Filemaker Pro 13 Theme - Custom Theme Slow and problem on web direct (6 Comments)

Issue report by cjcj01

Product

FileMaker Pro

Version

13

Operating system version

Mac OS X

Description of the issue

Hi.

Following FM advice, I created my own custom theme, I think from Elightened in FM13. Over the last couple of months, I have judiciously and carefully crafted my own theme using the styles palette.

I have not cut and pasted objects from other themes into my new theme and pretty much all my objects reference a style created in the inspector palette. Some have minor modifications e.g. left / right alignment etc..

I have noticed two significant issues crop up:

1) Speed: When selecting a couple of objects in a row, working on a remotely hosted file on FMServer v13, Filemaker sits and thinks (spinning rainbow wheel on a Mac) in layout mode before allowing me to select another object or when trying to move an object across the layout. This is very frustrating as it takes ages to complete a simple layout task.

2) Some objects like portals disappear completely in WebDirect and I cannot get them to reappear unless I apply a completely new theme.

Work arounds:

- Removing and reapplying a default theme solves both of these problems, but obviously messes my layouts up after weeks and weeks of design work.

- Removing and reapplying a default theme and then customising it again works, but can take hours of re-working per layout.

So my question is:

1) How do we troubleshoot a theme when it displays this behaviour?

2) Is there a way to view this custom theme's css and try to work out where in the FM produced code the problem lies?

Thanks

Steps to reproduce the problem

I'm not clear where in the process of creating the custom theme and adding new styles, the problem has occurred, it may at a guess be either:

1) the size of the theme
or
2) where code has been messed up in applying a number of new styles to elements

Expected result

Clean, quick and easy layout management

Actual result

Slow, degraded performance
Invisible objects in web direct

Exact text of any error message(s) that appear

N/A

Configuration information

N/A

Workaround

Work arounds:

- Removing and reapplying a default theme solves both of these problems, but obviously messes my layouts up after weeks and weeks of design work.

- Removing and reapplying a default theme and then customising it again works, but can take hours of re-working per layout.