I love grids – especially the cool third party ones like Devex, C1 etc..
Our programmer doesn’t think end users can handle them – so he always designs his forms with read-only grids (with read-only classes). Choosing to edit an item in the grid opens up a detail form that allows editing.
This app is going to be used by general business folk – not geeks. But they are all very good Excel users – which I think is kinda ‘grid’ like. Should I trust my lead developer, or go with my gut which says that users like fast editing – which the grid does much better than the detail forms? I do want to have a consistent feel to the application, so prefer not to mix it up too much.
This is mainly a matter of taste, but my preference is in line with your developer’s (and Corey’s answer, above.) I much prefer a read-only/edit model over a big editable grid, for most applications. But I work a lot in Excel and it would kill me to have to open up a row at a time. Different purposes! If you’re primarily going to be doing a large amount of random-access editing, I’d stick with a grid. For everything else (including sequential entry) I’d use a read-only model with a break-out form. Various apps I’ve worked on have shown that users can deal with either in the appropriate context.