Hi David,
Regarding my points #3 and #4.
#3 - It is jarring and out of character ... The tool bar is not
neutral. It has it's own colour and style scheme. This may or may
not go with a client dictated colour and style scheme when open in
the balance of a program.
White would go a long way to helping. It is neutral. That is a
personal observation and probably taste. Your comments on perhaps it
being for the end user as deployed in their final product versus the
developer, is right on. It makes it really obvious that it is "The
Tool Bar". I like my final product to look as if it came from some
sort of whole cloth.
So this one is a touchy feely thing.
#4 Regarding the placement of the Tool Bar at the top. I have clients
wanting more and more to show on a single screen. This is especially
true if their employees are good computer users. A full interface
with good mix of serial and lateral navigation (a) makes work flow
very efficient and (b) reduces the learning curve on the program.
This makes every inch of the screen real estate valuable.
However, I believe that to a large extent current screen designs are
consumer driven, specifically to give wide screen media reproduction
on the computer screen. With the exception of bookkeeping, where for
ledger purposes, the wider the better, even though we talk of a
paperless society, business is paper driven, specifically letter and
legal size, portrait orientation. That makes some screen real estate
for FileMaker usage more valuable than other parts of the screen.
The, depending on paper size where you are, 8.5" swath down the
screen with maximum depth to minimize scrolling is the real estate
used for WSIWYG forms. In some applications divorcing the data entry
from the final form is fine. In others, seeing the actual form on
screen with a minimum of scrolling is very important. This is The
Prime FileMaker application screen real estate. Unfortunately, this
is also, at the top of the screen, where the tool bar resides.
Dave
Hi Dave and Steve,
Thanks for sharing.
Dave...
I can appreciate your annoyances, particularly your point 2. They
got the automatic window resizing a bit messed up, and hopefully
will fix/improve that in a future version.
You also said:
Also, I confess to not knowing that it could be customized. The
big thing would be could that customization be scripted?
And Steve you said...
It seems this is not a setting that we can script. Do I assume
that it also is not saved with the file? So a user can alter the
setting at will...
No, it can't be scripted as far as I'm aware, nor is it saved with
the file I think - or at best, if it is, it's certainly overridable
by the user. I believe the point of it is (as mentioned by someone
else earlier today) to leave that stuff in the users' domain as it
is with every other Mac program.
It really is just the standard operating system functionality that
is available there. It's FMI trying to bring FM more in line with
modern applications... right? (Though why did that have to take 8
years??!)
As a user, frankly I hate it when some applications have some custom
toolbar implemented that is out of character with every other Mac
program. Usually it's the apps written in java or other common-code
cross-platform apps - developers trying to provide the same
interface across platforms on their apps, or just porting an ugly
windows app over to the Mac as is, instead of building each
platform's version of their interface in line with each platform's
native GUI.
So really, perhaps we developers should not be enforcing a
particular view of the toolbar on our users. The users' ability to
customise the toolbar however they want is there with every other
Mac app, and so it should be there with FileMaker. That said, to be
honest, I don't even think the toolbar is meant to be for us
developers.
I believe FMI's target market falls into two distinct groups:
1. Developers like us, and our clients, who together use FileMaker
Pro as a tool to build custom applications - users of which from a
practical point of view, may not even even need to know or care that
their apps are written in FileMaker any more than they care that
Microsoft Word (I believe?) is written C++.
2. The market that often we developers seem to forget - more "basic"
users who *don't* engage us, but use FileMaker as its own
application to organise their own stuff. A glorified Bento. A
graphical and data oriented Excel. Or even just like the Address
Book & iCal for that matter.
It is my belief (and the only thing that really makes sense to me)
that the toolbar is there primarily for group 2. Given that (1) it's
a damn sight more flexible than the sidebar used to be, and (2) now
finally it has been brought inline with the OS by having a toolbar
instead of a sidebar, surely it's an improvement, right?
But maybe it frustrates us developers, because it's just pretty and
useful enough to tempt us to incorporate it into our apps (to save
us having to build some of our own custom UI), but it's just not
quite flexible enough. It's an end user tool and perhaps it's *not*
meant to be a development tool, but it's close and so if only they
could just go that extra bit so it could be...?!
Would that be an accurate description of our frustration as developers?
All that said, what I still don't understand is your (Dave) points 3
& 4 (which I know aren't just your own). Aside from its quirks
mentioned in your point 2, why is it that a toolbar at the top of
every other Mac window doesn't offend, but the toolbar at the top of
the FileMaker window does?
That's the big bit I don't get. My apologies if you answered that
and I missed it.
David Thorp
All About Abundance Pty Ltd
Sydney / Brisbane. Australia.
[email protected]
ph: +61-4-0558-8065
fx: +61-2-9475-1444
On 12/12/2010, at 7:40 PM, Steve Cassidy wrote:
On 12 Dec 2010, at 06:08, David Thorp wrote:
Still, setting the icons to small and removing the text does
indeed reduce the screen real estate issue significantly. In
fact, I'd argue that with it set to show icons only and set to
small icons, the toolbar takes up no more space than it used to
David
Thanks for noting this. It's new to me, too. I've barely used FMP11 so far.
It seems this is not a setting that we can script. Do I assume
that it also is not saved with the file? So a user can alter the
setting at will...
This reduces its usefulness somewhat. You could design a layout to
fit a screen size based on the minimal (say Text Only) toolbar, but
the end user will likely be using the default (giant icons).
Or am I missing a way for the developer to take control?
Steve
...AND...
On 12/12/2010, at 10:33 PM, David McQueen wrote:
Hi David,
As another poster said ... It's annoying
1. I don't run programs with the status area open in general. The
only time I wanted it open would be for a continue/cancel button.
With the side bar it was front and center. Now it it hidden away
on an expanse. Even if it is another colour, it is small and not
front and center. If I use it that way, people hate it.
For people who do want to run that way and have a whole lot of
things visible,I imagine it is a whole different kick. Also, I
confess to not knowing that it could be customized. The big thing
would be could that customization be scripted?
2. I run my programs in "adjust window size to fit" mode, not
maximized. On Windows this does not make much difference unless
you also scale down the FileMaker window, but on Mac it leaves easy
access to what is behind the open program on the desktop. This
leads to two more annoyances:
a.) When I flip the status area open, the layout does not drop
down properly and I have to manually pull the window down larger to
see the full layout.
b.) I have some layouts that are page width. When I drop open the
status area with these layouts, only part of the tool bar will
show. So not only do I have to pull down the layout to make the
window larger, but I have to pull it sideways too.
>
Do this 100 times on a heavy development day and you are just ticked.
3. It is jarring and out of character with the rest of the program.
4. In a good design context, it should occupy "spare" screen real
estate. With current monitors, that real estate is located at the
side of the screen, not at the top or bottom. This offends me,
especially as that is the way it used to be.
So there is nothing terminally wrong with it, but I don't find a
whole lot right with it either ... OR ... I am looking for it to be
less than what it is and find the features out of context and in
the way for what I am doing.
Justy my $.02 CDN
Dave
--
David A. McQueen
LICHEN Software
705-720-9022
www.lichen-software.com
Little Helper 2.0 Now Released
--
David A. McQueen
LICHEN Software
705-720-9022
www.lichen-software.com
Little Helper 2.0 Now Released
