checkboxes: scripting vs containers?

[Nightmarcher]

hello FM gods,

i've been frequenting these boards for a while and can usually find what i'm looking for. however, this is more of a question based on your opinions. i would like to know how different ways of doing checkboxes compare. speed of operation, ease of use in other calcs, and preference. obviously the filesize using graphics would be bigger.

reason being, i have a layout that has a little more than 200 checkboxes (unavoidable). the first go around, i ended up using 1 field per box, and wrote 200 scripts for the check function, plus 1 boolean value list. since i've been getting more graphic intensive lately, i started using containers and globals for the checkboxes, 1 number & 1 calc field per box, but only 1 script needed for all 200.

so it's either 400+ fields & 1 script, or 200 fields & 200 scripts. i'm currently in the process of debugging/testing and can't decide which copy of my db i want to use. still very green, but learning every day. any opinions or suggestions are appreciated. thanks

chex.zip

[Oldsneekers]

In my experience, anything that relies more on calculations than scripts is faster than scripted instructions.

The rest is where do you want to spend your time, formating fields or debugging scripts.

Good luck.

(It's never so bad that it couldn't get worse.)

[IdealData]

I had a look at your sample, and can only give the following comment if it is to be used in an FMServer environment.

As you are loading your graphics into global fields, then there is a potential performance problem as the graphics must all be passed to the client before they can work. This would also be true even if you stored the graphics in fixed fields (maybe a related file). Once loaded, however, FMP should keep hold of them.

Personally I prefer scripting because I work in a live server environment and I can't change field defs etc.., but I can change scripts.

Incidentally, I found it difficult to "disect" your button/graphic/field, more importantly, to get to the button I had to ungroup, which lost the button definition (but I'm sure you know how it works)

[Nightmarcher]

thanks Mark, that's the fencebuster i was looking for. it WILL be used in a server configuration (eventually). anyone else have any scripting magic for a ton of checkboxes, let me know. thanks!