Okay, I've dived in and am trying to go ahead and use the new theme-based layout tools and am running into a couple questions.

1) I understand that 12 has done away with the stock"Emboss" and "Engrave" options, and my impression is that such effects can be achieved more beautifully in 12 . . . if you know how? But I don't! So lets say I have a coup of 7 fields and I want to put them on what looks like an engraved or embossed platform. How do I do that? I've dawn a box around them . . . and I see how to play with the corner radius . . . but what else do I apply in order to get that kind of effect?

2) One thing that's driving me nuts is that when you select two or more objects on the layout, the Inspector no longer displays their combined height or width -- extremely useful when you want to make a new field or object that matches the dimensions of existing elements. What the heck! All it shows is a dash now. To get the figure I have to Group them together and then Ungroup again.

Is there a reason? is there a place for lodging requests for tweaks? This turns out to be a surprisingly annoying change.

To create an ingraved or embossed effect you would use seperate individule lines as borders. Fir instance, make the bottom and right a dark color and the top and left a light color for embossed I believe. Then use them as borders for your field or object.

As I understand it

This can't be done with the field's or objects native borders because FileMaker 12 only has controls for one border color for all of an objects borders. However I think when converting an existing file with objects using Engrave or Emboss that is what filemaker 12 does. It creates borders with different shades on bottom and right vs top and left. But once you change a converted field or object from Emboss or Engrave it loses that capability.

I have no idea why they didn't include the option in the line drop down since it is somehow available on new objects created in the classic theme. Even then, once you change it you lose the option..

I really don't understand why they took this away. Especially since it worked fine with IWP. The new themes cannot be used at all with IWP.

It can't be a resource drain or a programing issue. The emboss/deboss has been around forever.

I can think of no logical reason it was dropped. The only reason (illogical in my opinion) I can think of is because they want to force people to use themes. Which I would be OK with if they worked in IWP and were editable.

Yes, it is simple, but it was quit possible to produce nice looking layouts with these effects.

It it is just silly to have to manually build them, or keep a database of converted boxes, etc. just so you can slow your work down by copying and pasting.

Put it back FM.

I agree. Even more silly is the fact that if your layout is set to classic theme and you create a new button with the button tool, it is by default embossed. That appears to be the only place the emboss effect is used in FM 12.