SeedCode Support Forum

Hi John,

Having to change the colors to get higher contrast and resize objects to accommodate larger type and longer text instructions involves a lot of work. This is not made easier by my clumsiness in the graphics department.
And perhaps - dare I voice such heresy - FileMaker could provide more assistance in this area.

I just realized that when I was shifting some objects around in the Contacts layout I overlooked a few invisible portals. I went back to my backup layout, selected a portal, selected all portals with the type selection tool, and colored them orange, but there were selection handles that did not get colored in - presumably the portals were too thin. I've tried to select them by clicking where I think I saw them, but that doesn't seem to work, either.

Can you help me out here? And do you happen to have a list of all the hidden portals used in the solution (I know, that's a lot to ask).

Yea. It would be nice if we could get reveals for some of these things like we do for tool tips, but your select-similar trick is the next best thing. I generally drag-select any area I'm going to be working in to see if there are invisible items.

It's not just portals you have to worry about, but also fields which may be behind other objects- such as the fields we use for finding contacts.

There are lots of other invisible objects in many solutions, from simple things to the button laid over a button graphic, to the navigation field we use for BackMagic. Some of these items reveal themselves in layout mode, especially if View / Show / Sample Data is selected, but some don't so I think the drag-selecting thing is always a good idea when working in layouts you're not sure of.

We actually use a second or hidden related field, rather than an invisible portal per se in many cases-- the "find" link above should explain that-- but that said, here are the invisible portals in SeedCode Complete:

Contacts: there is an invisible portal surrounding the company phone and company url on the overview tab. You'll find the same thing on the Edit Company / Contact layout where we have the same fields.

Edit Appointment: an invisible portal surrounds the "show repetitions" button on the Mini Window Edit Appointment layout.

Month View: the little red indicators in the upper right of each day are surrounded in an invisible portal set to show just the 7th row of the portal (ie to show one more row than is visible on the layout).

Tab Editor: on the Tools tab of the Admin / Tab Editor layout you'll find the "cancel" buttons surrounded by hidden portals.

Hope that helps.

That does help, thanks. I still can't understand some of what I'm seeing but I'll just keep trying.

As for the BackMagic fields, I have somehow managed to give them a color that makes them visible in Layout mode but invisible in Browse mode. That's quite handy, I hope it works out all right!

My problem with drag selecting is making sure I lock down all framing objects, and I still need to take components apart if I have to resize them.

Keep up the good work, and thanks again.

I am probably stating the obvious, but I, too, was having a problem with resizing Calendar fields on the initial small layout window. Dragging the window out didn't do anything--the Calendar stays the same size, just within a larger window. However, it is FileMaker, and if you hit zoom, you can expand the window content to whatever size you want. So drag the Seedcode window out to fit your screen, then zoom it up to 150%. Now you are looking at the full calendar in something more legible like 14 point text. And if you want to zoom further in to get at complex layered layout objects, you can.

Excellent point. Also keep in mind that with FileMaker 9 you can set layout objects to resize. We've already done this in SeedCode Complete and here are some screen shots of the appointment window at various zoom sizes: