15 minute tabs - Global Error

[Neville310]

I have been working an interface solution for some time now. One solution has form the basis for my interface; 15 Minute tabs (http://www.filemakermagazine.com/) . In order to develop my own solution, I re-created Matt Petrowsky solution. My re-creation left me with some perplexing questions.

 

First, one particular text box disappears when I place a background pattern on the body part. The text box just has a caption and is not attached to any field. When I remove the background on the body part, the text box appears in Browse. The Text box appears in layout with or without the background. I tried Arrange > To Front and still could not resolve this odd behavior.

 

My second question relates to the 15 minutes solution itself. It has a major limitation when entering Find mode. The Interface graphic vanishes. Upon reading the comments at filemakermagazine.com, someone suggested converting Tabs_Display into a GLOBAL. Filemaker will not allow me to change this field to a global. Filemaker keeps returning the following error message.

 

The calculation “Tabs_Display” cannot be stored or indexed because it references a related field, a summary field, an unstored calculation field, or a field with global storage.

 

Please let me know if I am over-looking something in particular.

[SurferNate]

If the text box is partially (even one pixel) in a preceding part it will "disappear" when a background is applied to the body part.

 

Also, I studied the 15 minute tabs solution and found that I wanted to develop a parallel method for my own tabs that seemed easier to me. I set all of the tabs to exist on the basic layout all of the time and then "hide" them with a repeating calculation field.

 

example:

 

TabHide[1]=

Case(TabLabel[1];Fillcolors[1])

 

 

 

I can then "Display" the current tab on top with another Repeating calculation. My tabs can be prebuilt with the button scripts attached and a simple CheckLayout script step to abort the script action if the button which goes to the current active layout is pressed.

 

Problem: calculated values will not display in Find mode. Therefore the layout changes when the mode changes.

 

Solution: script the find action through a dialog box. Eliminate manual Find requests.

[Neville310]

Ok, the global error has been over come. But it was related to a FileMaker 7.0 bug; and the FileMaker Update 7v.3 resolved the situation.

 

The text box disappearance related to a one pixel shift into the header. Thanks for your suggestions; they resolved the mystery.

 

I am still developing a tab solution with considerable difficulty. The Find mode gotcha presents additional development or other hacks. The main issue relates to my elementary knowledge of scripting in FileMaker. I am still learning the workarounds and basic concepts. Let me know if you have any sample exercises and databases to build upon my reference book resources.