Conditionally colored field boxes

[Jarvis]

I would like to be able to change the fill pattern of a field or button based upon changes of value in another field.

I learned earlier this week (thank you All!) how to change font color conditionally.

The text color function will make a font turn red if the PRIORITY FIELD is set to "urgent".

I would like the fill pattern behind the red font to turn yellow if Billybob is supposed to respond to the event, and turn green if it should be Skippy's turn.

The combination of colored font and colored fill pattern would establish both priority and scheduling.

If it is possible, I would like to be able to conditionally affect the fill color and pattern of both field borders and buttons.

Can anybody advise me on this?

Thanks,

Jarvis

[Ap Ruygrok]

Create some global container fields and fill them with the desired color/pattern.

Create one or more condional container field(s) and place them under the number field (this must be tranparent).

Use "Enlarge" in the graphic format to completely fill the condional container field.

[CobaltSky]

Hello Jarvis,

There are various ways to have fill colors and buttons change dynamically.

In FileMaker 7, perhaps one of the better techniques is to set up a resources table which has a key field (eg which holds the user's name) and some container fields with corresponding colors and button designs.

If you then create a relationship from the field which indicates who is to process a particular task to the username field in the resources table, the relationship will return a color that corresponds to the user.

Then you can place a copy of the related container field behind your text field and apply transparent fill attributes to the field in front.

The fill of the field itself will not change, but it will appear to do so when the color swatch being referenced by the related container field behind it changes.

A variation of the technique will enable you to control the appearance of buttons in browse mode.

[Jarvis]

Ray & Ap,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I am making some progress on this.

I created a global container field with three repetitions and then inserted three colored jpegs into each repetition.

The problem I am having is that the container field will not fill up with color.

The container field measures 1 inch by 3 inches but the object within only occupies about 1/3 of that space.

I have the graphic formatted to reduce or enlarge to fit frame but it still seems to maintain this 1/3 aspect relationship.

What am I missing here?

Jarvis

[CobaltSky]

Hi Jarvis,

Have you turned off the option (in Graphic Format) to 'Maintain original proportions' ?

Besides that, it would be helpful to know what what operating system you are on, as there is a glitch with some scaling on Windows with the first release of 7.

[Jarvis]

Ray,

Yes, I have turned off the option (in graphic format) to 'Maintain original proportions".

I am running Developer 7 on a G4 Mac OSX Panther.

My recollection is that I was able to fill a container field with color in Filemaker 6.

I build kitchen cabinets.

One of the things I am hoping to one day do is produce rectangles that emulate cabinet parts and then have them change colors based upon differing conditions.

If, for example, a cabinet part was 1/2 inch thick it would turn green, 3/4 inch thick would be red.

Tim

[Ken Newell]

24U has a free plugin that will fill with RGB colors that you can dowload as part of their plugin template. The plug in also has the ability to find and highlight text. Set the graphic to enlarge to fill the frame not just unclicking the maintain original proportions.

[Jeep Watson]

If all you want is color, why use jpeg's? Just use native FM elements - faster, virtually no memory usage, and no artifacting when you scale.

If you want textures or actual graphics, that's a horse of a different color and you are doing just what you would need to do. Just be sure to size your graphics carefully in Photoshop before bringing them into FM and keep them to 72ppi (maybe 96 for PC's).