SiriusProjects
10-08-2009, 10:01 AM
For the last couple of weeks I have been trawling the internet trying to find some ideas as to how to solve the following problem.
I have been given the task of writing an App which will allow all users within the company, the ability to access a library of what are called process maps. These are a series of documents created in word, that are basically training aids for various procedures.
I basically wanted to create a single screen app, with a treeview control on the left, with various categories and sub categories and a viewer window on the right, which will display the selected document. No editing of the documents is needed, it is purely for viewing only.
I have been experimenting with the Webbrowser control, and this seems to work to a degree. But I am stuck on making the loaded document read only and removing the toolbars that appear. There is a toolbar property for the Webbrowser window, but this does not work to get rid of the Word toolbar(s) that are displayed.
I have also considered using the crystal reports viewer of all things. I have experimented with using an OLE Object to hold a link to a file, this works okay, but whenever the file changes, it pops up with an annoying "Updating ActiveX Object" message and seems to be a bit slow. I did wonder about storing the Word Documents in an Access Database and having the data in the Crystal Report as a Blob field, but have no idea if this would work.
Of course, there are third party controls out there, but I want to avoid having to distributed any extra controls to all users on the network, plus, I don't think the company would pay for this anyway.
I am just completely stuck at the moment. My initial idea seemed fairly straightforward and with me using Microsoft Visual Basic, I had assumed that it would mesh well with any other Microsoft Product, but obviously not. Please, please help if you have any ideas as to how I can do this.
I have been given the task of writing an App which will allow all users within the company, the ability to access a library of what are called process maps. These are a series of documents created in word, that are basically training aids for various procedures.
I basically wanted to create a single screen app, with a treeview control on the left, with various categories and sub categories and a viewer window on the right, which will display the selected document. No editing of the documents is needed, it is purely for viewing only.
I have been experimenting with the Webbrowser control, and this seems to work to a degree. But I am stuck on making the loaded document read only and removing the toolbars that appear. There is a toolbar property for the Webbrowser window, but this does not work to get rid of the Word toolbar(s) that are displayed.
I have also considered using the crystal reports viewer of all things. I have experimented with using an OLE Object to hold a link to a file, this works okay, but whenever the file changes, it pops up with an annoying "Updating ActiveX Object" message and seems to be a bit slow. I did wonder about storing the Word Documents in an Access Database and having the data in the Crystal Report as a Blob field, but have no idea if this would work.
Of course, there are third party controls out there, but I want to avoid having to distributed any extra controls to all users on the network, plus, I don't think the company would pay for this anyway.
I am just completely stuck at the moment. My initial idea seemed fairly straightforward and with me using Microsoft Visual Basic, I had assumed that it would mesh well with any other Microsoft Product, but obviously not. Please, please help if you have any ideas as to how I can do this.