JohnAustin Lamprecht is a Lead Application Developer based in Texas.
4 thoughts on “Popover and Web Viewer Rendering”
Martin
Hi – Still facing this problem on Windows machines – All works fine on Mac OS X but on Windows the popover is hidden under the web viewer – Any suggestion.
This seems to be a lingering issue on the Windows side as you discovered. One approach is to set the Web Viewer up with a visibility calculation (“Hide object when” under the Data tab of the Inspector) that will hide the Web Viewer when your popover is open. For example, you could have a button that shows your popover and sets a global variable $$a = 1. The Web Viewer would have a calculation to hide itself when $$a = 1. Then, when you close your popover, empty $$a ($$a = “”).
If you require both the Web Viewer and the Popover to be visible simultaneously, you will have to position the popover in a location away from the Web Viewer.
Hopefully, FileMaker releases a future update to remedy this.
Absolutely! Before I do so, I would like to preface that this is an older technique now. With the advent of Card Windows, this has become a simpler process. If you have FileMaker 17, you can create a new layout for the data you want to see and have a new window open above the Web Viewer. I tend to use Card Windows more than popovers now due to the ability to have many different areas of my solution use one single layout rather than many popovers.
If you are interested in that technique, the FileMaker Custom Academy has a great tutorial found here.
Now, the popover method with a global variable I describe has a few moving parts. This is a quick solution:
Firstly, you will want to click on your Web Viewer, open up the Inspector, and head to the Data (rightmost) tab. Under this tab, you will find a section that says “Hide object when”. This section allows you to enter a calculation that will hide the object (Web Viewer) when it evaluates as true. In this area we will want to enter the following:
$$hideWebViewer = 1
This means that our Web Viewer will be hidden when our global variable, $$hideWebViewer, equals 1.
Next, we want to create a new button that will open our popover. Note that this is just one of the methods. I prefer this one as it allows me more granular control rather than using the popover button itself. We will create a quick script for our button with the following:
Set variable $$hideWebViewer to 1
Go to Object “Popover Name”
Refresh Window
This script will set our global variable, $$hideWebViewer, to 1 in order to hide our Web Viewer. It will then take the user to the Popover that is named “Popover Name” and will refresh the window to have our visibility calculation above trigger.
Now, we need to make our Web Viewer show again if we exit our popover. We need to add a script trigger to fire on our popover. Note that the popover is our display area. The button will not have any script trigger.
Right-click on your popover and select “Set Script Triggers…”. In our dialog window, scroll down and select “On Object Exit”. We want to clear our global variable, $$hideWebViewer, each time we close our popover so we can view the Web Viewer again. We will need to add this quick script to our trigger:
Set variable $$hideWebViewer to “”
Refresh Window
That should do it! You can enter Browse mode and try it out.
Hi – Still facing this problem on Windows machines – All works fine on Mac OS X but on Windows the popover is hidden under the web viewer – Any suggestion.
Hi Martin,
This seems to be a lingering issue on the Windows side as you discovered. One approach is to set the Web Viewer up with a visibility calculation (“Hide object when” under the Data tab of the Inspector) that will hide the Web Viewer when your popover is open. For example, you could have a button that shows your popover and sets a global variable $$a = 1. The Web Viewer would have a calculation to hide itself when $$a = 1. Then, when you close your popover, empty $$a ($$a = “”).
If you require both the Web Viewer and the Popover to be visible simultaneously, you will have to position the popover in a location away from the Web Viewer.
Hopefully, FileMaker releases a future update to remedy this.
Hello JohnAustin. Could you please explain how to go about having a popover button set a global variable?
I’m using Windows 10 and am trying to get the popover window to appear over a webviewer.
Thanks!
Hi David,
Absolutely! Before I do so, I would like to preface that this is an older technique now. With the advent of Card Windows, this has become a simpler process. If you have FileMaker 17, you can create a new layout for the data you want to see and have a new window open above the Web Viewer. I tend to use Card Windows more than popovers now due to the ability to have many different areas of my solution use one single layout rather than many popovers.
If you are interested in that technique, the FileMaker Custom Academy has a great tutorial found here.
Now, the popover method with a global variable I describe has a few moving parts. This is a quick solution:
Firstly, you will want to click on your Web Viewer, open up the Inspector, and head to the Data (rightmost) tab. Under this tab, you will find a section that says “Hide object when”. This section allows you to enter a calculation that will hide the object (Web Viewer) when it evaluates as true. In this area we will want to enter the following:
$$hideWebViewer = 1
This means that our Web Viewer will be hidden when our global variable, $$hideWebViewer, equals 1.
Next, we want to create a new button that will open our popover. Note that this is just one of the methods. I prefer this one as it allows me more granular control rather than using the popover button itself. We will create a quick script for our button with the following:
Set variable $$hideWebViewer to 1
Go to Object “Popover Name”
Refresh Window
This script will set our global variable, $$hideWebViewer, to 1 in order to hide our Web Viewer. It will then take the user to the Popover that is named “Popover Name” and will refresh the window to have our visibility calculation above trigger.
Now, we need to make our Web Viewer show again if we exit our popover. We need to add a script trigger to fire on our popover. Note that the popover is our display area. The button will not have any script trigger.
Right-click on your popover and select “Set Script Triggers…”. In our dialog window, scroll down and select “On Object Exit”. We want to clear our global variable, $$hideWebViewer, each time we close our popover so we can view the Web Viewer again. We will need to add this quick script to our trigger:
Set variable $$hideWebViewer to “”
Refresh Window
That should do it! You can enter Browse mode and try it out.