Filemaker with Html table layout - filemaker

I'm designing a form layout in FileMaker, and I'm spending a ton of time just trying to get all the controls in the right spot. Is there some way of doing a table layout? I just want to say "this control is in this cell" and let the table take care of all the formatting. Instead of having to set the position on each object just right.
What I Have
A form with a bunch of fields, organized in a table manner, i.e., rows and columns.
Example:
What I Want
To not have to specify the exact position of each individual control. Every time one element moves or needs to resize, it ends up screwing up the entire row, column, or "table", and I end up needing to move every field individually accordingly.
Is there a better way to organize fields in a form like this so that I don't have to manipulate the position and width of every "cell" in a row or column individually?

I think this is made easier with the use of the Inspector in layout mode. In particular, the controls in the "Arrange & Align" section on the "Position" tab of the inspector.
For example, you can quickly select all fields on the same "row" and align them to the top and make them the same height and width as needed.
If you are using FM 13, you may also want to make use of styles to make it easier to set the same formatting quickly across similar objects.

If you're a web developer you might want to experiment using the WebViewer. You can use Javascript for creating a nice table. Then you can interact with that table through calling a script in FileMaker.
Or just stick to a portal like Michael.Hor recommended.

Related

Nested table height auto increase?

I am trying to create a report in SSRS using Report Builder 3.0 where there is an ungrouped section of data (in the screenshot this is called "Risks") followed by a grouped section of data "Controls". There can be many controls to one risk row as seen in the row with the "Ref" 3a. After the grouped set of controls it goes back to the ungrouped risk info (see below).
screenshot
I have made this work by using a nested table inside one of the cells, this all looked fine until I added a larger amount of data in the cell "Consequences". As you can see this does not look good at the moment as the inner table does not grow.
My question, is there a way to make the inner table grow, so the 2nd row text would be in the middle of that row and the background colour would take up the whole row, so it does not leave a white space?
I really appreciate any help you can give.
Thanks,
Glenn
I do not believe this to be possible as the nested tablix is by its own right optimised for space and visual appearance.
I know what you want to do and I can only suggest you tweak yourn report to query this data in one and produce one tablix. Not ideal I know as this will mess the arrangement.

How to change the sqlite table structure dynamically in iPhone?

I'm developing an iPad application, in which i have to store some data in the database. So that, i prefer to use SQLite, here i have an doubt regarding the table structure. Let me explain, actually there is a view in which, the user can add the labor Qty, labor type and so on, at default i have displayed only one set of fields.
I have created table with the five fields ( Labor Qty, Labor Type.....) and it works fine. Now i need to setup a button "Add New" at the bottom, i apologize for the low resolution image, when the user click on the button, will generate another five fields below the previous. So how can i get the text fields values into the database table since i have created only for five fields. I tried and googled it but can't find the correct way. Any Help Appreciated. Thanks.
Well in that case what you can do is following.
put your content in UIScrollView
Have the textboxes in UIWebView and upon click on add new create new instance of that.
Put the X,Y co-ordinate in increasing manner let's say first time it is at 10,50 second time 40,50 third time 70,50 and so on,,
also increase X,Y co-ordinates of the button itself.
This way you can achieve above.
Using above logic you can get something like following.

Prevent a text field within a portal from being truncated, filtering portal contents to display in another layout

I am already using Filemaker Pro 10, I have two questions:
I have a text field in a portal, and whenever I am entering values like "B12C45" in it, it works well, but when the string is longer like "BC12F42, B45z87" it doesn't show whole the strings and omits the letters from it. what Can I do?
My second question is that: I have a portal in a layout, in this portal every row has an id sometimes the id is repeated in other rows but the value of another field called Position is changing. Now I want to have those rows of this portal which have the same id in another layout. I have tried using scripts for it, but scripts don't work well in this case, and they are entering whole the portal in the new layout not the parts I want . How can I write a script which does this?
I will really appreciate any help.
For the first question there are many ways you could display more data in a field and the best one will depend on the particular implementation in your database. There are three main ways to solve this problem: field-size adjustments, text-size adjustments and programming adjustments to dynamically change the text-size.
Field-size adjustments include:
Making the field longer
Using the autosizing aspect of a field so that as the window grows, so does the field
Text-size adjustments include:
Making the font size for that field smaller.
Setting the font style for that field to condensed.
Programatically, though, three things stand out to me as possibilities. I like the third one the best for most of my solutions:
Set the tooltip for the field to "Self" (without the quotes). A user can see the entire contents of the field by hovering the mouse over the field.
In "Define Database" set the field's calculated value to: "TextStyleAdd(self;Condense)" (without the quotes) and make certain that "Do not replace existing value of field" is turned off
Use Conditional formatting to add the Condense style or use a smaller font when the number of the characters in the field gets long.
The steps for using conditional formatting are as follows:
In layout mode select the field and select 'Conditional Formatting...' from the pop-up menu
Add a new condition
Change the condition to 'Formula is'
In the text field enter "Length(Self) > 8" (without the quotes)
Press the "More Formatting..." button
Select "Condense" as the Style from the text
You can add multiple conditions, so you might have "Condense" only for Length(Self) > 8 and another condition for Length(Self) > 16 where you set both "Condense" and reduce the Font Size.
As for your second question, I'm not able to get a picture of what you're trying to do from the question you asked. You might be able do the following in a script:
Go to Related Record [the portal relationship]
Sort Records [by ID]
And then use a summary field (Count of ID) to determine how many of each ID you have.
If you clarified what you were trying to do, gave more information about your tables and table occurrences, we might be able to provide a better answer for this instance.

