Animated Gifs and Filemaker 6 pro
I would like to make a "Please Wait..." animated gif for a layout, in a currant project of mine.
I've made the gif and it works, however when i load the image to filemaker it does not work.
I have also read on a few help sites that filemaker does not support animated gifs... yet.
My question is, does anyone know away to get around this limitation?
Thank you,
criss
I've made the gif and it works, however when i load the image to filemaker it does not work.
I have also read on a few help sites that filemaker does not support animated gifs... yet.
My question is, does anyone know away to get around this limitation?
Thank you,
criss
ASKER
Has anyone ever done anything along this line?
I am open to suggestions for other ways to show the user that the system is busy.
I would really like an alternative to static text, Im sure my users will also.
Whatever I end up doing it needs to run for at least a minute.
any help would be great.
I am open to suggestions for other ways to show the user that the system is busy.
I would really like an alternative to static text, Im sure my users will also.
Whatever I end up doing it needs to run for at least a minute.
any help would be great.
FileMaker has its own animated "busy" mouse cursor. You may want to educate your users to look for that.
What is the specific task that needs to run for a long time? Is it a looping script? A single long sort? This will affect what options you have available. If what you're doing involves a loop in a script, you have way more options. You can always launch some external program to display your graphic, though that's not the greatest solution. If you're on a Mac, you can do this easily with AppleScript. If you're on Windows, you can use an automation tool such as AutoIt to do similar things.
What is the specific task that needs to run for a long time? Is it a looping script? A single long sort? This will affect what options you have available. If what you're doing involves a loop in a script, you have way more options. You can always launch some external program to display your graphic, though that's not the greatest solution. If you're on a Mac, you can do this easily with AppleScript. If you're on Windows, you can use an automation tool such as AutoIt to do similar things.
ASKER
Educating my user is not an option..
The program i am creating is soo fisher priced, there is no more then 2 buttons per layout. and even at that, they seem to have a hard time figuring it out.
The built in animated curser has been used by the same users before and they failed miserably. and managed to break the system. (dont ask me how but they did)
The please wait layout will be used for when the PLC dumps its data, then when filemaker retrieves it.
My DB goes to the please wait layout for one minute to give the system ample time to dump and retrieve the data.
The problems is that I have a feeling that when the system goes into the wait and they get impatient,
that they will attempt to exit, press buttons or do something dumb, thinking that the system stalled.
An animated gif or something along those lines would hopefully detour them from taking matters into there own hands.
All the systems will be run on Windows also.
The program i am creating is soo fisher priced, there is no more then 2 buttons per layout. and even at that, they seem to have a hard time figuring it out.
The built in animated curser has been used by the same users before and they failed miserably. and managed to break the system. (dont ask me how but they did)
The please wait layout will be used for when the PLC dumps its data, then when filemaker retrieves it.
My DB goes to the please wait layout for one minute to give the system ample time to dump and retrieve the data.
The problems is that I have a feeling that when the system goes into the wait and they get impatient,
that they will attempt to exit, press buttons or do something dumb, thinking that the system stalled.
An animated gif or something along those lines would hopefully detour them from taking matters into there own hands.
All the systems will be run on Windows also.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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ASKER
Its sounding like instead of making my users wait one minute, im going to have to make them wait up to 45min -_-
But yes my filemaker is idle during the PLC download, and because the PLC is slower then we thought we will have to wait even longer..
So its looking like the AutoIt will be perfect. :)
Thank you for your help.
But yes my filemaker is idle during the PLC download, and because the PLC is slower then we thought we will have to wait even longer..
So its looking like the AutoIt will be perfect. :)
Thank you for your help.
Yikes! 45 minutes is quite a long time... I can easily see someone forgetting what they were doing during such a long wait. Glad I was able to help.
I have found AutoIt makes a great companion to FileMaker. If you haven't already, you should download the package. It's free, and very easy to use.
http://www.hiddensoft.com
You can create AutoIt scripts that work around some of FileMaker's limitations, and if you install the AutoIt application on all your workstations, you can actually use FileMaker to build a custom .au3 file and execute it, allowing you to do all sorts of interesting things.
I have found AutoIt makes a great companion to FileMaker. If you haven't already, you should download the package. It's free, and very easy to use.
http://www.hiddensoft.com
You can create AutoIt scripts that work around some of FileMaker's limitations, and if you install the AutoIt application on all your workstations, you can actually use FileMaker to build a custom .au3 file and execute it, allowing you to do all sorts of interesting things.
If you're looking for something sort of like a progress bar to run while a long script is running, you can use a repeating container field to simulate the effect of an animated GIF. Create a global container field with one repetition for each frame of the animation, a global number field, and a calculated field that uses the GetRepetition function to display the repetition based on the value of the number field. In the script that's running, occasionally increment the value of the counter by 1, and reset it back to 1 if it exceeds the maximum frames.
If you want something to display during a long import, export, or sort, this won't work. You can embed an animation file such as an AVI or QuickTime file, but it's going to have controls on it and won't look very satisfactory.