FMP8 - Slow Click and Drag in Layout

[CatLady03]

I recently converted from FileMaker Pro 6 (FMP6) to FMP8 and find that the rearrangement of fields in layout is incredibly slow when using click and drag. It's almost as if it's delayed somehow. Is this a known problem? I realize that there are all kinds of ways to align easily with a click of a button (new functions), and I'm using them, but I just don't understand why the click and drag method seems to have gone whacky in the new version.

Any thoughts out there about this?? :qwery:

Thanks!

Edited May 29, 2006 by Guest

[Fenton]

Have you upgraded to 8.0v3? I would do that first.

[CatLady03]

Yes, I have the latest updates. I installed V2 first and then V3.

[MarkWilson]

What type of hardware are you using?

I have no trouble with FMP 5.5, but all things FMP7, FMD 7, FMP8, and FM8 Advanced respond very slowly on my older laptop.

I believe it is because of the 4200rpm hardrive speed. I cannot be certain as I have not tried a new drive; but, I have been able to eliminate RAM, all non-OS level software conflicts, and disk problems.

Also, if you watch closely you will notice that using a button to perform a script will cause the same delay you are experiencing in layout mode.

[CatLady03]

Thanks for responding. I built my own a couple of years back and it has a 1.35 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP chip and 512MB of RAM. My don't know about my hard drive, though. Is it possible that I need more RAM? Could that be part of the problem? I also have a lot of what looks like screen flashing...it's as though it's repainting the page to display the next field. It's acting very strange. I mean it works and I can get through it, but I would like to know if there's a solution.

[LaRetta]

Sometimes I'll have a field on a layout that doesn't belong. It is related (in a VERY round-about way) - but not directly. Display crawls ... it starts to draw then stops and starts again. In one such instance, it took several seconds to draw a a layout which normally only took a second.

Have you verified that every field on the layout is correct? Just a thought ...

LaRetta :wink2:

[SteveB]

I doubt that more ram would help you. Version 8 is so much more complex an animal than Version 6. My guess is Filemaker.

Steve

[Wim Decorte]

It's actually in the way FM interacts the graphics on the machine. I've seen it happen in a few instances on Toshiba laptops.

Either:

- scale back hardware acceleration in the display's properties

- or update the graphics drivers on the machine

[IdealData]

FWIW it's worth, the layout mode on Mac is also slow, or should I say slower than it used to be.

[CatLady03]

Hi LaRetta,

You've helped me before on a different subject and I appreciate your input on this one.

Here's what I know. My boss has a new Compaq desktop and FMP8 rocks on it. No slowness, just speed...what I consider to be "normal." I'm betting that it has to do with the graphics card in my machine. The reason I think this is because the same thing happens when starting a brand new database. Even with a blank file, I still get the same delayed response with click and drag in layout mode. The constant repainting of the screens hasn't happened, because there's not a lot of data in the file yet. That happens a lot, though, in one database that I have that has a lot of related files. There are fields on every screen from multiple sources and it's constantly flipping and repainting.

Anyway, I guess I'll see if I can figure out what Wim Decorte is saying about scaling back hardware acceleration in the display's properties and/or upgrading the graphics drivers. Maybe that will do the trick.

As always, thanks for your help!

Debbie

[LaRetta]

Hi Debbie

Yes, if it varies per box then it must be the box and not the file. The incorrect TO issue I mentioned produces this effect as well - but it would be consistent box to box. I have faith you'll figure it out.

LaRetta

[Ryan Prager]

I just upgraded my machine and I am having very similar issues.

I went from an older Thinkpad T23 to a Dell Optiplex GX260 (P4, 2GHz, 512 RAM) with dual screens.

I use a higher resolution of 1280 x 1024. When FileMaker is fully maximized on my screen clicking and dragging objects in layout mode is very slow. When I resize the FileMaker window so it is half the size of my screen, the clicking and dragging is much faster.

I've tried all sorts of setting changes with my video cards including lowering the hardware acceleration, but on this resolution and with the window maximized, it is very very slow. I've even changed my resolution down to 1024 x 768 and that didn't help.

On my old thinkpad it didn't work right away either. I had to lower the hardware acceleration and have windows adjust the visual effect for best performance. It didn't work great but it was tolerable. I thought that have this significant upgrade would change things dramatically.

I have a Dell Latitude D505 laptop at home that's a couple years old (1024 x 768) and the clicking and dragging works pefectly on that machine.

I don't understand. Any other suggestions? Thanks

[Ryan Prager]

I'm also wondering if it would make a difference if I changed from PCI to AGP. Any thoughts on this?

[mscholtz]

old thread, but just wanted to let any future readers know that dipping the hardware acceleration on my machine definitely helped. The layout mode response is still laggy, still way behind the pretty much instant response this same machine has with FMP 6, but it's much improved.

(This is a machine w/ 1GB ram (FMP cache set plenty big), plenty fast processor, but a generic onboard graphics chipset, drivers are recent)

On WinXP graphics setting, I only had to dip the Hardware Acceleration down one tick from Full (the description says: "disable cursor and bitmap accelarations") to get the benefit. Dipping lower doesn't seem to change anything further for me.

Maybe this will help someone else.

If anyone has further ideas for me to try (short of getting new graphics card) let me know.