iPhone UI Design approach - was using Excel Filtering

I'm new to iPhone development and don't know what the best iPhone UI approach for my problem is. That's where I was hoping you all could provide some input and guidance.
Here's the system & how it's currently used:
Right now, I have an Excel spreadsheet of data with four columns - Make, Model, Size, Value. There are about 1,000 rows of data. How the system is used in Excel is to use Filtering on the columns. First, you select the Make from the filtered column (there are about 8 unique Makes), then select a Model (each Make has between 1 and 20 unique Models), then select the Size (each Model has about 20 unique Sizes), then use the associated Value.
If I were to create an HTML page and jQuery with AJAX, I'd have three SELECT elements and one DIV (or some kind of label). When a Make is selected, populate the Models SELECT. Likewise, when a Model is selected, populate the Size SELECT. Finally, when a Size is selected, display the associated Value in the DIV. (Note, that when a Make is selected, I'd need to clear out the Value DIV and the Size SELECT in addition to the population of the Model SELECT. - appropriate action for selecting Size as well)
Now, given that, what do you recommend as a UI pattern for the iPhone?
You could do exactly that you describe for the HTML version, using a UIPickerView in each place where you would use and HTML SELECT. (The UIPickerView uses the "spinning wheel" metaphor to select from a list of values).
You could also use a single multi-component UIPickerView, where the first wheel is Make, the second Model, and the third Size. That works best if the names are short enough that you can fit all three (Make/Model/Size) in a single row on the screen.

How to move all the selected element n rows down in expression blend?

Designing forms in silverlight is a PAIN.
The grid does make it easy to align stuff right or left, but when you start building more complex forms, It quickly becomes a hell.
(Think multicolumns forms, separating parts of the form in sub-usercontrol, with Localized labels so that you need the label column to be set to Auto...)
One particular problem I face is when I need to insert a new row in a form.
Is there any way to select all the
controls on multiple lines and move
them all 1 row down?
Right now, I have to go through every line and move them down, one by one.
How do you effectively build complex forms? I know about the DataForm control from the toolkit, but it is in "preview" quality and from what I have read, it is too inflexible when you need to customize and build multiple-columns forms.
Yes, complex Grid's can be annoying to change. Here are a few thoughts and ideas for you.
If you use Expression Blend and insert the Row or Column using the Blue Bars in the Artboard, Blend will attempt to do this for you. It works with varying degrees of success, largely based on the amount of the control the new row or column snap lines overlaps. For the best results, zoom into the Artboard and add the new snap line very close to the row above or column to the left.
At this point you'll still have a lot of cleanup to do, but the Grid.Row and Grid.Column properties will be correctly adjusted. Correcting the row and column sizes is one of the few times I choose to manually edit the XAML, so you'll probably be faster fixing those values manually.
If odd Margins are created (as they often are) you can select all the affected properties at once and reset the Margins en masse.
Probably the best advice would be to consider using a different control. If you find yourself constantly rearranging the contents of a Grid, perhaps you would be better off with a DockPanel. You can achieve a Grid-like result by adding elements (Grids) docked to the Top and binding the row or column height's to a Resource:
<UserControl.Resources>
<GridLength x:Key="StandardColumnHeight">32</GridLength>
</UserControl.Resources>
Now you can bind the ColumnDefinition Width to the static resource ensuring they all have the same width (of course this could also work with column widths).
<ColumnDefinition Width="{StaticResource StandardColumnHeight}"/>
If you define each of the subsequent Grid's using the same set of ColumnDefinitions (another quick XAML copy-n-paste job).
This may be a little extra work to set up initially, but inserting a new row in your DockPanel is a simple matter of XAML order and would not require as much work.