There are a few requests from people for a workaround to better highlight the active record in list view (more than the small black line).

Dear Mr Filemaker can you please at least just add a couple of pixels more to the line thickness, or better still allow us to easily highlight the active record without the complicated workarounds?

In version 10, you can achieve this very simply by trigerring a script on record load.

Can you give an example of the script please?

Set Field [ gCurrentID ; SerialID ]

or:

Set Variable [ $$currentID ; SerialID ]

Refresh Window

Just thinking about this...This only works if there's only one window, right? If you have multiple windows and layouts, I suppose you could define a $$var for each layout.

But is there a solution if you have multiple windows showing the same layout? I suspect there isn't.

I think you need to make a combination of the layout name, window name and the serial ID in order to make this universal.

---

(I hate universal mechanisms. I don't mind doing a touch-up here and there - but I'm not going to rewrite the application.)

I understand your reluctance if the universal mechanism is kludgy, but if we can come up with an elegant solution?

What if I used multiple values in a window title?

How about a script on Record Load:

Set Window Title[GetValue(Get(WindowName);1) & ¶ & SerialID]

Then your conditional formatting would be:

GetValue(Get(WindowName);2) = SerialID

That should accomplish the task, but I don't know enough about windowing though to know if it will screw something else up.

Select Window[] would need more attention and WindowNames() would get hosed. But other than that?

This is a good example why I don't want to do such things. I go by completely different considerations when setting window names - and I would certainly not use them for storing information.

That said, I don't see why the variable couldn't hold multiple values.

I've thought long and hard about this issue. The problem, as has already been identified, is that interface information such as field sort order or the selected tab are actually window-specific.

About the only good news is that just like there can be an unlimited number of windows, we can also have an unlimited number of variables.

I haven't implemented this yet but I reckon the solution is to create a system where the names of the global variables are dynamically generated to associate with the window name.

The devil is in the detail, however.

The thought has occurred to me - but I believe a single variable with multiple values is much easier to handle than multiple variables (and that includes so-called repeating variables). Shawn and Agnès might disagree, though.

Check out this link. I just made an example file that does what you are wanting, and more.

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?fid/214/tid/202233/pid/320413/

I agree with this want... I hate all the work around stuff but I guess that's what allows us to charge more for our work.. ha ha ha... Kinda the same reason PhotoShop is so dang non-intuitive - to keep the rift raft out and make it seem like you need an expert to work it!