FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner Tutorials
Working with the Database / New Layout pt. 2
Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner / Working with the Database / New Layout pt. 2)
Let's continue on with Creating a New Layout and talk about the Layout Types in more detail. I've already told you that Blank Layout is my favorite because I like to set my layouts up myself but these other Layout Types can be useful so we're going to try one of them but let's explain each one. The Standard Form as you can see is very similar to what we have already, a Form Layout meaning that it shows one record at a time. A Table View is like a spreadsheet and refers to that view as it's up there in Browse Mode. That view as that third choice is called the Table View and it looks like a spreadsheet. And you know you can see a little example here on the side, it, it gives you a visualization and it's very easy to work with the Table View. It's very good if you're trying to make a quick, fast, database or maybe you're really a beginner but you really wouldn't be watching these tutorials if you wanted to be a beginner. These tutorials are quite extensive, they go through beginner, intermediate and advanced and they will allow you to go to a developer level. So using a Table View is really not a developer type layout, that's because you really can't have interface on it. It is handy because you can click on the Column Headers and they're going to sort for you. There's Context Menus and all kinds of good stuff but for me, I don't use them very often, make your own decision but the biggest reason is you can't really put a good interface on it. On the other hand a List View is very similar to a Table View but it allows all the interface that I want on a professional, polished solution. So let's take a look at the List View, we have an option down here, Constrain Columns to Page Width, look what it does. It allows you to make a List View that's better for printing. Where as this is a List View that's better for a screen which is typically wider than the printed page. So we're going to choose that for what we're doing here but realize there is also Report Layout, you can do Sub Totals and Grand Totals and all kinds of good things. You also have Labels which allows you to do things like Avery type Labels, there's hundreds of Avery type Labels, the. The most common probably being the 5160, you can choose it from here. Vertical Labels and Envelopes and again these things can all be done by using the features in here. Let's go back to our List View, we'll hit Next now, we'll choose what fields we want to display. So let's try Name First or we can come over to Name Last and double-click on it so we don't have to come over here and hit Move. I might want the City next and maybe the Phone Number. We'll click Next, we'll decide whether we want to sort it, well this is not really a report and this is only going to sort it once anyhow so it's really not much use. I'm just going to skip this feature; we don't really need it to sort. Then you come to this area, now if you've used previous versions of FileMaker this may look similar to the features that we had before. This is not, this feature here, these Themes are completely redesigned. Not only do they look different, they act different, meaning that you can take a theme and apply it to any layout at any time. Change the theme at any time whereas before you'd have to delete the layout and add it back in again, it's completely different. It really is a new feature and we'll get more into it in, in the later chapters. For right now just realize this is completely different and we're just going to choose the same theme we have for this Form Layout so they match. We'll hit Next and here's where you can easily put information in the Header and the Footer and so on, you can put in some text or page number or whatever you want, a logo, it just kind of walks you through. But again, you can do for instance text by clicking on this. You can use the Insert Menu to insert a logo and all these things can be done manually so I'm not going to really use this feature here. Same is true with the Footer, if you want something in it, you know do you want a page number in the lower left-hand corner of the footer? So it's at the bottom of every page? Well, you can easily do it here, we'll hit Next and do you want to create a script? Well that's something that we'll learn how to do as well and I really don't need a script for this so we're not going to do it. But it could create a script for you to automatically, it's usually good for reports but again, this is really a beginner feature and I'm not going to use it. And then do we go to Browse Mode or Layout Mode, well you can switch between them anytime you want so I'm just going to use Layout Mode for right now because it's going to take immediately to Layout Mode so you can see what will happen. But again I can go right to Browse Mode so it's, it's really just kind of helping you out here if you're just starting out with it. So we hit Finish, you can see it's got the Labels up here in the Header, it's got the Fields in the Body Part and you'll see that the Body Part is quite a bit smaller. Right. Here's our Form Layout, we go over here, here's our List View and we see it's going to allow us to put many records on the page at once. So if we go into Browse Mode, you'll see we see all of our records like that. If we switch back to our Contact, we see one record at a time and that's because we have it on Form View here. Switch back to our List View, it's on List View, not Table View. If we switch to Table View you'll see it's a very plain vanilla looking thing. This you can have all kinds of interface, you know, alternating record colors and things around the active record and all kinds of stuff like that. So it's pretty cool stuff what you can do with a List View so I hope that you, you like that in, you'll lose a few features you have in Table View but you can easily substitute those with scripting and other features. You just have to do it yourself but the results are so much more superior for a polished solution.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner |
| Author: | John Mark Osborne |
| SKU: | 34323 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-046-6 |
| Release Date: | 2012-06-08 |
| Duration: | 16 hrs / 169 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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