Transparent triangle button <- It's possible!!!

[HazMatt]

You know how some wall calendars have the last Sunday and Monday of the month share squares with the second to last Sunday and Monday? The rectangle is cut in half to create two triangles instead of two rectangles.

Well, I downloaded a calendar FileMaker 3.0 file that uses honest-to-goodness triangle buttons to achieve this affect. It works great in FileMaker 6 on both Mac and Windows. I have no idea how this is done, and all my attempts to create a similar button have failed. How the heck do you do this?

I could copy the element, but I'm creating a larger calendar layout, and sizing up the element creates "breaks" in the clickable area.

I got the file from here.

[andygaunt]

Matt -

One way to achieve this is to use a series of diminishing sie lines on a 45 degree angle. Once your shape is made, highlight them all and group together. Turn off the line color so it has no fill and then set the object to behave as a button.

[HazMatt]

Ahh, the man behind the curtain has been revealed. I took a closer look at the triangle button and indeed, it's exactly as you described. Clever trick.

[Ender]

Hi Matt,

The triangle button in that demo is just a diagonal line in the bottom left 2 cells on every calendar. The dates for those cells are then just calculated.

This technique of calculated dates works fine for small "date picker"-like calendars, where no details are needed for each date. But for a large, full screen calendar, you will probably want to use related records for the events on a particular day. In this case the triangle idea won't work. Instead use a calendar layout with six weeks (or two layouts, one with five weeks, one with six.)

[HazMatt]

Hey Ender. Yeah, I figured out the triangle trick - it's actually a diagonal line plus a few other horizontal "fillers".

I wasn't planning on implementing a portal-based calendar layout, but eventually it made more sense to do it that way. So, I am adapting it to keep the calculation fields and relate them back to another pre-made database. But that's a topic for another thread.

Thanks for the insight, guys!