Making the most of Advanced Conditional Formatting
Providing users of your database with every possible clue, indicating the status or state of things, is something you should seriously consider - every time you start to work in Layout mode.
I must admit, I was personally a slow adopter of Conditional Formatting when it was introduced in FileMaker 9. It's been a few years now, and there are a lot of things you can do with it. Yes, it's lacking, in terms of being feature complete. You can't change the color of lines, it only applies to fields and text (none of the vector objects like rectangles, ovals, etc.) and you can't make things disappear with it. However, what you can do with it, should certainly be used.
When you combine useful logic, understand how to "sort of" hide things, and know a few of the behind-the-scenes tricks, you can really leverage this FileMaker feature. In this video, I present pretty much everything I know about using this feature for the purpose of adjusting what your layout will display. If you have your own tricks for using Conditional Formatting I'd love to hear them! Post a comment below.
Comments
Buttons can have conditional formatting too
> Todd Geist wrote in email:
>
> Hey Matt,
>
> I haven't watched the video yet, but I was struck by this
> sentence...
>
> "it only applies to fields and text (none of the vector
> objects like rectangles, ovals, etc.)"
>
> It also works on buttons.
>
> Todd
Oops, I guess I missed one - sort of. I consider buttons
to be equivalent to text objects because they're not
fields, and you can use the define button settings to
control their shape. A button isn't "really" an object,
but rather it's a property of an object because you can
arbitrarily assign it to a field, vector shape or text
label and even to an image.
Semantics I guess. :) Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
Matt
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Last example
Hi Matt,
I've a question about Conditional Formatting video.
If conditional formatting can't apply to object like rectangles, ovals, etc...in the video's examples you use only button and textbox?
For example in the last example, in projects' portal, what kind of control Do you use to apply conditional formatting in order to hide icons?
Thanks,
Anna
Hiding things using conditional formatting
Is simply a matter of putting an overlay above what you want to hide. Yes, you use a transparent text label, with only a space character, above anything and then conditionally set the fill color to the same as the background.
This will effectively hide whatever is underneath. Just keep in mind that any buttons underneath are still defined, so you'll need the same logic on the buttons to make sure they don't do anything when they are hidden.
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Instant Web Publishing
Dear Matt,
Happy with incorporating Conditional Formatting into my application thanks to your video lessons, I discovered later that this doesn't work anymore in IWP. What doesn't work anymore too is buttons hidden under an object, in my case several different buttons under one drawing. Also transparency doesn't work anymore, so I doubt transparent gradients will stay as you expect into IWP.
Is this something that never will be possible in IWP, or could such become realizable in the future?
Best regards,
Jerome
I wouldn't depend on IWP
I wouldn't depend on IWP picking up too much of what you do within a FileMaker layout. Translating what FileMaker has on a layout to HTML including interactive Javascript is a pretty complex task. I imagine, if IWP as a feature is important enough to FileMaker Inc, they will be enhancing what it can do.
But for now, you have FAR more control with custom web publishing if you want similar types of features. I would consider IWP only a "get me by" feature if you need to get data up on the web quickly.
Matt