Instant Web Publishing Guide

28 FileMaker Instant Web Publishing Guide
1 Instant Web Publishing offers limited text styles. Paragraph text styles, tab stops, and vertical alignment
are not supported. Additionally, underline, word underline and double underline are all rendered as
regular underline. Evaluate your layouts in all supported web browsers before sharing the database with
others.
1 If layout text is wrapping to a new line, increase the size of the text boundaries in the FileMaker Pro
layout. For example, if the text is aligned left, drag the lower right handle slightly towards the right.
1 Buttons can display multiple lines of text if you include Return characters between the lines. Make sure
the button is large enough to accommodate the text in supported web browsers.
1 The FileMaker Pro Title Header, Title Footer, and Summary layout parts are not supported and should
be removed from layouts used with Instant Web Publishing.
1 To avoid cropping of movies, make sure the container field is large enough to display the movie and the
movie controls.
1 A timestamp field cannot be formatted to display a drop-down calendar. The calendar and optional
calendar icon are not displayed in Browse and Find modes.
1 Avoid using more than one copy of the same field on a layout. Otherwise, web users must change all
copies of the field to save changes or to perform a find.
Design considerations for List View and Table View
With Instant Web Publishing, users can dynamically choose a layout view to interact with data on the current
layout (provided that you make the layout view available in the Layout Setup dialog box).
Here are key differences between views in FileMaker Pro and Instant Web Publishing:
1 List View displays 25 records at a time and Table View displays 50. The current record is always at the
top, or the first row. When new records are created, they become the current record. You can display
previous record ranges with the controls in the status area.
1 Web users can add, edit, and delete records and find requests in List View and Table View.
1 In Table View, records can be sorted in ascending or descending order by clicking the column heading
(the field name). Sorting is enabled in the Table View Properties section of the Layout Setup dialog box.
For more information, see FileMaker Pro Help.
Tips for working with data in a web browser
1 Formatting for date, time, timestamp, and number fields is specified in the layout.
1 Repeating field data is displayed in web browsers.
1 The tab order defined in a layout works in Instant Web Publishing. The status area is included in
the tab order; you may want to prevent web users from using the controls in the status area. For more
information, see
“Hiding the status area to customize the interface” on page 31. Buttons and tab controls
can be included in the FileMaker Pro tab order, but in Instant Web Publishing this functionality is
available only in Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows. Web users may be able to tab into omitted fields.
Note that working with a tab order may have different results in a web browser than in FileMaker
Pro,
and not all browsers will support the tab order in the same manner.
1 Only the Tab key is supported for navigating between fields or objects in Instant Web Publishing.
1 Pop-up menus and pop-up lists display as HTML pop-up menus. Web users can’t edit value lists by using
an Edit item, or enter values that aren’t in a value list by using an Other item.