Roving Drop-Down Menu for Aligning E-R Objects

Issue report by Richard S. Russell

Product

FileMaker Pro

Version

13.0v9

Operating system version

Mac OS X 10.10.3

Description of the issue

I have an iMac with a 21.5" screen. Sitting immediately to its right is an Apple cinema display with a 30" screen, on which I do most of my database work. I'd send you a screenshot of the way the 2 monitors are arranged vis-a-vis each other, but you'll only let me attach one file to this bug report, and I've got a much more interesting one I'll be sending instead.

This situation (I hesitate to call it a "problem") doesn't occur when I'm using FMP on the iMac's native monitor, only when I'm working on the cinema display. I go to Manage Database, look at the E-R diagram, and click on any of the buttons at the bottom left that let me align TOs in the diagram (etc.). Oddity Type A: The "drop-down" menu opens up not immediately below the clicked-on button but way down at the bottom of the screen. Oddity Type B: If the Manage Database window itself is positioned sufficiently far down on the cinema display, the drop-down menu doesn't open up on that screen at all but rather over on the iMac's native screen.

Steps to reproduce the problem

Just do what I described above; works every time.

Expected result

A drop-down menu actually dropping down from the clicked-on object.

Actual result

See above.

Exact text of any error message(s) that appear

None

Configuration information

Contact me at RichardSRussell@tds.net and I'll send you a picture of the System Preferences window that shows how my displays are aligned. I'll bet that the fact that the lower edge of the cinema display is logically below the lower edge of the iMac's native display accounts for the Type B behavior mentioned above.

Workaround

Well, the menu is still THERE — tho I admit that it took me awhile to figure out exactly WHERE it had materialized the first time this happened — so I can still click on it, so I guess that might count as a workaround. Or maybe you just think of it as normal behavior. In any event, it doesn't prevent me from getting work done, just kind of a nuisance to have to move the cursor farther than necessary to do it.

Of course, the real solution would be to have "1-stop shopping" dedicated alignment buttons that just align the selected objects left, center, and right (etc.) with a single click, exactly the same way we can in Layout mode, but that would require your own designers to build that approach into the program's user interface itself. Maybe in Version 14, hope, hope?

Screenshot