best practices in navigation

[hollyheadhunter]

What are some favorite places to read about best practices in navigation for a FileMaker file? In considering the task of rebuilding a file, I'm guessing we need to rebuild in a specific order (1, import tables; 2, re-draw relationships; 3- value lists; 4... import scripts or layouts -- that's where we get stuck).  It seems like the ideal situation would be to only have a few scripts that reference any layout. Almost no layouts would use steps "go to layout" or "go to related record" --- only a navigation script would. Do you agree? Before go down that path, I'd like to learn more about it.

 

[webko]

There are some ideas about this on Modular fileMaker - http://www.modularfilemaker.org/?s=navigation

Personally, for most smaller systems, I've only got one actual Navigation script that accepts parameters to determine where to go. But I do use GTRR quite a bit. 

 

[webko]

And as for the rebuild, which may also answer the above - https://www.geistinteractive.com/checklist-moving-filemaker-code/

[Fitch]

19 hours ago, hollyheadhunter said:

It seems like the ideal situation would be to only have a few scripts that reference any layout. Almost no layouts would use steps "go to layout" or "go to related record" --- only a navigation script would. Do you agree?

 

100% do NOT agree with this. All planes don't need to fly through Atlanta. Keep your scripts small and focused. Your 'Home' button doesn't need to know about your 'List' button. I've built systems that used monolithic navigation scripts and eventually it becomes a maintenance headache. If you need to organize your scripts, that's what folders are for. And script search in the script workspace is very fast now.

With FileMaker 14 we got a nifty new ability: you can assign a single script step to a button (that part's not new), but now if you later find you need more than that one step, you can turn it into a script without having to redefine the button. This is somewhat liberating. I would still make my main navigation buttons as scripts, since those are going to be on lots of layouts and I wouldn't want to go back and change them on all those layout. But for many other single-task buttons, I'm fine with just assigning them script steps directly.