"The Works": Aqua,Tabs,Audit,Login,Preview,Help...

[kennedy]

[color:"red"]"The Works" Multi-File Template

Keywords: aqua look, dual-tab bar with status area, audit log / trail, user login, passwords, privileges, print preview control panel, multi-column sort, quick help, generic notes, startup / shutdown scripts, import script examples, relational examples, and more.

From the About for this template...

Description

This, [color:"red"]

Works08.zip

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Brian,

I'm very excited, but the Password you provided in the .txt won't let me in.

[kennedy]

My apologies to the first two who downloaded that... I was trying to be sooo careful... even sat on it for a couple days... but, I missed a couple fixes in the about.txt (I'd have sworn I fixed those). The user id is "brian" with password "123"... that has been fixed in the download for everybody else. There is also an id "nancy" with same password "123" that has reduced privileges (for example, no clearing the audit log).

[Lee Smith]

Hi Ugo and Brian,

Ugo beat me to the punch

Thanks for sharing Brian, a quick glance show you have done a lot of work for the benefit of others.

Thanks again,

Lee

[kennedy]

For completeness, this template is a refinement of one posted in an earlier thread:

Prior Starter Template thread

Future plans will include refinements in the barcode display and handling and possibly a related set of Kiosk layouts/files.

Also, I am developing a Donor/Donation Tracking Solution with The Works that will likely be useful to more than just our foundation.

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Great thanks. It's a huge wonderful "work" you've done here again.

[mjay]

I tried downloading to a Macinstosh System 9.0.4. The file downloaded as download3.php. I double click to open and the file is opened with Internet Explorer and shows as a bunch of junk text.

I am getting this with any downloads from message attachment in FMForums. What am I doing wrong?

Michael

[Lee Smith]

Look for a folder called Works.

All downloads from this Forum are titled download.php your being labeled with a three means you have two others on your hard drive.

The file should open automatically with Stuffit or unZip.

HTH

Lee

[kennedy]

The Forum seems to be reverting to some past behaviors the last few days. Strange. (Misnaming of downloads; limited editing of old posts; etc.)

Just rename the file to "Works.zip" and double-click it... should work just fine.

HTH.

[Trisha]

Hi

I'm very very very new at this stuff, but I need to learn quick how to put a database together for a new program I'm in charge of. I think this template will be an excellent start, but I have lots of questions (I'm sure they are all quite stupid questions too!). I'm trying to muddle my way through this and figure it out as I go along but I'm currently stumped.

In the layout, I took out the selection where you choose mother/daughter/father/son. In this area I placed a pop-up menu where I can choose Primary Mentor/Secondary Mentor/ Adult Household Member/ Child Household Member. The problem is that if I choose "Primary Mentor" for the first person on the list of Family Members then they all go to "Primary Mentor" and if I try to change other Family members to something else, then it switches everyone on the list to that. If anyone could help me, please let me know. Thanks

Trish

[Fitch]

Sounds like you are using a field from the current file instead of from the related file. Double-click the field, and the field dialog should come up. From the popup menu at the top, select MEMBERS, then choose Family Member.

Remember, fields in portals need to match the portal's relationship.

[Fitch]

First of all, nice job and thanks for sharing.

A couple of comments:

- Your file references are all by IP, it would be nice to clean those up.

- Too much flashing in the navigation, is it really necessary to zoom every time?

[kennedy]

Thanks for the comments. And thanks for answering the prior query!

1) I know *when* the IP references are introduced... when I use the DB with FMS.

But I don't know *why*... FMP happily does the right thing even when the IPs are bogus. I assume its just acting as a time-saving cache, but then I don't know why they show them to us. AND, I have no idea how to make them go away. Opening the DB in FMP without IP doesn't do it. If you can explain what's going on, perhaps I can clean that up. Also, let me know if that causes you problems in any way (other than just being ugly when looking at the code). I haven't seen any problems... so I've never dug into it... but its always been a worry.

2) The flashing... I hate that! But its better than the complete breakdown of the tab paradigm LAF if the user innocently moves a window. Ideal would be to tell FMP to display a set of windows in one window... then I could let the user move the window around and all would be well. Without that, the next best is to have the tabs move the window to standard position, thereby recovering the tab behavior fairly quickly. Unfortunately, FMP doesn't give me a way to move the window... except by maximizing it (which moves it to upper left) and then resizing to the proper size. Not ideal, but better than the other alternatives I have come up with. Other suggestions that reasonably preserve the tab LAF are definitely welcome... I hate that flashing, too. (I spent two days eliminating as much of the flashing *inside* the windows as possible; but couldn't do anything acceptable about the flash outside the window.)

