Apr

23

Customizing Themes Even Further

Filed Under Bento Tips, Themes, Tutorials | 2 Comments

Long time ago, my fellow Bento gold digger Barbara sent me a screen shot of a funny custom Theme she had created. Initially I didn’t see anything unusual. But after all this time I happened to run across that image again and all of a sudden I noticed that the Theme included a visible Column Divider. Interesting, I thought… No regular Bento Theme has that. The Column Divider usually only becomes visible in edit-mode and it just looks like an outline.

Today I figured out how my friend created a Column Divider image!

Here is the solution:
When you edit a theme to customize it (see my tutorial on theme creation/customizing), the plist file contains this line that I had never even noticed:
<key>columnImageScaled<⁄key>
<⁄true>
… which is very similar to this line:
<key>separatorImageScaled<⁄key>
<⁄true>
… which refers to the image of the horizontal separator you can add on a form. That image is called Separator.tif. That told me everything I needed to know…

So this is what I did to create an image for the otherwise invisible column divider, and it worked like a charm:
I opened the Separator.tif image in Preview and simply rotated it to make it vertical. Then I saved it under the name Column.tif. That was it!

After re-starting Bento the column divider became visible for that theme – like Magic!

Have fun!

Apr

22

Sorely Needed: Page Guides On Forms!

Filed Under Bento Issues, Editorial | 6 Comments

Besides the new label printing in Bento 4 and several helpful printing options, Bento has a very basic flaw when it comes to printing:
No Page Guides on Forms! That makes it very hard to get the most important kind of printout: The famous WYSIWYG!

You are taking great care designing a form that looks great on your particular screen – be it a 13″ Macbook or a 27″ iMac. Then, big disappointment: the printout looks horrible. Why? Because Bento automatically squeezes any screen layout into whatever paper size is selected in the print dialog, therefore often making text sizes much smaller. In most cases that kind of printout is frustrating and not usable at all!

Bento needs page guides that should fetch the current print settings. It should be possible to switch them on and off.

Dear Filemaker: Thanks for listening.

Apr

12

List Field Refinements Needed

Filed Under Bento Examples, Bento Issues, Editorial | 3 Comments

This post is part of the continual evaluation of Bento 4. The following issues are not new, but since they still have not been addressed or commented on by Filemaker, Inc., I have to mention them again. I’ll never give up hope, you know.

Let’s face it: The Bento List Fields are pretty ugly, but they are even uglier with scroll bars. Whenever possible I am trying to avoid them.

The Simple List field contains a bug (or to put it nicely: an oversight) that makes avoiding horizontal scroll bars very hard:
The rightmost column is always called “new column.” It’s very unsightly because it’s like constantly displaying the edit-mode. Even though you can re-size it like the other columns (making the words disappear), Bento does not remember the new column size! It always expands back to the full size if you click on a different form and then go back. Only the sizes of the active columns are remembered.
This also falls into the category “Unexpected Results,” because first Bento let’s us resize the column, then later just ignores that action and reverses it!
Dear Filemaker: please fix this or at least tell us that you won’t. If you never address these valid concerns you are giving us the impression that you simply don’t care. Bento is branded as a database designer’s dream. Unsightly problems like these spell trouble in paradise!

Another Simple List field bug – same Category: unexpected results.
You can copy data and paste them into a Simple List field. But even though the Simple List field looks and feels exactly like Bento’s Table View, it acts differently all of a sudden:
You can not paste into multiple columns, and first you have to create the correct number of empty cells before you can paste anything!
In Table View on the other hand, you can simply click into the last row (the one with the “+”) and paste muliple columns!
Dear Filemaker: please fix this. Thanks.

Next issue – Category: missing basic feature.
For a while now, Smart Collections can also be used as Related Data fields which is very useful. But they still won’t be filled automatically with records to match the functionality of the Smart Collections. This feature is so logical that I really don’t understand that it hasn’t been implemented yet.

Finally, I really wish the option of creating a one-line Related Data field would be re-implemented, therefore eliminating the need for an ugly List field in many situations.
Dear Filemaker: why did you not reconsider this yet? The initial design of this feature had so much promise, and many users had requested it.

Apr

11

Dear Filemaker & Bento Product Manager:

Filed Under Editorial | 9 Comments

How are you?
I’m speaking to you as a Bento power-user (a term I created). But I hope that I’m also speaking for many other Bento users.

There are a few things I have learned to live with, and I’m pretty sure that they will never change:
I know that you will never guarantee that they will even be another new version of the program.
I know that you will never tell us in advance what new features/refinements are considered or in the works.
I know that you will never add certain advanced features, so not to compete with your own Filemaker Pro (i.e. scripting).
(I’ll add more items to this list as I think of them)

More importantly though, there are a few things that you could communicate to us, the users:
Could you please give us a complete list of advanced features that will never be added to Bento? We can take it
(Similar request) Could you please tell us occasionally which user request will never be added? (That one’s important: users requested simple features since Bento 1: will they ever come?)
Could you please include a list of ALL new features/improvements in a new release/upgrade/update? (i.e. I found out that you reduced the minimum size of the Spacer, which is a great help in form design)
Could you please include a list of ALL fixes of reported and/or acknowledged bugs? (i.e. I found out that Bento 4 fixed this bug in forms: now all elements in a duplicated form are independent)
(my brain’s tired; again, I will add to this list as needed)

Summary:
I strongly believe that any effort on your part to increase communication with your users will benefit everyone involved.
As it is now, we, the Bento users, feel a little abandoned between new releases. The Forums are helpful, but they don’t really address any of the items in my lists without a lot of lucky coaxing.
Still, the great TS people at the forums could be the middle-men for items on my lists.
Another middle-man could be the Bento e-newletter.

Thanks for listening quietly.

Sincerely,

Florian Keller
Daily Bento User/Tester/Evaluator/Teacher

Apr

10

New Free Service: iChat Screen-Sharing!

Filed Under Bento Basics, Editorial | 8 Comments

I get many emails through our contact form at BentoUsers describing specific Bento project dreams… mostly ones where people have trouble finding existing templates for. Some new Bento users also have a problem getting started with the program. I found out that it’s much easier and faster to do personal one-on-one iChat sessions with screen-sharing to tackle their problems rather than going back and forth with emails.
That way I helped several people in recent months to get a good initial grasp of Bento and/or their projects.

So today I would publicly like to offer my bilingual iChat services (English or German). If you’re stuck with Bento or any project, just leave a comment here and I’ll email you to set up an online meeting.