Modifying Excessively Long Forms

An extremely long form requires unwanted scrolling to be viewed or filled in and adversely affects the user’s experience.

1. Create multiple columns.
   1. Place groups of controls into two or more separate vertical panes, each representing a separate column. Drag the second pane to a position next to the first pane, so that you see a dotted line appear. The dotted line means that a horizontal pane will be created to contain the two vertical panes.
      Note: To do this, you must first enable the Windows > Preferences > Forms Designer > Auto-generate othogonal data panes preference.
   2. If you want more than two vertical columns, drag additional panes, one at a time, next to the right-most vertical pane within the new horizontal parent pane.
   3. If you want to have other groups of fields in the second column, rather than adding another column next to the existing columns, you will probably want to first create an additional horizontal pane to hold them. Then place new vertical panes within this horizontal parent pane, and add the additional controls to the vertical panes. This ensures that the added controls are aligned vertically and horizontally.

      You can create, for instance, two columns out of four modules by first creating two horizontal panes, one above the other, and placing two vertical panes inside each of them. Your controls would be placed within the four vertical panes.

      In this way, the default tab sequence will be left-to-right, and then top-to-bottom, the way you read a book, which is the tabbing behavior expected by most users.

2. Use tabbed panes in place of vertical panes. See the section, Creation of Tabbed Panes.