fmp8: hiding key field in dropdown

[michele]

[color:blue]Great, finally the 'hide key field' has been added to dropdown lists in fmp 8.

Still a little dissapointed though because you end up with a field that shows a number.

Of course I hear you think...what did you expect?

Well, a field that would contain the id but (as the dropdown list) only show the second value.

That makes sense to the user and gives sense to the dropdown arrow next to the field.

Now we still have to add a second field to show the user what he chose.

Now I'm going to stop adding topics to this part of the forum because I guess you must be thinking I'm complaining all day long .

That's not what I'm like at all actually but the three topics I added just seemed worth adding to me.

Thank you for paying attention to them.

ps: I love filemaker (in case you must have doubted that)

[raymanj]

[color:blue]Great, finally the 'hide key field' has been added to dropdown lists in fmp 8.

Still a little dissapointed though because you end up with a field that shows a number.

I was very excited to see the ability to hide a key and return it, but when they did not follow through, so we could populate another field with that key, I felt terrible.

I for one cannot see what someone would use this new feature for. I mean a user sees a field with a key (number) in it. They click in the field to edit it and a menu pops up with human readable text, Car, House, School, etc. The user is confused already. So they pick one of the items from the list, car. Once the menu disappears and a new key (number) appears in the field. This confuses the user even more.

In my opinion the old way was better. One field, one or two list item returned, and none hidden. At least the user could match the key numbers with human readable ones, with the old way.

Filemaker should have completed this new feature or at least explained how to use it.

[CyborgSam]

The field defaults to the key field when using a popup list. When using a popup menu, it remains the 2nd field. The reason is that since the popup list allows manual entry, and this entry is into the key field, the # must appear.

I agree that in this use popup lists leave a lot to be desired. For large value lists the list is easier to navigate and display. Hopefully FileMaker will offer an option for popup lists to display the 2nd field and not allow manual entry.