Ability to hide individual tabs in a tab control

Idea created by scottworld on Jun 2, 2017

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We would really love the ability to conditionally hide individual tabs in a tab control.

Currently, we can only hide the ENTIRE TAB CONTROL itself, but we can't hide individual tabs.

We realize that there are several different "workarounds" to this problem. One popular workaround is to use button bars + sliding panels + blank sliding panels + Go To Object script steps. But all of the workarounds are laborious, very fragile, and they can't even be made to look cosmetically perfect (like tab controls actually look).

Tab controls is a great example of one of those AMAZING FileMaker features that is introduced into the product... but then is left to languish in the dark because it is never evolved in future versions of the product, and is never fully updated to take advantage of any new features in the product line.

It would really be great for us and our clients if we could hide individual tabs.

Benjamin Fehr Jun 2, 2017 12:17 PM

There are some similarities in functionality between Tab Control AND Slide Control and I see them as part of the same "family" structurally wise. Would you mind to edit and enhance your request?

… hide individual tabs (panels) in Tab Control AND Slide Control

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Johan Hedman Jun 3, 2017 8:44 AM

I rather have button bars to navigate in between Slides. With that it is so much easier to handle/hide buttons

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scottworld @ Johan Hedman on Jun 3, 2017 8:52 AM

No. It is not easier at all. With that approach, you have to constantly manage the active/inactive button states and you have to constantly manage which slide panel is in the foreground through script triggers... and you have to constantly run scripts for those things upon record creation, switching to a new record, changing data in the record which might cause a button to disappear but still leave the wrong tab panel in the foreground, etc. etc. etc. erc. It is a complete nightmare, and you have to spend most of your development time trying to simply manage this process.

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Malcolm @ scottworld on Jun 3, 2017 10:17 AM

I've had a button bar/sliding panel combination in one solution for almost a year. There are a few advantages of this technique. Button bars have more styling options. Button bars allow you to attach scripts to the button, in addition to all of the script triggers that can be attached to the framework. And they have hide conditions, which allows to to present different buttons depending on data.

Recently we had to implement buttons which were "disabled", depending on the state of the data. Unfortunately the default panel was one of the buttons which could be disabled. Since then, I've just been jumping through all the hoops that Scott described above. There's a lot to get right and we'll have to maintain and extend the code in future.

Having a tab panel that could be hidden would reduce the need for some of that coding effort because the tabs are linked to the panels. Of course, we also want tabs to have better styling options and we want to be able to swap out the implicit "go to panel" switch attached to the tab with other scripts.

Malcolm

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Johan Hedman @ scottworld on Jun 4, 2017 11:08 PM

coming just from dotFMP where we just had a discussion about this, many experienced developer have chosen to go towards using button bars and slide control instead of tabs. I see your point scottworld , but there are also so many positive things about using it

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5 Comments

Benjamin Fehr Jun 2, 2017 12:17 PM
There are some similarities in functionality between Tab Control AND Slide Control and I see them as part of the same "family" structurally wise. Would you mind to edit and enhance your request?
… hide individual tabs (panels) in Tab Control AND Slide Control
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Johan Hedman Jun 3, 2017 8:44 AM
I rather have button bars to navigate in between Slides. With that it is so much easier to handle/hide buttons
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scottworld @ Johan Hedman on Jun 3, 2017 8:52 AM
No. It is not easier at all. With that approach, you have to constantly manage the active/inactive button states and you have to constantly manage which slide panel is in the foreground through script triggers... and you have to constantly run scripts for those things upon record creation, switching to a new record, changing data in the record which might cause a button to disappear but still leave the wrong tab panel in the foreground, etc. etc. etc. erc. It is a complete nightmare, and you have to spend most of your development time trying to simply manage this process.
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Malcolm @ scottworld on Jun 3, 2017 10:17 AM
I've had a button bar/sliding panel combination in one solution for almost a year. There are a few advantages of this technique. Button bars have more styling options. Button bars allow you to attach scripts to the button, in addition to all of the script triggers that can be attached to the framework. And they have hide conditions, which allows to to present different buttons depending on data.

Recently we had to implement buttons which were "disabled", depending on the state of the data. Unfortunately the default panel was one of the buttons which could be disabled. Since then, I've just been jumping through all the hoops that Scott described above. There's a lot to get right and we'll have to maintain and extend the code in future.

Having a tab panel that could be hidden would reduce the need for some of that coding effort because the tabs are linked to the panels. Of course, we also want tabs to have better styling options and we want to be able to swap out the implicit "go to panel" switch attached to the tab with other scripts.

Malcolm
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Johan Hedman @ scottworld on Jun 4, 2017 11:08 PM
coming just from dotFMP where we just had a discussion about this, many experienced developer have chosen to go towards using button bars and slide control instead of tabs. I see your point scottworld , but there are also so many positive things about using it
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Ability to hide individual tabs in a tab control

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