Scripts in Preview Mode?

[gessie]

Hi Everyone

I've been setting up a User Interface made up of splash menus and Reports tied together by scripts to help new users not trained in FMP (some quite young) to navigate a FMP database to look at video-clips and a range of associated "reports". For any new user the "get me out of here" button - Go To Main Menu - is a critical support. However, some of my reports only give their best detail when they are sorted and viewed in Preview mode - which doesn't allow any buttons/scripts to operate. Now, obviously "I" know how to get out of Preview Mode and back to the Main Menu Layout, but a new user - still learning the menu interface - won't - and will therefore become stuck at the last Preview screen they went to to search for whatever information - ie before they've been able to act on the answers to that search. I know this - because my test users all had problems!

Is there any way to make Buttons/Scripts active even in Preview mode? Or, is there a way to revert back to Browse mode after a limited time (say 30 secs?) - so that the User is automatically returned to a screen with functioning Buttons again? Are there any other useful tricks or hacks that might help? Otherwise - it seems as though I shall be unable to use some of my more interesting/useful reports - which isn't the end of the world - but it doesn't help me to develop the sort of intuitive user-driven Menu Interface that I think most new users would find simplest to interact with.

Big thanks

gessie

[Vaughan]

A paused script can be resumed by clicking the Continue button in the status area, or after a time period.

Just be careful of putting too much into making a system foolproof for new users: it may become hellish to use for everybody else (and for the new users once they learn the system).

[brian rich]

Have a look at this demo file from Ray Cologon

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos7/demo704.html

This shows you how to build a small control palette that floats over the preview report and allows you to page back and forth, scroll up and down, and print if you want to.

HTH

(and thanks to Ray for this neat demo too)

[gessie]

Hi Vaughn,

Thanks very much for your feedback.

I'm still not decided about how much I want to have the status bar there - for some new users, it does seem to confuse them when things just "Pause" in the middle of a script and they have to click Continue when they think something should already have happened. Many people don't even see the Status Bar anyway - let alone the Continue button!

I'm trying to work up an interface to ease people into using a database on public display in a US museum - so there will be lots of educational usage - hence the young kids - and plenty of interested public who have never seen an FMP solution before - and of course some serious iconography experts used to complex database searches - just for good measure. Very simple things (like backwards and forwards arrows in the Status Bar) still cause people all kinds of problems - and they end up not going any further into the database to search for records (films etc.) you know they'd like to see. I never underestimate how slow some new users can be. I also remember a friend of mine in London who helped develop a kiosk information system for the National Portrait Gallery - costing a pretty penny - and within a few days of installation the developers had been locked out of their own system! - and they had to take it down. It turned out to be a couple of 11-year olds who'd hacked the program, caused onscreen havoc, changed passwords and put in little trap-doors to keep them out! Red faces all round! So one has to think about both scenarios.

That being said - I fully agree with your concerns about hellish interface systems that just get in the way of things.

gessie

[gessie]

Hi B Rich

Thanks for that reference - I found it very interesting. I've seen those little Nightwing demos before, and always find them good to go over and try to work out what's going on.

The demo provided perfectly answers my question of what to do to control things when in Preview Mode - so now I'm trawling through the various scripts trying to "reverse engineer" the effects. If only I could work out where the floating palette comes from in the first place, and how it co-exists with the Preview layout - I'd be in with a good chance!

Anyway, big thanks to you for the tip!

gessie