FM Devcon 2016 - Designing in Tight Spaces
In July of 2016, Matt was afforded the opportunity to present as a speaker at the annual FileMaker Developer's Conference. FileMaker Inc. decided to make the release of the session videos available for the general public. The session was well received with high marks given all around.
The session was a jam-packed roundup all the various things you can do with FileMaker layout objects in order to meet the objective of creating designs which work well within a small form factor. If taking advantage of FileMaker Go's highly portable convenience is one of your personal objectives, then set aside an hour of time and watch this video.
If you're looking for the sample file provided, then the link is provided below and within the video itself as well.
Comments
Preserving State
Hi Matt,
Great video. I have a suggestion for preserving state. What I do, let's use a button bar as an example, is set a global variable as I use the button bar to indicate the current button that was last used (i.e. $$layout.button.active) and the active segment is set to this variable. When I leave the layout that variable remains and I can use the button bar in that layout (i.e. $$anotherlayout.button.active). No need for an extra window.
Chris Wilson
Thanks Chris
Yeah, $$GLOBAL.VARIABLES are a great place to store all of your state data. Frontmost tab panels/sliders, active records and layouts and all kinds of stuff. The issue becomes more compounded when you have more and more objects on the layout.
I personally use a system which employs the use of a Custom Function which declares a special prefix called $$LAYOUT.ID.WHATEVER_I_WANT_TO_TRACK. The $$LAYOUT.ID part (i.e. $$LAYOUT.20) is automatically generate for each layout the user is on.
If the solution uses multiple windows then I assign the windows an ID and then it becomes $$LAYOUT.ID.WIN_ID.STATE. Using an automated prefix means you only need to worry about the significant name of the variable.
Coming up with some good OnLayoutEnter and OnLayoutExit scripts are really nice too.
Thanks for the reminder and I hope this info helps others too!
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
iOS Resize Window
Hi Matt
How can I get the iOS Resize Window change from Portrait to Landscape when you re-click the window size that you mentioned in your video.
Thanks
Craig