Brian

[-Queue-]

I remove ips by opening the file single-user, editing the scripts with external script calls, double-click on the script to force it to 'recall', then click 'OK'. When I return to the script, the ip is gone. If the remote file is set to multi-user, however, I do see the asterisk instead of an ip.

[kenneth2k1]

I must say that you have done a great job, and your generosity and effort is appreciated.

2 things, though.

1. What's with the big ID number along the left side? The font size seems to be so big it won't all fit on one line.

2. I know this solution was mainly designed for Mac users. It works just fine on Windows, but "Solution Name" in the upper left runs into the "Print" button. Also, in the Family Members portal header: On Mac the sort buttons are transparent, but in Windows they are opaque.

Just thought that I would point out these things I noticed. Other than that, I think you did an excellent job!

Ken

Ken

[kennedy]

1. The big ID number... you don't find that artistically brilliant?

Actually, on my computer its a nice barcode. That way, I can print that form and hand it to the customer when they renew and ask them to make any corrections... then later, my employees can simply scan the big barcode to find the record to enter the corrections.

I wish FMP had a way to embed fonts (or at least barcodes) in the database. But a future version of the template will either come with a barcode font OR will find some graphical, native FMP way to handle barcodes... along with working out the scripting and such to make barcode scanning automatic.

2. I test on my one Windows machine... but with Windows, that's not nearly

good enough. And I certainly don't spend time trying to understand Windows. So, I welcome the feedback from you guys on Windows issues. The Solution Name font is a funky Mac font (my business's corporate font)... I should change that to Times for the template, so the sizing is more consistent.

On the sort buttons... am I doing something wrong? Or does Windows just not support transparent graphics? Wasn't a big enough deal for me to try to solve for my needs... but if any of you know the answer, I'll be happy to make the change.

The one other Windows thing I haven't tried to solve is the flashing... on the Mac, the windows are all separate windows and my zoom-to-position technique just causes flashing in the form of a white flash *outside* the window. Not too big a deal. In contrast, on Windows it uses MDI (windows within one window) and the whole window flashes... and with the so much slower screen drawing, its really pretty ugly... going blank for so long, its almost not a flash anymore. Ick. Perhaps I need to do something different on Windows... can you control the MDI to just maximize all the windows?? I'll look into that.

Brian

[Leb i Sol]

Or does Windows just not support transparent graphics?

==> it does but it represents them as white colo(u)r vs. "see-through" if created on windows...if the file is made on Mac and "the image part- eg.button-script runner" is NOT edited again on windows then it will work.....as soon as winDoz edits the "tranpsrent" parts ...they become white color.

....nice work

[kennedy]

Not sure I followed that... so, is there a way to do my little round buttons such that they don't become little white squares on Windows? Or do I need to go to an assortment of little square buttons with different backgrounds... one for each underlying element I might place them on?

There would be one advantage to doing that... it would eliminate the remaining little bits of flash on the Mac. The disadvantage is that it would make the template tougher to use... lining up the graphic elements would become very precise and touchy.

Brian

[SteveB]

Somebody had posted a way of rotating a container 90 degrees and inserting the graphic which he claimed made the graphic transparent. Do a search and see if you can find it. It may be 6-12 months old. This came up about a week ago, and I did a quick search but could'nt find it.

Steve

[kyle]

here is the cobaltsky's rotating images and mike kim's transparent button.

HTH...

kyle

Graphic Demo.zip

[kennedy]

I just uploaded [color:"red"]version 8. If you are thinking of building something on this template, I highly recommend using version 8 or later as it will be much easier to update to new versions of the template later. Let me explain...

After working out a few more kinks in the template in preparing its use in my new project (Donors/Donations), I went to apply the new template improvements back to my first project (for my business, built on the older template). At that point, I realized that I had not made that easy! There were things scattered all over the template files that needed modifying. And worse, that would affect others even worse than me. Sooo....

To make it easier to take advantage of improvements to The Works template that might be posted here in the future, I reworked the template files a bit to move most of those things to global fields in Globals. That way, you can essentially just drop in the changed template files into your solution after importing your data into the new Globals file.

Also, I fixed most of the things mentioned to date in this thread. I changed the window resizing to give three alternatives: Maximize, Position, or Resize. You just set what you want in Globals. You'll get different amounts of flashing or window movement depending upon your choice. I've defaulted to Maximize since that is probably best on MS Windows and tolerable on Mac; Position might be preferred by some (like me) on Mac; others might prefer just Resize on the Mac.

I also fixed the font and sizing of the solution name (and user name) to both eliminate overlaps and reduce flashing. Further, as commented above, the solution name became a merge field so that you don't have to modify every layout to change the solution name (important since many layouts are provided by the template).

