Screen flash bursts

[macjules]

This is a particularly annoying problem and I wondered if anyone else has encountered this.

I recently started to notice that the screen refreshes were becoming increasingly erratic and somewhat more 'violent' in their intensity. Knowing how the guts of how Filemaker works I am aware that there are a number of factors involved in the screen refresh process involving the grahics card, Quicktime, the operating system etc., so accordingly I ran a debug and am still getting nowhere with this.

During the screen refresh the window will jump approximately 3 pixels and then revert. The entire screen will not refresh from Layout Mode and will need to be refreshed by going into Browse Mode and back again into Layout Mode. So far I have encountered this on only Windows XP (both Home and Pro) systems running a more advanced Nvidia card (fine on something like a Geforce 4 series and lower)and certainly not on any Mac systems we have.

Before being positive that the problem is within the Nvidia display software framework can anyone else confirm that they have had this problem - I would particularly like to know if anyone has had this on an ATI-card machine.

Many thanks in advance.

[Genx]

I recently started to notice that the screen refreshes were becoming increasingly erratic and somewhat more 'violent' in their intensity.

Lol great description..

A few things... 1) How often are you jumping in and out of layout mode that it annoys you so much

2) Why not just develop on the Macs

3) If it does really annoy you well then:

a) Compare your toolbars in layout mode to those in browse mode, check rulers, status bars etc, anything that could cause your layout to shift -- toolbars in Windows behave significantly different to those in Mac

Decrease your refresh time: FileMaker layouts often have hundreds of hidden layers on them. Each time you add a new object like a field, label etc you are giving it its own layer. FileMaker has to progressivly load each layer whenever the layout loads -- To decrease the time taken to load it would therefore be logical to decrease the number of layers that have to load:

- When in layout mode, select groups of objects and send them to back - all the objects you just selected and sent to the back are now on one layer, move them backwards and forwards without deselecting them and they will remain in one layer. Rinse and repeat

Hope That Helps.

[comment]

select groups of objects and send them to back - all the objects you just selected and sent to the back are now on one layer

I think any layout object is always either in front of or behind another object, so the number of "layers" must be at least equal to the number of objects on the layout. In practice, I think each object is assigned a z-axis priority.

Where did you get this idea from?

[AudioFreak]

I get the flashing also NVIDIA GeForce 6800. I have tried grouping this and that and everything I could think of and have seen suggested. NO Luck

One thing I have noticed if I refresh my brouser Filemaker goes into a temper tantrum for about 5 sec. Java Related? Who knows?

I'm just hoping they fix it in FM9

[Genx]

I think any layout object is always either in front of or behind another object, so the number of "layers" must be at least equal to the number of objects on the layout.

Practice more than anything... In a slow environment like over a net-WAN connection, you really start to see the break down of the way things load. I'll grant you that the same-layer theory is largely unfounded (but I still think it works that way).

[macjules]

Thanks for the help, I'm pretty sure its down to the Gef6800 series. Just put in a Radeon 9800 and no problem at all with Filemaker.