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.

What about your New Year’s resolutions: stop smoking, going to the gym, taking a yoga course to get more relaxed? Are they still on track?

Finding motivation to keep healthy habits is often hard. In my opinion, Bento can help you in an easy way: create a simple Check Box  field in you iCal Events Library! And check it in Bento when you’re done with your task. It helps me personally a lot.

My tips for a sports calendar

• Create a calendar in iCal called “sports.” Than create a simple Smart Collection for the “sports” calendar in Bento and add a check box called “task completed.” Move it into the first column in Table View.
• Create dates when you want to go to the gym. If you’d like to add notes use the notes field or an Encrypted field, then the notes are not displayed in iCal (Bento 3).
• Let iCal remind you one day in advance so you can get your gym bag ready the night before.
• When you come home from the gym, check the check box in Bento. I recommend using Split View, then you can see your progress over the last couple of weeks. Feel satisfied and proud!
• This also fits, for example, when you maybe paid for 20 massages or something else: you know your dates, when you were there, and when the package will end.
• And if you are a young man living on your own, it maybe helps with the housekeeping

Why encrypted notes in a calendar?

My gym, for example, is health-oriented. It’s not so much for body-builders, but to motivate people who sit in the office all day to get some exercise. Or to help people with back pain. So there’s a doctor, a physiotherapist, and special instructors in my gym. That’s why you might want to keep your notes private.
They won’t appear in iCal, so your colleagues at work can’t see them when they look over your shoulder, and you can look at them at home in Bento for Mac or iPhone. This is the advantage of the iCal integration in Bento: you can add a personal touch & convenience to your calendar!

I’m calling out to any other user, starting with my friends Dan and Barb, you know yourselves, how wonderful you are! I do appreciate the templates users have contributed. Keep them coming! But now I’m also looking for (regular?!) contributors. It could be a weekly column, the occasional tip or trick, special usage ideas, workarounds… pretty much anything. Even just someone who scours through the posts and leaves some comments on a regular basis. Point out the errors of my ways, make suggestions!

I hope I gave you some starting thoughts how to help out. Come out of the woodworks, get famous and help change the (Bento) world!

Thanks for listening…

Yours Truly, Lonesome Florian.

I am the editor of a magazine, Whispering Gallery, for the Dorothy Dunnett literary society (http://ddra.org/) This 40 page or more magazine comes out quarterly and items for inclusion can be sourced or submitted throughout the year by email or by post. I use Bento as a way of keeping track of all these actual submissions, pictures and ideas for articles. I also need to track what needs to be done to get an item ready for the magazine, permissions to be sought, proof-reading etc. Within a few days of downloading Bento I created the basic form and I have added to it and refined it as I have become more aware of what can be done with the program and of new requirements for the magazine.

I have created a library for the main task of tracking these items, integrating it with iCal, Address Book, and a WG Notes Library. A file list shows the location of each submission or image on the computer and the email message list allows me to link in directly to all relevant mail without the necessity of copying the message across to another file.

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Within the main library I have used several forms to gather together information. The Details form contains most of the information about an article: its content, any illustrations, contact details, emails, where the data is stored etc. Using a related Notes field rather than a standard text field lets me to sort and search the data. It also removes the necessity of duplicating the same information between records, as I can relate a single note to multiple records in a library. If items have been sent to me through the post then I can link into where I will find them and create an iCal task to scan or type it up. I also record in which issue of the magazine an article will appear, and what section it will fit into.

In addition I have created a Media form to include any illustrations and their location on my hard drive. This allows me to quickly see that my choice of images is balanced and prevents me from forgetting when and where I have stored images, and what they are about.

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I can then quickly scan the Overview form to quickly see what still needs to be done to get an item ready for publication.

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I have created some smart collections based on specific issues of the magazine, tasks to be done, so that I can keep track of outstanding jobs and priorities. This has proved a very useful feature to create. Again it allows me to quickly see how many articles I have for particular issues and where I have gaps in coverage etc.

I then became aware that I needed to track the progress of the production of each issue of the magazine, so I created a Project overview mainly consisting of a Choice field and a number of Checkbox fields which relate to specific tasks in getting it ready for publication. A related records field allows me to note the time spent on producing a particular issue.

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This is a continually evolving database. I have gradually replaced general text fields with related records fields as this allows me to track more quickly and efficiently information about each article and particular people involved. I feel that I am now using Bento’s ability to be a relational database much more fully, instead of using it as an enhanced spreadsheet which included several text fields for different types of information. The expanded ability of Bento 2 to directly link to Apple Mail messages is incredibly useful. The printing shortcomings or lack of multi-user use does not affect me as I am using it purely as a personal database.

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Although Dennis’ idea may not seem to be very complex it is an excellent example of the sort of thing that Bento can be used for. By his own admission, Dennis is of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy and likes to have his programs do just what he wants them to do and nothing else.

Before getting into teaching art Dennis was a newspaper police reporter and then a forensic photographer (crime scenes, fatal accidents, autopsies, fingerprints … CSI kind of stuff before DNA was being sought). He taught art as well as computers mostly at the middle school level before retiring after 25 years in 2005. Obviously his interest in computers and photography continues and he competes regularly in monthly photo competitions at the Twin Cities Camera Club.

Dennis’ site can be found at http://web.mac.com/mrgee59/Site/Main.html.

• Knowing when the does are ready to kid
• Knowing when to give vaccinations
• Keeping performance records of the kids as they grow so that they know if they are feeding them too much or too little
• Tracking prices
• Tracking farm expenses

There are herd keeping programs available, but most of them are either for Microsoft Windows, are too expensive or are just not really what they needed. They have tried keeping records in a spreadsheet which works but is not ideal and since Wendy got a new iMac for Christmas which came with Leopard installed and a preview of Bento she decided to give it a spin and soon knew that she had found what she needed.

The current plan is to use Bento in combination with Numbers (to keep track of milking production for the dairy goats) but the majority of their records will be kept in Bento.

The main Herd Book form looks like this:

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Here they can see all the pertinent information about each animal including the date of birth, registration number, breed, tattoo number, eartag number (if applicable), who she/he was bought from, parents, etc.

They have another form based on a Smart Collection:

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This form shows the animals in their kid crop.

On thing that Wendy wants to do on this form is to be able to take the date of birth and have a list of days at which I need to weigh the kids and input those weights and Bento which will then calculate weight gain for me.

The Library also contains a set of fields ready to store the information pertaining to the animal when it is either sold or processed.

Eventually she wants to be able to add pedigree search information and, although she has not figured out exactly how she want to be able to do that, she wants to be able to list on each doe’s page her kids from what years.

Wendy says that this is just the beginning of the kind of information she can see her keeping for their business. They have some good genetics in both their dairy and meat goats and hope to be able to sell some breeding stock as well as meat.

Being able to print invoices is also on the wish-list.

As a final word, Wendy says that, “for the price, I’m finding Bento to be a great, useful product.”