

Here’s the killer one: on FileMaker Pro, we can open up a card window then use the “New Window” script steps to open up other non-card windows. One example would be if we have a card open in WebDirect, our main window in the background wouldn’t refresh until the card is closed, but that’s not the one that might break our solution. Why do I care about whether it’s an actual window or not? Even though they look very similar, the card window on WebDirect behaves differently than the card window on FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Go.

You may be thinking, “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…” Do card windows behave differently on WebDirect? Introducing the card window to WebDirect doesn’t change the fact that WebDirect runs in single-session. They don’t behave independently from the main window behind it, and they just make a pop-up object look and behave like a card. If you only look at the visual presentation of card windows on WebDirect, they appear to behave like a second window, but they are still not an actual window. Now, some of you may be thinking, don’t card windows on WebDirect contradict everything I just said? Yes and no. We can’t have two windows shown side by side, and they can’t be different sizes (they will be the size of our web browser window). When we close the new window, WebDirect will go back to the layout of our original window, but it’s really just one window. When we try to open a new window, WebDirect will treat it as a virtual window, meaning it will remember which layout our original window was on, then it will navigate to the layout with the new window. On WebDirect, technically, we can only display one window per page. Card windows on WebDirect (still) aren’t actual windows In this article, I want to discuss this issue and offer a workaround. However, with this change comes an issue that might break our solutions, as happened to a client. In FileMaker 19, by popular demand, card windows are supported on WebDirect. If we try to open a card window on WebDirect with FileMaker Server (FMS) 16, 17, and 18, it will open the layout in full window size, similar to how other windows styles behave on WebDirect. At the time, it was supported on FileMaker Pro (FMP) but not on WebDirect. Since then, many of us have incorporated it into our design.

The card window was first introduced in FileMaker 16. Card windows weren’t supported on WebDirect until FMS 19
