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Working with windows

When you want to control the flow of a procedure or work on several tasks concurrently, you can have more than one window open at a time. For example, additional open windows can display alerts, prompt a user for information, or provide different views of data.

•	To open a new window based on the active window, choose Window menu > New Window. See Opening multiple windows per file.

•	To modify an open window, see Arranging windows in FileMaker Pro and Windows script steps.

•	To open a new window that displays a different layout or behaves differently than the current window, create a script that includes the New Window script step. See the steps below.

Creating a window that opens with a script:

It is not necessary to enter values for each option. When no value is entered, FileMaker Pro uses the default value associated with the Window menu > New Window command.

1.	Choose Scripts menu > Script Workspace.

2.	Click , enter a name for the script, then press Enter.

3.	In the script steps pane, double-click the New Window script step.

4.	In the script editing pane, click to open the "New Window" Options dialog box.

5.	For Window Name, enter a title for the window.

The window name appears in the window’s title bar.

6.	Specify the dimensions and position of the new window.

 

For	Enter
Height	The height of the new window, in points.
Width	The width of the new window, in points.
Distance from Top	The new window’s distance, in points, from the top of the FileMaker Pro window (Windows) or the top of the screen (OS X).
Distance from Left	The new window’s distance, in points, from the left of the FileMaker Pro window (Windows) or the left of the screen (OS X).

If the window’s height or width is greater than the screen displaying the window, FileMaker Pro displays the window at the largest size possible.

If the window’s height or width is smaller than the operating system allows, FileMaker Pro displays the window at the smallest size possible.

Tip  You can create a new window off-screen by supplying negative top and/or left values, which can be useful for multiple-monitor environments.

7.	Select Specify Advanced Style to open the "Specify Advanced Styles" Options dialog box.

8.	For Window Style, choose one of the following window styles. See About window styles.

 

Choose	To
Document Window	Create a window that users can minimize, maximize, restore, or close; or that starts a new process as users work.
Floating Document Window	Create a window that remains on top of other windows even when the floating window becomes inactive.
Dialog Window (Modal)	Create a window that appears in the foreground and can’t be minimized. Users must close all open dialog windows before they can activate an open document window.

9.	For Window Controls, select which controls you want to enable in the new window.

 

Select	To
Close	Enable the close button in the window’s title bar.
Minimize	Enable the minimize button in the window’s title bar.
Maximize	Enable the maximize button in the window’s title bar.
Zoom Control Area	Enable the zoom control and Mode pop-up menu at the bottom left of a document window.
Resize	Allow users to resize the window.

Note  When you do not select a window control, the corresponding menu command is disabled.

10.	Click OK to close the "Specify Advanced Styles" Options dialog box, then click OK to save your changes and return to the script editing pane.

11.	Choose File menu > Save Script (Windows) or Scripts menu > Save Script (OS X), then close the Script Workspace window.

12.	To open the new window, choose the script from the Scripts menu.

Notes

•	In Windows:

•	When a window is maximized, the maximize and restore buttons become a single button.

•	When you disable both the maximize and minimize buttons, these buttons do not appear in the window’s title bar.

•	You can use a script or button script step to control a window, even if a button is disabled in the window’s title bar.