Color Picker for Windows - any better options?

[Greenman]

When you select a color from the windows color picker for fill, line or text, the interface is the same as it probably has been since filemaker 4. Has anyone created a plugin with a better interface?

[Vaughan]

The picker is supplied by the operating system. There are different pickers that can be selected from, at least there are in FMP 10 and later.

[Greenman]

That may be true on the Mac, but I'm having a hard time finding that option on Windows. If you could show how to change it, I would be grateful.

There are two interfaces -- the pallet interface and the color picker interface.

With the current color picker on windows you get three pallet choices:

88 colors standard for filemaker

256 colors standard for windows system

216 web-safe colors

This is the actual color picker used by FMPro on windows since the dawn of time:

• You cannot create custom pallets. You can't add a pallet - for instance the visibone or visibone2 pallets.
  
• There is no quick interface to switch pallets. You have to go to the edit --> preferences --> layout tab every time you want to switch.
  
• You cannot save the 'saved' colors between work sessions or from one fm solution to another, and you only get a temporary and limited number of custom colors.
  
• You end up having to copy and paste your preferred colors from a color pallet of your own creation or buying cut-and-paste solutions.
  
• The color picker interface is not resizeable
  
• Most problematic is that there is no way to grab a color from somewhere within a layout.
  

The mac color picker interface is more intuitive and can grab colors from the layout, generally has more options and is resizable.

I don't think the color picker on filemaker is specific to windows system -- it's just what fm decided to implement for windows. For instance, even office has changed their interface since filemaker 4 debuted. The office color picker is also resizable.

While we're at it, there is no support for vector gradients or images within drawn shapes. Even Powerpoint has a better interface for color, gradients and inserting images as backgrounds into shapes.

It's time for Filemaker's color picker interface for windows to grow up, eh?