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  November 2009

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• Recently Written

  • Lion, iCloud, and Bento… October 25, 2011
  • Bento 4.06 Available October 1, 2011
  • Bento Price Drop Confirmed! August 23, 2011
  • Bento 4.0.5 Available! August 9, 2011
  • It’s Confirmed: Lion Is Fighting Bento! August 1, 2011
  • Bento 4.0.3 Update Is Unstable May 21, 2011
  • Customizing Themes Even Further April 23, 2011
  • Sorely Needed: Page Guides On Forms! April 23, 2011
  • List Field Refinements Needed April 12, 2011
  • Dear Filemaker & Bento Product Manager: April 11, 2011
  • New Free Service: iChat Screen-Sharing! April 10, 2011
  • Bento 4 Crashes Reach BentoUsers! March 17, 2011
  • Finally: Bento 4 – First Review! March 16, 2011
  • Bento Black-Friday Pricing! November 26, 2010
  • Important Software Update – Bento 3.0.5 November 4, 2010

This little tip is for people like me who like to design the form layout pleasingly for the eye.

Sometimes I like to insert a spacer on the very left of a form so the fields don’t get so close to the edge. But the minimum width of a spacer isn’t very small. There is a different way that uses a little less space:

Add any field to an empty form. Then insert a column divider. Next add any field to the right of the new divider. Now remove the first field you added initially. Voila! The column divider moved to the left edge of the form, acting as a spacer which is narrower than a real Bento spacer.

Bento user Mark found a Bento 3 easter egg (a hidden, undocumented feature): when you hold down the Option key upon launching Bento, a dialog box pops up which lets you choose any database file, set a default file, and more.

I tried it out and it displayed some strange behavior. Luckily, I had copied the database file I tested the feature with. Bento moved the file (removing it from my back-up folder where it resided). Since I didn’t specify that file as the default database, it later automatically reverted to the previous file, and the other file was gone, I couldn’t find it anywhere! I had to move the copy back into its old location by hand. Sounds a bit dangerous and complicated, right?

I recommend to use this hidden feature with big caution! So far, the documentation never mentioned the possible use of more than one database file, even though many users are using them, including myself. This would be another reason for the release of an updated version of Bento 3 that includes a new users guide! The users guide would need to include instructions on how to create additional database files.

Bill reported:

“I opened Bento 3 today to find it crashes after typing my password. I did this three times. Restarted my PowerBook Pro twice. On the 4th try, it worked and asked me if I wanted to back up my data. I am also using Snow Leopard.”

Comment: crashes like this seem random – why does it work the 4th time? Bento 2 was much more stable. No crash reports to speak of.

Addition (Nov. 25): I had another crash today myself: I simply edited a text field (adding a few words) while it happened. I restarted Bento and reverted to a back-up of my database. First a strange thing happened: when I tried to edit the same text field, the new entry disappeared when I tabbed out of the field! The same thing happened several time, and then Bento crashed again.
Now I restarted Bento and duplicated the record in question, then deleted the original one. Now the edit worked fine. So somehow, that single text field was corrupted! Very, very strange and disconcerting!

(Nov. 28): This is maybe the craziest Bento crash: my active application was iPhoto. When I woke up my Mac, the Bento icon in the dock was jumping: Bento 3 had crashed while it was idling in the background!

Dutifully I’m reporting the release of the Bento 3 Holiday Pack.

It consists of two ugly themes and two templates. The templates are designed for Bento 3, the themes should work in any Bento version.

The first Holiday Pack was very nice. The Themes were also designed in a way that I found many good uses for them. This time no special fonts, a color that hurts your eyes and background pictures that tile badly… I have nothing else to say.