Database Reference
In-Depth Information
It sure would be easier if this button had a name. But your styles are safely copied to
the new layout's Header.
4.
Click the circle with the red triangle beside the style's name and choose “Save
Changes to Current Style.”
The changes to the default Header style are now saved.
5.
Click the circle with the red triangle beside the theme's name and then choose
“Save Changes to Theme.”
The new style is now saved inside the file's theme and will be available in the Inspector
when you need to apply it to another text block. The Header and its logo look great, but those
gray field labels on the left get lost as the gradient turns to white. Draw a rectangle in the
header the width of your layout that's about quarter of an inch tall. Then use the Alignment
tools (see next section) to send the object behind your field labels to help them stand out
from the gradient. If you want to enter data on the list layout, you'll need to add field control
styles to the Rental Fee (
Formatting Fields
)
and Date Signed fields (
Adding a Drop-Down
Calendar to a Field
)
. See
Field Behavior
for a way to keep folks from clicking in fields and
entering data.
NOTE
All objects, not just text blocks, have styles. Applying them consistently is important, especially
when you'll be sharing your database using FileMaker Go or on the Web. See
Touch Themes
for de-
tails.
Arrange and Align Tools
Designing custom layouts requires lots of moving and resizing layout objects. It's such a fre-
quent task that FileMaker dedicates an entire menu to helping you arrange and align the ob-
jects on a layout. You can find the same commands in a slightly different form on the In-
spector. You can find them on the Inspector's Position tab, in the Arrange & Align section
(
Figure 3-19
). Finally, right-click (Control-click) an object for the contextual menu, where
you'll find an Arrange command. Its hierarchical menu contains the Arrange and Align tools.
Aligning and Distributing Objects
Your database will look more organized and professional if you line objects up with one an-
other. When you have fields arranged in multiple columns on a layout, take care to align the
fields neatly.
How
you align them depends on your layout. For example, in
Figure 3-9
,
the
