Hi David,

As another poster said ... It's annoying

1. I don't run programs with the status area open in general.  The 
only time I wanted it open would be for a continue/cancel button. 
With the side bar it was front and center.  Now it it hidden away on 
an expanse.  Even if it is another colour, it is small and not front 
and center. If I use it that way, people hate it.

For people who do want to run that way and have a whole lot of things 
visible,I imagine it is a whole different kick. Also, I confess to 
not knowing that it could be customized. The big thing would be could 
that customization be scripted?

2. I run my programs in "adjust window size to fit" mode, not 
maximized.  On Windows this does not make much difference unless you 
also scale down the FileMaker window, but on Mac it leaves easy 
access to what is behind the open program on the desktop.  This leads 
to two more annoyances:

a.) When I flip the status area open, the layout does not drop down 
properly and I have to manually pull the window down larger to see 
the full layout.

b.) I have some layouts that are page width.  When I drop open the 
status area with these layouts, only part of the tool bar will show. 
So not only do I have to pull down the layout to make the window 
larger, but I have to pull it sideways too.

Do this 100 times on a heavy development day and you are just ticked.

3. It is jarring and out of character with the rest of the program.

4. In a good design context, it should occupy "spare" screen real 
estate. With current monitors, that real estate is located at the 
side of the screen, not at the top or bottom. This offends me, 
especially as that is the way it used to be.

So there is nothing terminally wrong with it, but I don't find a 
whole lot right with it either ... OR ... I am looking for it to be 
less than what it is and find the features out of context and in the 
way for what I am doing.

Justy my $.02 CDN

Dave


>Hi all,
>
>I'm confused.  Perhaps someone could enlighten me...
>
>Just about every modern Mac and Windows program on earth has a 
>status bar/toolbar/whatever you want to call it, at the top of every 
>window.  With Mac apps (including FileMaker) you have the option to 
>turn it off, using the little bean in the top right corner.
>
>I can appreciate the comments about the screen space lost due to the 
>wider strip and the longer screen dimension - but that's not an 
>issue for anyone in any other Mac app, right?  If a toolbar across 
>the top is good enough for every other Mac app on earth, why is it 
>such a problem for FileMaker to have it? 
>
>And I can appreciate that the change creates an adjustment we have 
>to make, but we've all made adjustments, usually without complaint, 
>every time *any* software company updates their user interface (or 
>anything aspect really) significantly.  The change from OS9 to OSX 
>were all pretty welcome and what we have now is light years ahead of 
>Mac OS 9.  No one ever complained about how OSX had toolbars across 
>the top of every window, where OS9 didn't, right?  If anything, the 
>only complaint I have is that it took FileMaker 8 years to catch up 
>with this part of the OS!!
>
>So yeah... I'm not trying to be a smartarse, but I really want to 
>understand why this is such an issue, given the points I've made 
>above.  Enlighten me?
>
>David Thorp
-- 
David A. McQueen
LICHEN Software
705-720-9022
www.lichen-software.com
Little Helper 2.0 Now Released