Free text
Anyone figured a way to make this line up with a regular field?
Fields align vertically at their top. So a data field with label positioned above does not line up with any 'Free text' placed on the form. Well, the data field's label does, but not the data below. So far I have never found this to be what I want as I place most data fields with their label above, so any ajoining Free text is too high.
This can be solved by making the Free text 2 lines. The top line aligns with the data field's label and the bottom line with the its data. However, I never need 2 lines. I just want the lower line. Or more precisely, I want to be able to make Free text line up correctly with any adjascent data fields.
I have tried to add spaces on the first line so nothing is displayed except the lower line, but Ninox 'helpfully' strips out these spaces. No matter what spaces I use, regular, Opt (non-breaking), M Space, N-Space, thin space. Whatever. Anything that does not actually display any glyph is stripped out.
I have resorted to using · on the first line as that is the smallest glyph I can find, but I can still see it and would rather be able to make the Free text align with the data field's data line without any spurious character displayed.
Any suggestions?
11 replies
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I have found that by using a headline instead of the free text tool - and changing it's attribiutes font size/colour etc - is SOMETIMES more prefferable to using free text !
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I do use Headings, but not in that context. I'll see if I can achieve a better solution than with Free text.
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Formula fields can also be used for that and besides they are also interactive trough formula or even html text.
e.g.: html("Today it's <strong>" + today() + "</strong>")
Steven
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I have myself have used formula fields for this, however it just seems somewhat bizarre that what must be the raison d'etre of the 'Free text' field (i.e. to place text between data fields) does not allow you to align that text to those fields if they are in the default configuration with label above.
I'll just continue to use alternative methods to achieve alignment, but wondered if there was actually an official way this could be done. Seems not. Oh well, thanks.
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Ninox clearly have a fixed grid to drop the various controls into and have control over the size/position. This gridding, I guess is somewhat fixed for display purposes across different devices (iphone etc).. However I really think they could give some thought to maybe tidiying up the presentation.
To have a field and a free text label over it that it virtualy impossible to line up - seems very amateurish.
I mean why - not make the forms free form so you can position the items where you want or use a finer x-y grid for better alignment.
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Indeed, I have found the large borders around each field to be somewhat restrictive, but having said that, there is an element of good interface design in keeping such data entry areas apart as it helps the eye to be able to pick out the relevant info. On the whole, I don't mind the grid, but everything placed on it should line up, or be at least able to be lined up and currently with Free text, it is impossible to align that with a regular data field in default display mode.
I do think it would help if we could change the overall formatting of fields. Formula fields can be customised, why not regular data fields? Also I would really like to be able to format the label. To assist with the visual cues for where to type in new data etc and distinguishing between label and data, they really need to be styled noticably differently. Currently they're too similar and the interface suffers from this. Allow labels to be formatted as desired so we (developers of sorts) get to choose exactly how the user can distinguish between label and data.
One more interface annoyance is not being able to specify the width of table view columns. I know we can drag them to any width, but when you have e.g. several tables that show a different selection of records, but the same columns, I want to be able to set those columns to identical widths. Even when there is some variation in the actual columns I still need to be able to specify the widths for consistency when viewing those different tabs. Heck, any spreadsheet provides this facility.
But baby steps. Let's first have Free text fields that can actually be made to line up.
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Ninox is a web app. It can be formatted using CSS or JavaScript.
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Good point. I'll have to look into that further.
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I have discovered a simple fix. The Unicode character 'ZERO WIDTH SPACE' can be used on the first line of a Fixed Text box so its second line will align with the data line of an adjacent regular field and it is NOT stripped out by Ninox. The character is marked as NOT whitespace and so should not be stripped out, but the normal NON BREAKING SPACE (i.e. Opt. Space) is similarly marked as NOT whitespace yet Ninox incorrectly strips that - as it does all other versions of Space that I have tried. Except the one mentioned above.
Information about it can be found here:-
https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/200b/index.htm
and the character can be copied from the 'Browser Test Page'. Maybe it can be entered directly from the keyboard, but if it can, I've not figured how to do it.
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Now that is interesting - Will give this a try.
Entering it from the keyboard probably involves using a combination of all 10 fingers !!!
Thank you for the update :-)
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I was using it with a symbol on the second line and it was all lining up. However, when I tried with some regular text I couldn't seem to match the size and vertical spacing of the adjacent formula field. Seems Free Text uses different font size. Oh well.
Content aside
- 2 yrs agoLast active
- 11Replies
- 698Views