How to use Color palette?

[fmbug]

Dear friends,

I am trying to work with 'Color Palette'. But I am unable to work with it.

Actually my need is that. I need a color palette, from where I can select the color. The color must be viewable in a container field. Or I want to set the font color or background color of a text field, dynamically on the layout only in browse mode.

Please help me. I am not getting any logic regarding that.

Thanks in advance.

[bcooney]

You come up with the most unusual requirements, Mr. Khan.

A user can set the font color themselves, provided that the formatting palette is visible. The background color of a field, however, is set either via conditional formatting or in layout mode.

Why is this needed? Is this some sort of color-coded status?

[fmbug]

Yes bcooney. I want to use this functionality. coz i want user to select the color according to their choice, in particular events.

Thanks

[bcooney]

I need more details. Still not sure what you're doing. "Particular events"?

[fmbug]

Dear All,

Actually I am working on changing the color of the field dynamically in browse mode. The field with name 'FontColor' stored with the color codes. I want the named with something called 'ABC' should change its background color according to color codes.

I have stored these color codes in manually made color palette. after selecting field, color from color palette. I am able to select the color.

Please help me in changing the back ground of the field after selecting color from color palette.

I am attaching a screen shot to make it more clear.

[fmbug]

hey bcooney,

Color palette work is completed, please go through my next (recent) post...

[comment]

Please keep your issue to a single thread:

http://fmforums.com/...-color-palette/

[bcooney]

I've merged your posts.

I still don't know where you're going with this. All I can suppose is that you should have a preference table, and that is where the user would select the fill color for a status. Then, your conditional formatting formulas would reference this preference.

[comment]

Please help me in changing the back ground of the field after selecting color from color palette.

The fill color of a field cannot be set to an arbitrary value (other than in Layout mode). To display a swatch of the selected color, you could use text in a calculation field using the TextColor() function - see an example here:

http://fmforums.com/...__1#entry293464

You could also show the selected color in a web viewer, or use a plugin than can generate the color in a container field.

Either way, you cannot use an arbitrary color in conditional formatting. If you limit yourself to a small number of preset colors, perhaps you could define a condition for each, based on status and user preference (I think that's what Barbara meant). Still, it seems like an awful lot of work compared to the result.

[bcooney]

Yes, comment, I'm trying to interpret his goal from his posts. I suppose I'm picturing a pref table of color choices for status levels, and either condtl formatting that changes the fill (I suppose via a global container in the back) or simply loading the global upon startup. I admit, since we're not getting much detail back, I've been lazy in researching my responses.

We're getting a lot of posts from people that are taking FM in unusual directions. I wonder if they all work at the same place! Part of me finds the requirements interesting in that they pose a puzzle (and FM people love a puzzle), but part of me feels that there's a basic misunderstanding of FM's capabilities and purpose, and they're using the wrong tool to accomplish their needs.

[comment]

Well, my point is that neither conditional formatting nor a container field (sans plugin) can generate a color from a given RGB/Hex code.

We're getting a lot of posts from people that are taking FM in unusual directions. I wonder if they all work at the same place! Part of me finds the requirements interesting in that they pose a puzzle (and FM people love a puzzle), but part of me feels that there's a basic misunderstanding of FM's capabilities and purpose, and they're using the wrong tool to accomplish their needs.

:exactly:

[RodSierra]

We use colors in two ways, the first, probably well known, and not related to this thread is by displaying a color via a wingding using font formating. We use it as an aid in applications where a visible screen reference to a color is helpfull while selecting color formulations.

We also have a color table that contains 88 container fields and their associated rgb data. We provide this for users to set highlight and font colors for special instances. The most common request for this has been background highlighting variatons for our calendars. This uses nothing more complex than a calculated container field as background to a text field.

We have a multi lingual requirement for our solutions that requires us to be able to dynamically switch between languages on any layout for any user at any time for any field label or tool tip. Our solution to this was to have a layered single record portal for each field label, when developing this we decided it was not difficult to incorporate a highlight background in this portal. I digress, but my point is that having incorporated this flexibility it is used very very sparingly, and only at user developer level. Opening up text and background color selection to users is not a good idea, if you have designed your interface properly and maintained color standards for field labeling and status information, there is little need to open this up to users.