hidden objects with scripts attached? don't even show up in layout mode unless you know where to click... are you kidding me? seriously now... is this a joke that someone is playing on us newbies?

no wonder i couldn't understand some of the examples.

forgive the rant... it's monday.

Try changing to LAYOUT mode then go to View > Show > Buttons. Each of your buttons will be highlighted.

Granted that does help a little... but try looking at the 'choose company' layout (or others...) in the Business Tracker sample app. Even with Show Buttons you NEED TO CLICK ON THE CORRECT PIXEL TO FIND IT!!

As a newcomer to an app dev environment it's frustrating enough to come up to speed on a new environment. Then to run into things like lack of documentation... no way to comment code... lack of variables in a scripting language (or maybe i should say lack of scripting language)... and HIDDEN BUTTONS!!! come on.

That said... I stick by my decision to go with FM for this project. It's probably the right choice given the pros/cons.

Lack of documentation, well, yeah, that's a real bad thing. But no way to comment code? This you can do in 7. Lack of variables? Again, you can do this in 7, using Let() when defining calc fields or, from a script, Set Field (someGlobal , "someValue" ). Admittedly, that's a little abnormal for most programmers, but now that you can define fields from within ScriptMaker, not so much a limitation as a different way of approaching scripting.

As for hidden buttons... i haven't encountered this because i'm not using 7 regularly, but that is a drag.

Jerry

By hidden buttons I

Better to use a serial relationship since it's faster than a constant to constant if there are several records in the file.

Case( authlogic = true, serial )

Relate the result to serial.

Hi,

I don't see why FM didn't introduce conditionaly formatted buttons/text. I am beginning to think the idea of showing/hidding things depending on a certain value is not desired by anyone. I use it every day for other software (scada) and couldn't live without the show/hide/disable functions there with texts and buttons and even complete screens.

Even Excel has had conditional formatting since I don't know when...!

Jim