The one thing that I didn't fix yet is the lack of transparency on the sort buttons in Windows... I didn't want to delay getting these fixes out until I can figure out that transparency problem in such a way that people building things with my little buttons get automatically.

I also have not fixed the excessive flashing I see now in MS Windows. The flashing is much less noticable in Mac OS X (surprisingly), so I hadn't known to look into it. But the really ugly flashing in MS Windows due to window resizing is gone. I'll be looking into the rest of the flashing more in the near future.

Enjoy.

[SteveB]

Brian, I was all set for a treat...did you forget the attachment?

Steve

[kennedy]

Steve, its in the first post. Rather than leave an old version up there for people to mistakenly download, I edited the first post with the new version 8 file. But then I announced it with a separate note, to keep the integrity of this thread going. I figure, as time passes, you guys will make great suggestions in this ongoing thread, and I'll keep the latest and greatest version available up top... minimizing confusion for newcomers. Make sense?

(Note that in my previous template thread, back before you could continue to edit posts, I had a second version later. The first version continues to have more downloads than the second... some people never see the second.)

Anyway, grab version 8 from the same place you got version 7 earlier (the first post).

Sorry for the confusion,

Brian

[andyplayit]

I downloaded "The Works" in the hopes of looking at the structure and fuctionality and learning something about how to proceed in the project i'm working on (a customer contacts / orders database).

I'm using version 7. i opened all of your files and coverted them, and now when i open "begin.fp7" it prompts me to open begin.fp5, and i click OK 3 times and the message stops popping up and a blank layout named begin is opened. if i try to open any of the other files, it tells me to start using the begin file... any ideas on how to make this work in v7?

thanks!

[HowardCrut]

I could use some tips on getting "The Works" to work. I'm a Mac OsX user, running "The Works" on FM Server 6.0. From another computer opening Begin.fp5 from the 'Open Remote' menu, everything appears to open correctly. I enter Username: brian and Password: 123 and it says 'Invalid Username. Do you wish to try again?'.

But, if I open Begin.fp5 on the server computer directly in client version of Filemaker Pro 6.0, then all works fine - brian/123 enables all the files to launch and run as desired.

Am I doing something wrong?

Essentially I'd like to add my flat file for our ministry to "The Works" template to take advantage of these features so we can get this accessable online to our staff around the U.S. who will use PC and Mac.

Would anyone be willing to help our ministry (Campus Crusade for Christ's high school ministry - Student Venture - visit http://studentventure.com/joinus/ ) by helping me combine these? We can pay you, but probably not what you'd be worth... But you'd be having a major impact in the lives of high school students nation wide!

Howard

http://studentventure.com/joinus/

joinus -at- studentventure -dot- com

[HowardCrut]

Brian Benson,

I respect your views as a gay person. The ministry I work with, nor have I, ever have communicated nor condoned hate toward gay people. Having personal friends that are gay, I have nothing but love toward you and the homosexual community.

Your slanderous comments are painful, but you have a right to your opinion. I'm sure you can cite many instances in the liberal press that communicate all kinds of things about our ministry. But, being the largest and among the most respected Christian para-church ministries in the world is bound to have audiences of people that agree with, disagree with, or twist what is seen or heard. Even just two days ago, on Good Friday, March 25th, NBC Nightly News aired a positive story about Campus Crusade's Big Break outreach during the 6:30 pm (EST) broadcast. It

[KLee]

Weeeeeeell, does this work for version 7 or not???

[BruceJ]

Very cool!

There's a lot of things here I can use. However, the username "Brian", PW "123" opened the file just fine but doesn't give me full access. Is it supposed to or is this a solution to purchase?

[Lee Smith]

Hey people, clam down.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

The Files offered here are "Not" intended to be "Full" working solutions, although many can be implemented directly into your own solutions. For the Full Working Solutions check out the Product Announcement Topic Area.

Instead, think of the other files being offered here, and throughout the Forum as "How To", or Learn Tools. These example are usually narrow in their scope, and directed at specific need. The ones in this Topic Area are meant to be Open Source, modified, discussed, etc., but usually are only a part of the over all solution. As I recall, Kennedy submitted these as a "Basic Set" of files meant to help the New Developer by providing a starting point, and because they had the Aqua Interface. However, he has been active for over a year. So, if you are looking for him to help you, you are SOL!

The files are pretty much "AS IS", with no warranty expressed or assumed. If you can use them in some way, use them. If you can't, then lose them.

Lastly, there are PDFs at FMI on Converting files from earlier versions to v7. Download them and study them. Many of the developers I know suggest that it is better to redo the files in v7 and import your data than to straight convert them. There is also a Utility called FM Robot that has been discussed that may help you here too, but I don't own it so I can't comment on it.

HTH

Lee

[color:"red"] Also, check out the responses Here!