Overlay windows for FileMaker
For MBS FileMaker Plugin 14.1 we have new Overlay functions for you. These allow you to create windows without the usual system border and provide the whole content as a picture. This can include transparent areas, so you can make round windows if you like. You may receive mouse clicks with a script trigger as well as mouse moving in and out of the overlay. That's a great functionality and you may use it for various usages:Splash Screen
When your solution opens, you could show a nice graphic as splash screen from the start script. While your solution does some work like opening more databases, you can keep the window showing. When the start script finishes its work, you can close it.
Custom Navigation
You can have custom buttons outside or over your windows to provide actions for users. That may be a navigation bar, where you use the mouse trigger to perform actions and provide shortcuts to launch scripts.
Tutorials
If you provide databases and you have a tutorial built-in, you may use the overlays to draw circles around the buttons the user should click next. Or show help texts in the user interface to guide the user through the tutorial.
Progress Indicator
While a longer script is running, you may use our ProgressDialog functions. Or if you like something fancier, why not use an overlay to show nice graphics instead? You could have a designed progress bar indicator. Have your designer provide a set of images for the various stages and show them like a slide show while progress is made.
Media Player Controls
Overlays are a great way to show controls for play or pause over a window instead of using the existing controls. You can have the overlay sit there and wait. It can be completely invisible and only react if the mouse moves over it to show its graphics. In general the overlay can have transparency, so it can be only 50% visible when mouse is over, so the user still sees the video behind.
Context Help or Details
When mouse moves over an area on screen, you could decide to show an overlay with some content. You may have an invisible overlay there waiting for mouse to come and change the image to show some defaults or help information.
Draw guiding lines
We can use overlays to provide lines on screen to help with alignments. Or you draw a ruler on screen to measure the size of a picture.
Please try the new plugin as it becomes available and play with the example database. See 14.1pr4 here.