J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Colorful UserForm

I ran across a site that features an add-in that provides an alternate MsgBox function: ktMsgBox. Here's the UserForm (click to see it in actual size):

I'd say that qualifies as a poorly designed UserForm. Besides being ugly, it's just way too confusing.

When designing a UserForm, my advice is to emulate the look of the dialog boxes in Excel as much as possible. Just because you can change the colors and cram 50 controls into one dialog box doesn't mean you should do so.

I downloaded the add-in just to see how it worked. I deleted it as soon as I saw the pop-up greeting that stayed on screen for 60-seconds and couldn't be closed.

- Reader Comments -

Following are comments in response to this item.
The most recent comment is at the bottom.

1. By Debra Dalgleish. Comment posted 01 December, 2009 8:48am

   Wow! I've seen some bad UserForms, but this one might be the winner. Clutter, colour, chaos -- it's got everything!
2. By Rick Rothstein (MVP - Excel). Comment posted 01 December, 2009 10:48am

   Until I read your second sentence (which came after the picture) that you were going to advocate making forms look that way.<g> Wow, but that is one **ugly** display.
3. By Rick Rothstein (MVP - Excel). Comment posted 01 December, 2009 10:49am

   I screwed up my comment; it should have read...
   
   Until I read your second sentence (which came after the picture) I was afraid that you were going to advocate making forms look that way.<g> Wow, but that is one **ugly** display.
4. By Adam. Comment posted 01 December, 2009 11:30am

   ooooo....look at the pretty colours...*drool*
5. By Rick Rothstein (MVP - Excel). Comment posted 01 December, 2009 3:37pm

   I just noticed... with all that color, the two places the programmer did NOT use color were for the Prompt Color and Back Color fields... wouldn't it have been a good thing to color the field with the user's selected color so they could see if they typed in the right code numbers?
6. By teylyn. Comment posted 09 December, 2009 4:11pm

   reminds me of this ....
   http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008/03/05/simplicity/
7. By sam. Comment posted 10 December, 2009 4:17am

   John
   
   Thanks for the link. There are couple of nice things on that site
   
   a) There is a Class Module to create a Calendar control that is very unique...It does not require you to have a reference to the MSCAL.ocx (hence can be used on computers without access) nor does it require you to write code to simulate the calendar logic
   
   b) There is also a UDF which is an alternate to the buggy Datedif function in excel