Meta-Layouts (!!)

[gessie]

Hi Everyone

I'm sure this is an easy one - I just can't quite work my way through it at present!

I've a database with 800 records, each containing images, film-clips and related data. I want to build a couple of introductory layout pages that will help users with no prior knowledge of databases (some of them will be school-kids) to orient themselves within the database and find various useful sets of data. Let's call them 'meta-layouts' for the moment but they're just Menu pages - there's probably an actual name for them. These "Menu" layouts will only contain a background image, text labels and buttons - and from them the buttons will use scripts to go to various other layouts and perform programmed searches etc. The problem is that I don't want 800 replica versions of this same layout - I want it to be like a global field - entered once and just there and capable of being called as a Layout to which the user can return. How do I prevent such a Layout, when I build it, from giving me 800 replicas of the same "Main Menu" pages. I don't believe that you can't do that - just can't work out how to set it up from the outset.

Thanks in advance

gessie

[bcooney]

A layout is not replicated for each record. Anyway, you could create a table, called Menu, and all your Menu layouts (even just one) would be based on that table occurrence.

On each "branching" layout, you would put a button, "Main Menu," that does a Go To Layout (Main Menu) script step.

[gessie]

@bcooney

Thanks very much for your thoughts on this one. Maybe what was confusing me was that when I was on my Main Menu page I could still see 848 records in the status bar - and clicking through them always gave me the same Main Menu page even though the record count would increase by one each time from 1 through to 848. Same with Found Sets - if I had 35 records in a found set and switched to Main Menu - then I could click through what seemed like 35 records - each showing the same Main Menu page. Just confusion on my part then - it seems. Always better to have a good answer than continue in ignorance. Many thanks for the old hand's check-out - I will try your other suggestion anyway - it sounds like a good way to go.

Cheers

gessie