User Feedback using Button Bars

FileMaker 14 introduced a new layout object called a Button Bar. It’s essentially a wrapper around multiple buttons which can be used as either a conventional button or a popover menu.

The great thing about button bars is they respect a hierarchy. If you hide the whole Button Bar, then nothing shows. If you hide just one segment, which is what one individual button within the bar is called, then the bar will retain its size and simply not show the given segment.

All button segments have style properties for icons, text and allow you to use Conditional Formatting. When combined with the ability to hide/show whole bars, or any given segment, you can use Button Bars for more than just, well, a Button Bar.

So what to do with this knowledge? How about create a very flexible and portable user notification technique. That’s what this video is about. Using Button Bars creatively in order to provide user feedback within the user interface.

AttachmentSize
ButtonBarFeedback.zip278 KB

Comments

That was beautiful! Powerful, but ridiculously straightforward and easy to implement. I can see how this will be super useful.

Jerry Robin

matt -
clever use of the object!
might have missed a step...
how did you get each segment to come up a different colour??

john renfrew

Doh
a: didn't see the file as it was above
b: its conditional formatting, just couldn't see the label on the video

john