NightWing Enterprises — Demo for FileMaker Pro™ 8.5
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-- TOOLTIP CONTENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY --
Tooltips as data *without multiple relationships* !
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Requires FileMaker 8.5 or 9!
As a courtesy to fellow developers and potential clients, the
following demonstration is provided for free download.
NB: If you may require assistance implementing procedures such as those shown in the
example files, please consider establishing an account with us for developer support.
Tooltip Content Management without "Relationship Spaghetti" !
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Tooltips are great. So great, in fact, that before you know it you may have rather a lot of them - at which point keeping track of them becomes increasingly challenging. You may have used the same or similar text for the tips in many different places - but when it comes time to change or update them, finding them all can be quite a task.
The answer - obviously - is to store the tooltips in a database table which can be searched - and from which a single entry can be referenced multiple times. Then you can update the tip text once and all the various objects that refer to it will automatically 'see' the change. You can also store relevant comments or information to help keep track of all those tooltips. That all good, but not if it means that every TO in your solution that has a layout based on it is going to need its own relationship to your tips table. A recipe for Relationship Graph spaghetti, just to support tooltips.
The technique demonstrated here uses the List( ) function introduced with FileMaker 8.5, along with a single self-join relationship, a single auto-enter global text field and a custom function, to "publish" the tooltip data so that tips can be referenced instantly (by their ID number in the tips table) from anywhere in your solution - without the need for cluttering your solution with any additional relationships. The technique supports calculated/dynamic tips and multi-line tips, as well as providing a straightforward mechanism for a preference setting with which end-users can turn tooltips on and off (in one place for the whole solution).
The technique requires FileMaker v8.5 and is suitable for implementation in both stand-alone and hosted solutions (in the latter case, tooltip content can be edited 'live' while the solution is being served). This demo file is unlocked and is provided password-free, by courtesy of NightWing Enterprises.
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Mac OS X demo download
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Win XP demo download
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