Creation of flexible form in filemaker

[Sam0316]

Hello everyone, i am new to filemaker. Now i would like to find a way to create a flexible form in filemaker. 

Here is part of my form,

Education

Hobbies

extracurricular activities

The users sometimes may skip one of the part in the form and leave it blank, they would like to clean up the form. For example, if they don't enter data in hobbies field. the extra-curricular activities field will move upwards automatically.

i have considered the slide function in filemaker, but in my form design, the sub-title(education/hobbies...) is enclosed in a box so it will not shrink which equals the size of the field.

Are there any methods i could use to create a flexible form? Is web viewer a better way to create the form?

[rwoods]

Hi Sam

FileMaker doesn't have a facility to make objects move in Browse mode based on whether or not other fields have content in. If you switch to Preview mode (or Print) then you can use the 'Sliding Objects' feature which does have this effect, but only in Preview.

If you have a relatively few combinations then you could create a different layout for each scenario ('Education is filled in, Hobbies is not, Extracurricular is filled' would be one scenario, there would be six in total) or even have a single layout with a slide panel with six slides, and use triggers on the fields to move to the correct slide to show only the scenario that applies.

It's all fairly clunky though and I generally just accept that the fields I place on layouts are fixed for a given window size, and design the solution around that.

Does that help?

Edited October 28, 2016 by rwoods

[Sam0316]

Thank you rwoods. The problem of slide is the text field border is shown according to the length of the text inside the field. If the length of the texts is short, the field will be shown ugly, Shrinking to fit the text length. Could i fix the border of the field?

Yes, i think the most simple way is to create 6 layouts.

[Lee Smith]

Is this what you mean?

FileMaker Help http://fmhelp.filemaker.com/fmphelp_14/en/html/create_layout.9.67.html

[LaRetta]

18 hours ago, Sam0316 said:

The problem of slide is the text field border is shown according to the length of the text inside the field. Could i fix the border of the field?

Hi Sam,

Why not make the field have the border instead?  In this way, it will shrink when you shrink the fields.  You can then use Lee and rWoods' suggestions for shrinking/sliding the fields in preview.  Another option is to set separate border for a field using Hide calculation if the field it surrounds is empty.

Edited October 31, 2016 by LaRetta

[Sam0316]

1 hour ago, LaRetta said:

Hi Sam,

Why not make the field have the border instead?  In this way, it will shrink when you shrink the fields.  You can then use Lee and rWoods' suggestions for shrinking/sliding the fields in preview.  Another option is to set separate border for a field using Hide calculation if the field it surrounds is empty.

Thank you Laretta, The case is the border will shrink when the field shrink. i would like to have a fixed border around. Is that possible in filemaker? how to set separate border? you mean use the rectangular tool to draw a border? 

10 hours ago, Lee Smith said:

Is this what you mean?

FileMaker Help http://fmhelp.filemaker.com/fmphelp_14/en/html/create_layout.9.67.html

Yes, i have considered this option. but the border is not fixed and the border shrinks when the text length in the field is short.

[Lee Smith]

Can you show a screen shot of the layout, not quite sure what you mean by the border? It almost sounds like you have a field in a board?

[Sam0316]

26 minutes ago, Lee Smith said:

Can you show a screen shot of the layout, not quite sure what you mean by the border? It almost sounds like you have a field in a board?

Like this, could i fix the border?

[Lee Smith]

I am looking at your enclosure and see boarders and what appear to be fields. 

It might help to know what the areas are, and comment on the black lines as to wherther or not they are boarders on the fields, or boxes you have drawn?

 

also, what view are we seeing, Form, Layout, Preview, or a sketch?

Edited October 31, 2016 by Lee Smith

[Sam0316]

Sorry for unclear description. "Sports", "Music and Arts" and "Clubs and association" are text box, not fields.

the one with fdsfds, fsdfsdf and fdsfsd are text fields. The space below the text field is just white space because the text length in field is short. so the field automatically shrink in order to fit the text length. so my question could i fix the border of text field?

The picture i took is in browse mode

Edited November 1, 2016 by Sam0316

[Lee Smith]

Sliding does not show in Browse Mode, so you will have to go back and forth between the two Views while you are adjusting these items..

Eliminating white space is tricky. but not impossible. 

[Sam0316]

2 hours ago, Lee Smith said:

Sliding does not show in Browse Mode, so you will have to go back and forth between the two Views while you are adjusting these items..

Eliminating white space is tricky. but not impossible. 

Thank you, so you mean i need to create boxes for each text field and allow slides of the boxes?

[Lee Smith]

As a starting point, I made this demo based on what you have posted and responded about should you make a box.

This file has one layout that shows how you might do the boxes, and another that shows how the Removing blank spaces works. And the last one shows my original thoughts  based your diagram.

I modified my file as I left out one layout.

 

Elimate White Spaces.fmp12

[Sam0316]

6 hours ago, Lee Smith said:

As a starting point, I made this demo based on what you have posted and responded about should you make a box.

This file has one layout that shows how you might do the boxes, and another that shows how the Removing blank spaces works. And the last one shows my original thoughts  based your diagram.

I modified my file as I left out one layout.

 

Elimate White Spaces.fmp12

Thank you. May be my description is not clear enough. my client would like to print this form out or save as pdf so they don't prefer scroll bar in text field. The subtitle box(sports/music/clubs) also requires sliding or hiding.