InfoPath Dev

A developer is working on an infopath 2010 application which will be deployed into sharepoint 2007 and is intended to run within the browser window.

On screen 1, he has a text box into which a user should enter the login name of a user for whom the remaining screens will apply.

If the user enters a name, and presses return, the information is not submited. Instead, they must tab out of the box. So a submit button was added, so that the user would have to move the mouse, press the button, and then the process could continue.

On another screen, again, a text box - this time for comments. This, plus the submit button, are the only controls on the screen. If the user enters a comment, then moves the mouse and clicks on the submit button, nothing happens. If however the user enters the comment, presses tab, then uses the mouse to press the submit button, the comment is submitted.

Finally, when the user gets the submit to work, the message "The webpage you are viewing is trying to close the tb. Do you want to close this tab?" appears. The user then has to click yes to continue.

For months now the developer has been developing the infopath application. Time after time behaviors like these come up as users try out the application and then ask to see things change.

While there are likely methods of writing .Net code to write around the behaviors, the intent of this project is to minimize .Net code, in hopes of developing a framework upon which non-developers could make use of Infopath to create their own forms with business rules.

Are there online resources to which the developer could reference to learn "out of the box" solutions to these types of challenges?

Thank you!

I don't know about a link that addresses these challenges specifically. Tabbing in an InfoPath form is pretty normal; if you have rules on a field, for example, they will execute when you tab out of the field, not when the user finishes typing or hits Enter on the keyboard. This is just how InfoPath works out of the box and it might take users a little bit of training to get them used to it.

As far as clicking buttons and nothing happening: what are the Postback settings on the button?

You could also look at an action where the rule executes when the Comments field is not blank. The action would be for the form to submit once the field is not blank. So then the user just hits Tab and there's no button to click.