add a tab control

The tab control is a new FileMaker Pro 8 feature. In Investment Minder, rather than creating a separate layout for each of the four investment types we'll be tracking, each type can be placed on a different tab panel in the same layout.

In Layout mode, select the Tab Control tool in the tool panel. Click and drag in the Body part of the layout to create the tab control. (Don't worry about the tab control's size; we'll set its dimensions later.)

In the Tab Control Setup dialog box that appears, set Tab justification to Left and Appearance to Square.

To create the four tab panels, enter the following in the Tab Name text box and click Create after each one: Savings/Money Market, Stock/Mutual Fund, CD, and Savings Bond. Click OK to close the Tab Control Setup dialog box.

Select the tab control on the layout. Using the Size palette, set the width to 6.514" and height to 3.931".

Drag the tab control to the left edge of the layout, approximately half an inch below the Header part.

The gray color used for a new tab control is pretty drab. To set a new color for the tab panels, start by selecting the tab control. Doing so also selects the frontmost tab panel, as indicated by a dark box around the panel's name. To select the other panels, too, hold down as you double-click each of the panel names. Then choose the fill color shown below.

By default, the tab panel labels are plain on a Mac and boldface on a PC. To remove this boldface from a Windows database, select one of the tab panel labels and choose Format > Style > Bold (or Plain Text).