Developer’s Guide

2-14 Developer’s Guide
Graphics with gradients that are imported and stored as bitmaps will
redraw faster on the screen than graphics imported and stored as
PICT images. Additionally, PICT images containing gradients may
have some quality degradation when displayed on Windows
machines.
If your graphic image has an undesirable white border surrounding
an irregularly shaped graphic, you should create a mask for the
bitmap image. Refer to the documentation that came with your
graphics program for more information.
Using QuickTime movies in cross-platform solutions
To use a Mac OS QuickTime movie with FileMaker Pro for
Windows, first save the movie in a format playable on non Apple
computers using a QuickTime editing application. For more
information, visit the Apple web site at www.apple.com.
To save a QuickTime movie in a cross-platform format:
1. On your Mac OS machine, start your QuickTime editing program.
2. Open the QuickTime movie you want to convert.
3. Choose File menu > Save As and save the file with a new name and
the .mov filename extension.
4. Select Make movie self-contained.
5. Select Make playable on non Apple computers.
The first time you play a movie from another platform,
FileMaker Pro prompts you for the location of the movie. Keep the
files in a common folder and avoid choosing the wrong file—this
could lead to unexpected results.
Showing the status bar in Windows
FileMaker Pro for Windows includes an option to show the status
bar, which allows users to specify whether status bar information at
the bottom of a window is visible or not.
If your layouts are designed to take up most of the available screen
space, users can deselect this option in FileMaker Pro or in your
runtime application to make more room.
To show the status bar:
1 Choose View menu > Status Bar.
A check mark next to the menu item indicates that the option is
selected.
Using separate scripts for printing
Scripts that include Page Setup/Print Setup and Print commands are
not 100% compatible across platforms. The print steps in the
ScriptMaker
®
feature rely upon the current printer driver in order to
determine the paper sizes that are available, page orientation, and so
on. Even if a computer using Windows and another using the
Mac OS are connected to the same printer, the drivers themselves are
significantly different—so FileMaker Pro is unable to restore page
setup and print options across platforms.
To work around this, you can do the following:
1. Create separate scripts for Windows and Mac OS. First, open the
file on your Windows machine and create the script for printing from
Windows. Then, move the database file to the Mac OS machine and
create the script for printing from the Mac OS.
2. In ScriptMaker, use the If script step and the Status
(CurrentPlatform) function in both scripts to determine whether to
run the Windows or the Mac OS script. For more information, see
“Using the Status (CurrentPlatform) function” next.
3. Make sure the Perform Without Dialog option for the Print script step
is not selected. This will allow users to change the setup options
before they print.
Status bar help