Create Attractive Text- and Graphics-Based Data-Entry Screens in Minutes

There's no disputing that a good screen design program can help you create attractive programs and complete them quickly. The old-fashioned approach using LOCATE, COLOR, and PRINT simply takes too long when the screens are complex, or when there are many data entry fields. Painting screens and creating forms with a sophisticated screen design program is far easier than the trial and error method and affords greater creativity and a better finished result. But equally important to the savings of time and effort is the reduction in your program's code size.

QuickScreen and Graphics QuickScreen (two separate products) are the most elegant screen management systems ever developed for use with Microsoft compiled BASIC. QuickScreen lets you quickly design forms and input screens for display in text mode on any computer (the 43- and 50-line modes are also supported), while Graphics QuickScreen uses BASIC's graphics screen modes 9 (EGA) and 12 (VGA) and supports 25, 30, 43, and 60 lines. Both programs include a powerful screen designer to create screens and input fields, and both use supplied code that's added to your programs to handle all aspects of data entry. We provide full source code for the routines, so you can modify them if you want.

Quickly draw text and backgrounds, create data-entry fields with field-level help text, and even specify formulas for automatic field calculations, such as subtotals. The screen and field definitions are kept in a disk file, letting you make changes without recompiling, and the same data-entry routines are used for all screens. Compare that to clunky code generators that create many redundant pages of code for each and every screen. QuickScreen images are stored in compressed form, and the field definitions for multiple screens can be combined to reduce the number of files you must distribute. Graphics screens are stored in the popular .PCX format, while text screens can be combined to a single file or optionally linked directly into your .EXE program.

Both products include a sophisticated menu-driven screen design program that lets you create the screens and define the data entry fields. These screen designers are fashioned after Microsoft's BASIC editors, and they use the same familiar menus and shortcut keys. Portions of the screen may be painted any color. Blocks are easily moved, copied, or deleted. Boxes and lines are drawn dynamically without disturbing the rest of the screen. Text-mode screens may be displayed with a variety of attractive video effects, such as vertical and horizontal wipes, exploding box, dissolve, opening curtain, roll-away, and many more. Graphics QuickScreen's designer is even more capable, offering many of the features found in commercial Paint programs. These include the following:

A pop-up drawing and color palette that keeps the entire screen in progress visible at all times.

User-defined snap-to-grid settings that simplify the alignment of fields and other objects.

A re-color palette that easily lets you change all occurrences of one color to another.

A tile palette that provides 119 dithered colors and 24 different tile patterns.

A zoom feature that lets you easily edit individual pixels.

Scalable fonts for creating captions and labels.

QuickScreen supports 17 different field types, and Graphics QuickScreen adds single-line scrolling text, horizontal and vertical scroll bars, and push-buttons. The native field types include string, proper string, upper case, numeric string, integer, long integer, single and double precision, currency, American and European date, phone, zip code, social security number, logical, multiple choice, and memo (multi-line text). Optional attributes may be applied to identify fields as protected (read-only), relational, and indexed.

Proper name fields are used to enforce the correct capitalization for names. For example, if "john smith" is entered, it is converted automatically to "John Smith." Logical fields are similar to Yes/No fields, but any two choices may be specified. Multiple choice fields let you define a list of acceptable choices, which are then presented in a scrolling menu. This method also lets you save disk space by storing only the choice numbers instead of the equivalent text. Memo fields use a mini-word processor that features automatic word wrapping, and horizontal and vertical scrolling to accommodate more text than can fit in the allotted screen space. Date calculations are fully supported, and the field data is packed to only two bytes to save disk space.

Relational and indexed fields are flagged by the editing subroutines, although any indexing and relational operations must be handled by your program. Protected fields may be viewed by the user, but they are protected from being changed. Push buttons let you easily accept commands, such as Save, Load, or Print, and scroll bars provide a convenient way for users to select a single value from a range of values.

Formulas for calculated fields may be based on any combination of fields plus both numeric and string constants. String formulas may be used to concatenate other fields to the calculated field. All of BASIC's math, logical, and relational operators are supported for field calculations, as are the transcendental (Trig) functions. Full mouse support is built into both the screen designer programs and also the supplied data entry modules that are added to your programs. The editing routines are called in a unique polled mode, which lets your program display, save, or print data, even while new data is being entered. All editing, movement from field to field, and field calculations are handled for you automatically.

The QuickScreen subroutines are provided as BASIC source code that you load along with your program. The actual field contents are passed in a string array, with each element corresponding to one data-entry field. You may also pre-load one or more elements with default values and examine each field upon return. Further, all of the fields are combined for you into a single string, ready to be written to disk. Likewise, a record that has been read from disk is unpacked into separate fields automatically. This saves you from the tedium of writing MKI$, CVS, LSET, and FIELD statements for each different data file. QuickScreen also includes a screen capture TSR program that lets you import any text-mode screen from any program. Graphics QuickScreen includes a similar utility for graphics, saving the image in a standard .PCX file. Besides display screens and data-entry forms, Graphics QuickScreen lets you design 3D sizable buttons, menus, and scroll bars that look and operate just like Microsoft Visual Basicä . When a push button is clicked it actually depresses, just like the buttons in a real Windows program. Imagine being able to write programs that look just like Windows but with the blazing speed of DOS! This is the closest you can get to a true graphical user interface (GUI) but without having to program in Windows.

As with all our products, full source code is provided at no additional cost, so you can see how the routines were designed and even modify them if you want. We genuinely want you to understand how our libraries work and be able to learn from them. All of our products are reasonably priced and include free technical assistance, but they are licensed for use by only one person using one computer at a time. Royalty payments are not required when our routines are incorporated into your compiled applications. However, you may not distribute our source, object, or library files. If your customers need to rebuild your program, they will need their own copy of our product(s).

QuickScreen and Graphics QuickScreen cost $149 (each), and they work with QuickBASIC 4.x, PDS 7.x, and VB/DOS. Add $8 for UPS ground shipping to US addresses only (no P.O. boxes); Connecticut residents must add 6.0% sales tax or show proof of tax-exempt status. Please email or call for overnight and foreign shipping costs. We accept only prepaid orders accompanied by a check.

Download Demos: QSCREEN.ZIP (145k) GQSCREEN.ZIP (104k)