![]() ![]() ![]() It’s a shame, then, that there appears to be no way for developers and designers to create their own themes, or even to save modifications to existing themes.įive of the new themes, including the Windows-esque Wave, have companion themes with the word “Touch” added to their names. Objects can be given different styles for different states, so that the currently active text input field might have a stand-out background colour, while a script-triggering button could be styled toĬhange colour when moused over, and again when clicked.įileMaker Pro 12’s layouts are a decided improvement over the psychedelic mistakes of earlier versions’ colour schemes, but they might not be to everybody’s tastes. Corners can be rounded to a specified radius if a number of buttons are butted up against each other, for example, in a horizontal list, then rounding off the left corners of the left-most button, and the right buttons of the right-most object, can create a modern-looking style. ![]() Gone are the dated dither patterns that somehow clung to life through FileMaker Pro 11 in their place come colour gradients for fields and buttons. Once layout elements have been selected, they can be styled much more extensively than had previously been possible. This is a long-overdue standardisation, but I have a suspicion that it might initially confuse veteran FileMaker designers used to the old approach. In previous versions, objects had to be enclosed completely by the selection area, but now the selection area merely has to overlap the objects you want to select. Perhaps the most important change has been to the way in which layout objects are selected. Refining elements within a layout has also been improved in FileMaker Pro 12. And themes can be switched after the fact - if the Wave theme really does remind you too much of Windows, then a quick trip to the Layouts menu’s Change Theme command will change the entire layout’s theme to something less jarring. New fields added to layouts after their initial setup automatically inherit the styling of that layout’s theme. And the Wave theme would probably look quite at home on a Windows 7 desktop, which you may or may not feel is a good thing.įileMaker Pro 12’s layouts are now much more tightly linked to their source themes. (“ Claris Organizer Reincarnated as PalmPilot MacPac,” ). The 40 new themes are generally less gaudy and tacky than previous styles the Retro theme is reminiscent of one of the skins available in Claris Organizer, which was sold to Palm when Claris became FileMaker, Inc. Fields added afterwards had to be styled manually - colour, typeface, type style allīut this, mercifully, has changed. But even if you decided that you really, really liked the orange and yellow of Brick Screen, for example, the colour scheme of a layout created using that style applied only to fields added during the creation of the layout. Earlier versions included preset designs for new layouts, but they were riddled with problems, not least the fact that they were often garishly coloured and quite puzzlingly unattractive - some even looked like they could easily have been designed by a seven-year-old with a crayon. New Layout Tools - The primary enhancement that FileMaker Pro 12 brings is themes. FileMaker’s Web site claims that this latest version offers “stunning” and “eye-catching” database design tools, and while this is clearly advertising hyperbole (it’s still a database!), FileMaker Pro 12 does improve significantly on earlier versions’ Instead, as Mark Anbinder discussed in his coverage of the update’s release (see “ FileMaker 12 Adds Power, Clarity, and Free iOS Apps,” 4 April 2012), the focus is on display, presentation, and appearance.
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