I will be putting out a series of write-ups covering basic development topics in the SalesLogix LAN client, so without further ado...
SalesLogix Basics
Part 1 - The EditBox control.
The standard EditBox is arguably the most commonly
used control in SalesLogix. It allows
direct user input or modification of data on the current form.
There is really only one property that must be set for the control, either at run-time or at design
time. That is the Text Property. 
At design time, clicking the button presents a list of
fields for the current view’s parent table (Account, in this case). Select the desired field, and click ‘OK’.
At this point, there’s nothing else you need to do. When committed, the value is updated to the
bound field.
Otherwise, you can set the Text property to a specific value
using this syntax:
Edit1.Text = “Whatever”
Here are a few additional
selected Properties which are used frequently.
Alignment: The alignment
property determines the alignment of the text within the control. Enumerated values are; taLeftJustify,
taRightJustify and taCenter.
Color: The color
property determines the color displayed in the background of the control. Typically, I use this property to grey out
the field if it has been set to readonly.
Typically, I’m either setting the control to either “Window” or
“BtnFace”, but using the StringToColor function, you have quite a few color
options.
Ex. Edit1.Color = Application.BasicFunctions.StringToColor(“Window”)
Edit1.Color =
Application.BasicFunctions.StringToColor(“BtnFace”)
Edit1.Color =
Application.BasicFunctions.StringToColor(“Red”)
Enabled(T/F): This
property determines if the control can respond to any user events. Turning off this property will make the
control completely inaccessible to the user, although they will be able to view
the data.
FormatType: The
FormatType property determines the Format of the text displayed in the
control. Enumerated values include;
ftNone, ftInteger, ftDateTime, ftPercent, ftCurrency, ftUser, ftOwner, ftPhone
(Other values exists, but I tend to use these 8 most often.)
FormatString: This
property also determines the format of the text in the control, however while
FormatType has a finite list of potential options, FormatString allows you a
little more control used in conjunction with the FormatType Property.
Ex. Value = 100
FormatType = ftCurrency
Value = $100.00
FormatString = %.0m
Value = $100
Height,
Width: These properties
determine the Height and Width of the
control.
Top,
Left: These properties control
the position of the control on the form.
ReadOnly(T/F): This
functions similarly to Enabled, but a user is allowed to select the text in the
control. Typically, I set the color
property of the EditBox as well to designate that the control is not editable.
RecordChanges(T/F): If turned on, edits to this control
will generate a history record
containing the old value from the control.
Name: The Name property
sets the name of the control which can then be referenced in code. If you plan on writing any code, I strongly
suggest naming all of your controls.
It’s much easer to reference “txtAccountType” then “Edit1”, “Edit2”, etc…
I'll get into Events in the next Basics Article.