Creating controls at runtime...I need advice to make it look good.

[WilliamUT]

I basically just need some advice. I am writing a client / server application and need the client to generate fields dynamically. The problem is I need it to look good. I have thought about doing a telnet / dos type of menu but that doesnt seem very user friendly. I also have thought about making a form generator. Where the user first draws a form by clicking and dragging controls where they want them and it saves it to a text file or something. But this would be alot of work and I am alone and dont have the time to crank something like this out in a decent time frame.

What I really would like to accomplish is a type of word document that looks like a nice application (like you would fill out for a job) that the user can fill out..and I need to be able to grab the fields into variables...im not sure if this would be time wise either because I have never done it.

What are my best options to creating a nice looking GUI with dynamic contols? or something to the effect as what I have described? Thanks for any advice.

 

[damienlong]

Can you give us more information about what the program is going to do. Would Excel be better than Word because you can use VB to get the information out of the cells.

 

[WilliamUT]

What im going is writing a client / server application. On the server you can enter in a bunch of questions and they save to a database. Then when the client connects the questions are transfered to the client where the client asks the user the question. Then the client takes the answer and sends it back to the server and the answer is saved in the database.

The thing is i want this to be all dynamic and not have a limit on questions. Where for my use I may ask 5 questions somebody else may ask 50. So the form cant be static it needs to be dynamic and hold as many input boxes as there are questions. Something like a datagrid would work but im afraid it will look to blocky like a spreadsheet and not very user friendly. I have thought of asking one question at a time with a wizard type view but if there are 50 questions would you want to hit NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT 50 times...I hope this makes it a little more clear.