Book Image

Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV

By : David A. Studebaker
Book Image

Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV

By: David A. Studebaker

Overview of this book

<p>Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly known as Navision) is a well established Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, part of the Microsoft Dynamics family.</p> <p>Renowned for its challenging learning curve, Dynamics NAV is a complex piece of software with a unique design structure and, for developers learning to modify or enhance it for vital business purposes, the task can sometimes be overwhelming.</p> <p>This book will ease you through the complexities of NAV application development. You will learn the skills and develop the confidence to tackle your own critical NAV applications. This book will act as your experienced NAV programming mentor, helping you to become productive as a NAV developer much more quickly.</p> <p>From basic NAV terminology and concept definitions, through the essential building blocks of NAV data structure and objects, you will gain an understanding of the fundamental underlying concepts of NAV. You will learn practical details about NAV object construction and the tools available, including the Table, Form, and Report Designers. You will learn how to use NAV's tools to effectively navigate through the various features of objects, including properties, triggers, and C/AL code and receive practical guidance on ways to develop and test in the unique NAV C/SIDE development environment.</p> <p>A section on software design for NAV is provided along with tips for efficient design of a new NAV application or enhancing an existing application. With its comprehensive collection of NAV information, this book is not only designed to help you learn, but can act as a reference as well.</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Programming Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

NAV Form Look and Feel


Most of the time the particular form type will be relatively obvious. The specific layout and features of the form object available to you as a developer, will offer many choices. Thus, some forms require many design decisions. C/SIDE allows you to create forms with vastly different "look and feel" attributes. But the standard NAV application only uses a few of the possibilities, and closely follows a set of GUI (Graphical User Interface) guidelines, already published, that offer close compatibility with other Windows and Microsoft applications.

Good design practice dictates that enhancements should integrate seamlessly unless there is an overwhelming justification for being "different". The best advice you can follow for design of forms is to make your new forms have the same look and feel as the forms in the "out-of-the-box" product. When you add changes to forms, make changes look as similar to the original form look and feel as your new functionality allows.

There...