One of the graphical issues I find myself burning hours chasing my tail on is how Portals and the fields within them behave appearance-wise when you click into them

Right now I have a simple situation where I have a 1-record portal holding a single text field. The portal is filetered so that it displays the data corresponding to the active row in a 10-row portal to its left. Works fine, function-wise.

I have the filterd portal set to "Fill" with the same color as the layout background, and I have "Line" set to none, so that the portal will be basically invisible, and the single field inside of it has a white fill and a 1-pt Line , so in browse mode it just looks like a natural field box, like any other on the layout.

The problem comes when I have a record with no related records, so there's no data to display in this Filtered portal. Now, the p[ortal as well as the field inside it are invisible, so there's just a big blank space on my layout with the field label above it, which is bad because ity just looks like something's missing.

I notice that I can solve the problem by "Allowing Record Creation" on the relationship the portals are based on, but I'd prefer not to, as I don't use the portal for adding records (I created a scripted system instead) -- and so the "extra line" displaying the "next new" record is superfluous and inelegant (inviting data entry in a place where it isn't allowed).

So . . . I've been going nuts experimenting with borders and fills on both the filtered portal and the file within it (which needs a scroll bar), with unsatisfactory results. One factor that's often foiling me is the "greying" of the filter when the user clicks into the field within it -- the Portal goes grey, indicating you're "in it" and often creates an unsightly frame around the field . When I try to make the portal / frame identical size, I get unfortunate border effects that change between records with/without related records present.

If anyone's still reading, would you have any pointers on solving this sort of thing? Ideally, I'm wondering if there's a way to simply neutralize that greaying effect when you step into the portal.

Regarding the fields not being shown if there are not related records...

I think that's just a result of the method you are using to display the record detail. You could put a button on your 10 row portal on the left to set a field in the current table to the PrimaryKey of the related table, then create a relationship based on that field to show the detail for the selected record in the portal.

Regarding everything else...

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying, I'd probably have to see it to understand. You could try making the filtered portal invisible (no border or background).

Better yet, if you use my suggestion above; you probably won't experience this issue at all, since there won't be a filtered portal