Use Button Bars. Single-segment Button Bars are a superset of Buttons
It’s 2024, and Button Bars have been around since FileMaker 14 (2015). There’s no excuse for clinging to outdated, inefficient tools that slow down your development process. The Button Tool is a relic. A serious developer should consider using Button Bars exclusively. Here’s why.
1. A Smaller Toolset Is a Better Toolset
Think of a carpenter’s toolbox—the best carpenters don’t carry every tool under the sun. Instead, they master a small set of versatile, quality tools. The same goes for your FileMaker toolbox. Button Bars can do everything a Button Tool can do, plus a lot more. So why clutter your toolbox (and layouts) with outdated tools? By mastering the Button Bar, you’re reducing the complexity of your layouts and making yourself a more efficient developer.
Button Bars simplify your toolset and workflow. With one flexible tool that can handle multiple actions, you reduce clutter in your layouts and scripts, leading to faster, cleaner development.
2. Button Bars as a Layout Calculation Widget
The best feature of a Button Bar: It's a layout calculation widget. The text of the button can be a calculation, which opens up the world unto you. Multiple languges, case statements, and so much more.
Conditional visiblity of a segment? Check. Support for fonts, sizes and colors? Check. Convert between button and popover? Check. Control over active segment? Check.
3. Future-Proof Your Development
If you’re still using the Button Tool, you’re setting yourself up for wasting time later on. Button Bars are inherently future-proof. Need to add more actions? Just add another segment. Need to change the design or add conditions? It’s all built into the same Button Bar. You won’t have to rebuild your entire layout when your project grows in complexity.
The Button Tool, on the other hand, forces you into a corner. Adding new actions means adding more buttons, cluttering your layout and forcing you to constantly readjust. Button Bars give you the scalability and flexibility you need as your app evolves, without the extra work.
4. Themes and Styles
One of the biggest advantages of the Button Bar is how it works with FileMaker’s themes and styles. You can apply consistent themes across an entire Button Bar, or for each segment individually.
Using Apex Blue? (All your themes should be based on it) – Between the Button Tool and BB, only 5 styles match (16 don't). This means you'll need to manually sync styles between the two tools. What a waste. I made my theme lighter by deleting all of the Button styles, keeping only BB.
Are there downsides? Two clicks to delete two of the three segments when you want to make a single-segment BB. A few milliseconds now saves hours later.
Bottom Line: Be kind to your future self. Stop Using the Button Tool
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