Have I found a bug?

[EddyB]

Hi all,

I have the trial version of v7 running on WinXP. Just playing around with stuff really, just seeing what's about.

Do you remember the post about the effects of pressing the escape key in a custom dialog box. Well if you did not see this, the discussion was along the lines of the Escape key acts as if you have pressed the default button. Many developers thought it should be used to either just exit the dialog box with no effect or to act as though the cancel button had been pressed.

So if you have a script that does something if the OK (default) button is pressed in a dialog box, and the user presses escape to get out of the box, FileMaker acts as if the OK button has been pressed - you with me?

OK, I went about trying this in v7 to see if the situation had changed.

Firstly, no this has not changed.

Secondly, during my tests I have some strange results when pressing the escape key.

The basic test:

1 field on the file - dialogResult - just a standard text field

1 script - this brought up a dialog box, containing 1 input field, an OK button and a Cancel button

If the OK button is pressed, OK appears in the dialogResult field

If the Cancel button is pressed, Cancel appears in the dialogResult field

Now if the escape key is pressed, OK appears in the field as explained above - BUT not always! sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. There seems to be no pattern to when it happens, totally random.

Please could you try the attached file which is the test I executed. Please follow the instructions in the file exactly as I have only had the problem when doing things in this exact order.

Notes:

If the script is run from a button, the error does not occur

If a "Clear" script step is added to the start of the script, the error does not occur.

Anyway, please have a look, it ill be interesting to see if you get the same results as I, maybe on different platforms etc...

Many thanks

Ed.

Version: v7.x

Platform: Windows XP

tryStuff.zip

[Mariano Peterson]

Wow, yes, I've noticed the same thing using your file. I ran it about 7 or 8 times and then finally got a blank result. I did notice something different about the state of the screen just before the failed attempts. Unfortunately I didn't see exactly what was different, but it may have had something to do with whether or not focus was in a field at the time I ran it.

[EddyB]

Hi Mariano,

I thought about the focus issue too.

But here is one of my tests:

Field not in focus..

1st time script ran - "OK" not entered

Field still not in focus

2nd time script ran - "OK" not entered

Field still not in focus

3rd time script ran - "OK" was entered

:??

[BruceJ]

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[EddyB]

Well of course

[Jim McKee]

FYI:

In Mac OS X.3 with both FM6 (Message and Custom Dialog) and FM7 (Custom Dialog), pressing the 'Esc' key results in no action at all.

Maybe the intended behavior is that the 'Esc' key should be ignored in dialog situations because the user is required to make a selection from the options presented, i.e., they can't simply dismiss the dialog. I wonder why this is not platform/OS consistent?

[EddyB]

Thanks for the info Jim. On PC in FM6 the Esc key activates the default button. In FM7 it looks like it does what it feels like at the time!

I'm still doing tests on this to try and pinpoint the exact times when this happens...

Regards

Ed