- [Voiceover] Once you've created layouts in Filemaker, there are a couple of different things you can do to change some of the behaviors. You'll notice, if you go into layout mode on the customer's layout, you'll see that there is a little pencil icon next to the layout drop-down. If you select that, you're going to see the layout setup dialogue. I'm going to give you a quick little tour of what some of these settings are. The first couple that you're going to see here are the name of the layout, which you can change in the style log if you want to, and also the ability to include in the layout dropdown. That means in the layout dropdown menu in browse mode.
We'll talk about that in a later movie. You can also see what the context of your layout is, or what records you're showing. I like to refer to this as the context because this is the table that the layout is based off of. Now, these options down here are kind of interesting. Save record changes automatically. That's the default behavior in Filemaker, which allows you to make changes to the data in your database, and to not prompt the user with a save. Now, some developers and some users, for that matter, get a little nervous about that.
So, when you turn this off, and then save your changes onto the layout, you'll see that when users click into the field, when they want to commit the change, now they'll get prompted to save the change, don't save, or cancel, for example. So, that might be reassuring to some users. It's not default behavior, but you can turn that on in the layout setup dialogue. Also, show field frames when record is active. That's the behavior that you're probably used to already.
When you click into a record, you notice these dotted frames around it. You can even see this record here is active. That's what we're talking about when we talk about showing the field frames when the record is active. If you don't like that behavior, you can uncheck this option. Now, the delineate fields on current record only option will be off by default on form layouts like the one that you're looking at here. But, if we close this window and navigate over to the product list, for example, we'll see that that option is on by default on all list views.
So, what does that do? Well, if we dismiss the window for a moment, and we see here that we've got all the fields on our product list layout have this highlight applied to them. So, if we go into browse mode, what you'll notice is that only the selected record actually shows the highlight option. That's really what that setting does there. So, if you go into delineate fields on current record only, and you take that off, which is the behavior that we see in form views.
You'll notice that it gets applied to everything. So, the idea in list views is that you might want to only highlight selected or active records, and that's why this option is available to us. The custom menus, I've mentioned that briefly in this course, but it's outside the scope of this course. If you're interested in more information on this, you'll need a copy of Filemaker Pro Advanced. It allows you to modify the menus across the top of the screen. Enabled quick find will cover in the finding data section. So, let's move over to views. So now, we're going to list view in this case, so you'll notice that only the list view option is chosen.
Normally, if you go back to, let's say, the customer's layout, and we go into browse mode, we'll notice that there's these three icons here. Each of these three icons is available to us. This is the table view. This is the list view. And this is the form view. And you can also access those under the view menu. Now, we see all of those available to us because this was one of the default layouts that was created when we created the table in the first place. But if you use the layout builder tool, it will intelligently disable some of these options for you.
So, if you go back into layout mode, and we hit the pencil icon again to bring up the layout setup, we see views. We can go in here and say, Well, this is designed just to look at one record at a time, which is a form or a detail view, so I'm going to disable this view and disable table view. And, I'm going to make sure that we go to the form view by default. So, let's look at what that behavior looks like. Saving our changes. Now we see that those options are greyed out, both on the toolbar, and you see that they're greyed out on the menu as well. So, this way we can go into form views, and list views if we want to, and make sure that users are only seeing them in their optimal view.
Now, you'll also notice that there's a table view, and table view has some properties here. Table view is that spreadsheet looking view, which by design does not have any parts along the top. So, we can have a header or top navigation parts up here if we want to. And, we can either allow the users to resize columns, which is by default, or not allow them. You'll also notice that one of these is the default option. So, I like to go through all my list views and only allow them to be viewed in list, and make that the default, than go through all the form views or detail views, and do the same thing for them, but with the form view.
So, layout setup dialogue allows you to modify many of the settings for existing layouts, and set defaults based on the type of layout that you designed, so that users can view the data as you intended, without being able to accidentally make changes to the layout while working on it.
Author
Released
5/10/2016- Understanding the FileMaker Pro interface
- Creating new FileMaker apps from spreadsheets
- Building tables and relationships
- Defining primary and foreign keys
- Working with fields
- Creating, editing, and deleting records
- Importing and exporting data in a FileMaker Pro database
- Creating and formatting layouts
- Finding data and sorting data
- Printing from FileMaker
- Building reports
- Using calculations
- Scripting
- Triggering scripts
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
Related Courses
-
Advanced FileMaker Pro 12
with Cris Ippolite7h 33m Advanced
-
Introduction
-
Welcome52s
-
-
1. Getting Started
-
What is a database?2m 44s
-
Tour essential preferences6m 11s
-
Explore the interface5m 40s
-
Tour the Launch Center4m 46s
-
-
2. FileMaker App Creation Essentials
-
3. Creating Tables
-
4. Creating Relationships
-
Understand key fields6m 25s
-
5. Working with Fields
-
Understand field types7m 47s
-
Define fields8m 1s
-
Add fields to layouts5m 15s
-
Use field auto-enter options10m 5s
-
6. Working with Container Fields
-
7. Working with Records
-
Create and duplicate records6m 21s
-
Edit and lock records4m 4s
-
-
8. Importing and Exporting
-
Import data6m 44s
-
Export data4m 50s
-
-
9. Creating Layouts
-
Introducing layouts5m 1s
-
Work with layout themes7m 48s
-
-
10. Working with Layouts
-
Understand layout parts7m 28s
-
Preview the Inspector3m 2s
-
11. Formatting Layout Objects
-
Apply themes to layouts2m 11s
-
Apply screen stencils6m 13s
-
Apply gradients2m 3s
-
Understand states7m 1s
-
Set field behaviors2m 3s
-
Use the tab control feature7m 26s
-
Set the tab order3m 29s
-
12. Finding Data
-
Establish search operators5m 19s
-
13. Sorting Data
-
Sort with single criteria5m 48s
-
Sort with related fields1m 52s
-
Sort with multiple criteria1m 43s
-
Sort using custom values2m 25s
-
-
14. Value Lists
-
15. Printing and Saving
-
Print merge letters3m 54s
-
Save as PDF or Excel4m 48s
-
16. Reports
-
Create subsummary reports8m 37s
-
Add charts to reports7m 37s
-
17. Calculation Essentials
-
Introducing calculations2m 58s
-
Use number functions7m 6s
-
Use date and time functions2m 43s
-
Use text functions9m 42s
-
Use get functions4m 41s
-
Use logic functions10m 35s
-
-
18. Script Essentials
-
Tour the Script workspace3m 29s
-
Create multiline scripts8m 7s
-
Use script parameters2m 46s
-
19. Script Triggers
-
Introducing script triggers2m 12s
-
Use object-based triggers10m 22s
-
Use layout-based triggers7m 25s
-
-
Conclusion
-
Goodbye35s
-
- Mark as unwatched
- Mark all as unwatched
Are you sure you want to mark all the videos in this course as unwatched?
This will not affect your course history, your reports, or your certificates of completion for this course.
CancelTake notes with your new membership!
Type in the entry box, then click Enter to save your note.
1:30Press on any video thumbnail to jump immediately to the timecode shown.
Notes are saved with you account but can also be exported as plain text, MS Word, PDF, Google Doc, or Evernote.
Share this video
Embed this video
Video: Use the Layout Setup dialog