Visual style changing between PC and Mac

[Richard Sillitto]

Hello All,

First off, many thanks for a great forum. Whenever I do a google for something I'm stuck with FMP, the answer always seems to be here!

I'm in the process of building a large (for me!) database that will be at the core of our business. As such its going to be viewed predomenantly by people using FMP on either a mac or PC.

Being a Mac man, I've done most of the design thus far using FMP Advanced on a Mac.

The database is now served by FMS on a Windows Server 2003 system.

Viewing the layouts on a Mac, and they look as I expect.

Load the same ones up on a PC, and they look rubbish!

The fonts are different (I guess I've not used compatible fonts somehow?)

The graphics look different. For instance, I have photoshopped graphics to remove the backgrounds. On the Mac, the backgrounds are correctly "see through" on the PC, I get a big block of white.

Some of the graphics won't even display.

Is this normal behaviour, or have I not clicked the "PC compatability button" somewhere?

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Richard.

Edited July 15, 2009 by Guest

[Søren Dyhr]

The platforms rendering are completly different, which means you either design a double set of layouts, one for each - or you look for common fonts such as Tahoma...

Photoshop is a tricky thing to use even on a mac, since filemakers own layout objects are done vectorized. If you urged by your vanity and need gradients should they be build by aligning lines of various opacity of the same colour, to produce the needed eyecandy, since each line is then threated as an object to hoist somewhere on the layout, as a simple textual string to transmit over a network.

The good news is when you have produced such a grouped object, could it be re-used all over the place, changes to the solid colour could then for the object be warped via:

http://www.myfmbutler.com/index.lasso?p=422

....In say Textwrangler, before being re-used.

--sd

[comment]

Re fonts: this has been discussed numerous times, here are a few examples:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/189453/

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/190497/

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/198041/

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/209496/

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/209915/

Re graphics: you didn't provide much detail. I believe that if you save them as .png and use Insert > Picture… to place them on the layout, it should work on both platforms.

[Richard Sillitto]

Many thanks for the swift replies guys.

Fonts - yes, I guessed as much. I shall read my way through those links to find the best way forward for my solution.

Graphics - It is odd, as in the PC world FMP defaults to showing an "old" graphic that was on the layout that I deleted a while back.

I've been using .psd as my graphic files, which might be at the route of my problem. I'm just going to go through and tweek the layout and replace the graphics with .png and see if that helps.

Richard

[Fenton]

Pay attention to comment's advice to Insert the graphic files as Picture. Do not copy/paste unless you have to. FileMaker does a better job if you use Insert.