Making a Pop-up List populate before clicking into

[Steven Cappiello]

I have a FM7 server served solution that uses quite a few drop down lists that are derived from relationships.. but there's a problem....when connecting over our network, it takes a few seconds for the pop-up list to populate once clicked into.. Is there some way I can prepopulate the value list so that the user doesn't have to wait a few seconds after clicking into the field ?

ANY advice would be greatly appreciated, because I'm finding my users click in, and then start typing something before it populates, and then end up with a bit of typed text that doesn't type-toward anything.

A pop-up menu isn't really an option because you can't type-to your selection, and the solution typically generates many more choices in the value list than there is vertical screen real estate.

[Reed]

How about a portal instead of a popup?

[LaRetta]

Hi Steven,

I agree with Dana. Popup speed is more akin to the size of the list than the fact that it's networked. You can also consider adding a filter to the popup, ie, A-L and M-Z. User would click A-L and script would then Go To popup field and pop it for them. If your space is limited a filtered popup works well; as you indicate the vertical space problem.

Overall (if space is not limited), a portal is easier for Users. I many times include a filter in addition to a portal which, with vs. 7 is a piece of cake!!

Even with portal, if a User has to scroll, then I usually include filtering tools for them.

LaRetta

[Fenton]

This is an example file of mine, with a filtered portal. While it is much more screen-intensive than a drop-down list, and not as "keyboard-friendly," it is much faster, especially in large files (10,000+).

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/download.php?Number=122273

[Steven Cappiello]

Thanks so much everyone. Cool.

Ah, I see. Would it be hard to make the portal show all first *and* last names starting with the letter ?

Fenton, may I have the password to see the relationships and scripts ?

[Reed]

For first and last names, you would just add two global fields to the portal's relationship. One connected to each key. I like to use compound calculated keys like this:

F

Fi

Fir

Firs

First

Then set the global equal to the calc field. In v7, you can do this without exploded keys using the range operators, but I've found the exploded keys to be noticeably faster in cases with more than ~1000 related records.

There is a good example of the type-ahead portal using the <, > operators on the databasepros.com website. That file is completely open for you to examine.

Dana

[Fenton]

I don't know what's going on. The Account is Admin, the PW is blank. This is what FileMaker creates. Its File Options are to log in with that. So it's more or less wide open, should be.