Anybody have advice on how to easily manage redundant elements on multiple layouts? I'm talking about things like navigation buttons, default fields, etc. I have some fairly far reaching databases with a couple dozen related tables. If I want to adjust a redundant element on two dozen layouts, that's a chunk of time and a lot of repetitive work.

Man, I'm achin' for a framed approach to FileMaker layouts like HTML can provide but that isn't an option (at least yet).

So, anyone have a soap box they want to get up on and jabber for a while?

Do you mean beyond the ability to Duplicate a Layout?

Yes. Let's say I have 10 layouts, all with the same navigation buttons on them. I decide I want to change one button definition or text. I'll have to update 10 layouts with the same changes. If I want to update 3 or 4 identical elements on each layout I can either update each one manually on each layout or delete the original items and paste in the updated ones after annoyingly trying to find the center point of the elements and clicking to set the anchor point for the paste.

So, I was just wondering if anyone had a magic bullet solution for maintaining these sort of redundant elements on multiple layouts. I was hoping that v7 would provide a way to define a horizontal portal. Then, maybe you could use that to create a toolbar arrangement where each related record in the portal was a button on the toolbar. But, eh, that ain't in v7.

So, anyhoo, that's what I'm askin'.

What I do is have a small placeholder graphic all the way over in the upper left corner on each layout (it can be the same color as the background.) Then I make the button changes on one layout, copy the placeholder and the buttons that have changed, navigate to the other layouts, remove the existing buttons, paste the new buttons, and move everything to the upper left until the placeholder stops it. Then I just remove the extra placeholder.

This works pretty well when a row of buttons (or tabs) are all the same for a series of layouts. With tabs that are overlapped by another object you might have to move things forward or backward to get things looking right again.

Not as simple as you're looking for, but it saves time over renaming each button.

Another idea is to use calculated or related container fields for the buttons. Or use calculated or related text fields over button graphics.

Well, with v7's ability to have parameters passed on to the script, you could define a row of buttons. Each button givin a diffrent parameter (b1, b2, b3, etc). Then have a single script defined that would use "If" statements that corrospond to each parameter. So a button with a parameter "B1" could be defined to run the script that goes to Clients, or something of that nature.

The advantage is, since the same buttons on each layout retain that generic parameter, you could redefine script wise all the buttons at the same time by editing a single script. As for the button labels, That might be accomplished by creating a table with a series of fields (B1, B2, B3, etc) that held your button labels and on the actual layout, each button label could be a simple <<btn:b1>> style reference to the field in that table. But I've not tried this, just something that sprang from the top of my head.

Course, this works out ideally if you have all your layouts in the same file as each table can share the same script.