Primer Demo: The User Interface

The user interface of the contact book relies on visual form inheritance. The following diagram shows the form class hierarchy.

TBasicEditForm introduces basic editing capabilities for editing single objects. Descendant forms introduce capabilities required for editing objects of their corresponding business class.

TBasicBrowseForm is used for browsing and editing multiple objects at once. Descendants hereof are customized for browsing objects of specific classes.

Last saved

The time stamp of the contacts (ObjectTimeStamp, see The Business Model) is shown:

• in the contacts grid of the main window, in the Last saved column;
• in TContactEditForm, as a read-only field below the phones. TPersonEditForm and TCompanyEditForm inherit it from TContactEditForm and only change its position.