ISO FileMaker Magazine

One of FileMaker's most advantageous tools added in recent years is the Button Bar. It was the first way to present dynamic, calculated content directly on the screen. This removed the need for the decades-long practice of adding "yet another unstored calculation field." You can calculate something and render it right on the screen.

Then, in FileMaker 20, we got a new layout object called Layout Calculations. While these now provide the same functionality as a Button Bar, they do so without the overhead of unnecessary behind-the-scenes CSS and other extras. However, they are not fully implemented; they don't update any of their calculation references. While this will eventually be fixed, there are unique uses for Layout Calculations that allow for some really cool features—like Render Fields.

In this video, we take a look at generating temporary images for the purpose of PDF generation, which then cease to exist after the script finishes running. These Render Fields can be 100% dynamic on a record-by-record basis and can display whatever you want using an unstored field to show the result. This allows you to multi-purpose a field for multiple layouts. Let's take a look at what Render Fields can provide for your FileMaker solution.

Pop-up menus are the de facto widget for making selections from multi-option fields on mobile devices. Sure, checkboxes are possible, but they take up as much space as you have items. Not very efficient given the limited space on smartphones and tablets.

So, on mobile, the two most viable solutions for making multiple selections for a single field are either portals or a pop-up menu. You can use an additional window as well, but that's a technique for another day.

FileMaker has long supported making multiple selections in a pop-up menu via the Shift modifier key. In FileMaker 11, however, this feature went way on Mac OS X. The feature went away but the functionality did not. In fact, we still need this functionality for keeping things nice and compact in mobile only or hybrid designs.

This video showcases a wonderful technique, which works on both desktop and mobile, for supporting a default multi-selection option on fields formatted as pop-up menus.

If you're tight on space and need to offer more than one selection within the same field then look no further than this powerful technique!