Switch board VS navigation forms

[johnseito]

which is more effective and efficient.
I have used switch board but not navigation.

I don’t know so I ask. Thx

[Minty]

They both have their merits, but I personally dislike the inbuilt navigation forms, especially for beginners, as it hides how it works, and the referencing of the forms in not intuitive.
They load each form as a tabbed subform on load. This is fine if you know that but leads to issues with referencing other forms if required.

I think most developers "Roll their own" navigation / menu systems to suit the application they are creating, as it gives them complete control over what is happening.

[johnseito]

Thank you for the information and advice. 👍

[pbaldy]

+1 for what Minty said. I never liked switchboards, haven't even tried navigation forms. I build my own forms appropriate to each app.

[June7]

Another vote for 'roll your own'. I have never used Switchboard wizard nor Navigation form. Had enough interaction with them assisting posters with their issues. There's a reason MS deprecated the Switchboard wizard. Used to be up front on the menu/ribbon, now it's hidden and have to go find and activate it.

[isladogs]

And another vote for create your own.
The MS switchboard was/is very difficult to manage.
The built in navigation forms are a nightmare to code if you want to adapt the design in any significant way

[johnseito]

Thank you all for your advice. Good to know. Now I don’t have to be so tempted to figure out the navigation form.
👍👍

[Micron]

IMHO, drilling down to a form control on a navigation is bad enough. Add a subform or tab control on that form and yeeucch.
Then there's the fact that a nav form only loads one form at a time. Don't expect to be able to retrieve data from form A when you switch to form B 'cause form A is gone. Probably one of the major issues that June7 might have been alluding to.

[ArviLaanemets]

As most of my apps are single-purpouse ones, I don't use neither. Instead I use a multi-page (usually unbound) Main form. On leftmost page is form which works as real app, on other pages are various registry, report, and setup forms.

The main minus for this setup is, that you can't convert such design as web-based app - at least without designing the web from zero - because converters I'm aware of don't support multi-level subforms.