Highlight colour on dropdown lists

[TonyWells]

I think this is a simple question but I haven't been able to find an answer.

 

When I am growing the entries in a drop-down list, the highlight colour is a deep blue making it difficult to read the text on the list.

 

How can you change this?

 

I've checked the Inspector options and researched on the web but can't find an answer.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Tony

[comment]

When I am growing the entries in a drop-down list, the highlight colour is a deep blue making it difficult to read the text on the list.

 

What does "growing the entries" mean? When you select from a drop-down, you should see the selected entry in white font over dark blue background (subject to your selection in OS System Preferences > Appearance > Highlight Color), which seems perfectly readable to me.

 

[TonyWells]

Thanks for your response.

 

I am not too sure what happened with my first post, I meant to say "scrolling the entries".

 

Anyway, the problem is that the drop-down on my database displays black text on a dark blue background, not white text as your image shows, thus making it difficult to read.  See attachment..

 

What is interesting is if I change the field to a Pop-up Menu style it displays white text on a dark blue background.

 

I did find a workaround - from your reply.  I changed the system highlight colour to yellow which means I can see the black text on the dropdown.  But here's an interesting quirk.  If I change the field to a Pop-up Menu style, the highlight colour still remains Dark Blue.  Weird.

 

Tony 

 

Black Text on Dark Blue.tiff

[comment]

Are you able to reproduce the problem in a new file? Or in one of the template files installed with the application?

[Rick Whitelaw]

I'm sure this is an OS level preference issue. I'm sure because I had this problem on my laptop but not my desktop machine. I agree it's unnerving. Same thing for me. Black text virtually unreadable against a dark blue background.

[LaRetta]

Hi Tony,

 

It is interesting that, when I do as Comment suggests … go to system preferences on [the apple] > General, and see what my system produces.  I found a surprise here ...

 

If both Appearance and Highlight are set to blue, both drop-down lists and pop-up menus use a blue highlight.  Same if you change both Appearance and Highlight to graphite (which my MBP was using) ... both drop-down and pop-up use graphite highlight.

 

But:

 

Set Appearance: blue

Set Highlight: graphite

Dropdown uses graphite

Pop-up uses blue

 

Set Appearance: graphite

Set Highlight: blue

Dropdown uses blue

Pop-up uses graphite

 

It seems that pop-up menus go by Appearance and drop-down lists go by Highlight, at least that is the behaviour on OSX 10.9.5, FMPA 13.0v3.  This is in newly-created file.  I would love to know what all current Mac and Windows versions produce.  Oddities intrigue me!  Where is Daniele?!! :-)

 

I tried several theme/style combinations on hover and in focus and could not over-ride system highlight when either control is popped so I do not think themes are interfering; nor is conditional formatting.  This screen shot looks like Classic - does this happen to be a file which was migrated from pre-12 forward?  Are you are on the latest updater, 13.0v3 for Mac?

 

I could not find where system font color is stored; it seems inbred within the system highlight itself.  I assume that information is not available to users. 

Themes indicates that drop-down lists are simply edit boxes but pop-up menus are pop-ups, which might explain why pop-ups use Appearance ... they are a menu which each row changes color highlights as you hover them.

Edited November 17, 2014 by LaRetta

[Lee Smith]

This is the way it works in 11, 12 and 13 on my Mac. I can’t remember if it was different in 10 or in older systems, but I’m guessing since the selected item now shows in the field, you don’t need to see it in the list, and so it just shows the other available items.

[Lee Smith]

Instead of testing all the FileMaker applications and settings, I should just read LaRetta's post.

 

This is incredible.

 

Nothing like spending hours and hours on a theme design only to have Apple’s system changed the way some of the stuff is displayed.

 

 Curious, is this the way it is on Windows too?

[derlandson]

Curious about the status of this question.  What I have found is that in FMP 11 the highlighted text in a drop down list that was not set to auto complete showed up as white text against the blue highlight that was/is the default (?) on the Apple OS.  In FMP 13 (skipped 12) I can't get the text to show up as white unless I change it from drop down list to pop-up, as a previous post suggested.    This is problematic for users with poor eyesight.  Wondering if the Themes in 13 might address this.  Anyone have insight?

[LaRetta]

I was hoping to get more input from those with different OS and versions and then reporting it to FMI since I show it has not been discussed (but I could have missed it).

 

I really wish more people would get involved in posting issues here:  http://forums.filemaker.com/hives/1eea103f05/summary

 

If we don't tell them, they cannot fix it.  If we do not tell them OFTEN that it is a problem, they will not fix it.

No, same behavior with latest 13.0v4 for me.

 

corrected version

Edited January 20, 2015 by LaRetta

[LaRetta]

I have searched and see no indication this has been reported.  Can you report it, derlandson?  If not please let me know and I'll report it.  You're not still on Snow Leopard are you?  If not, can you update your profile for us please and let us know if you are different OS than mine (Mavericks).  Thank you!

[derlandson]

profile updated...  I will certainly report the issue.  For the moment looks like I will be switching quite a few fields over to pop-ups to make them more readable.

 

dan

[LaRetta]

Thank you for reporting it.  You can specify now that it breaks in at least two OS versions (Maverick and Yosemite) and at least two FM updaters (13.0v3 and 13.0v4).  

[derlandson]

reported.  Just as a side note, the white text color in the dropdown list shows up correctly in Web Direct!