Have a play round, explore, learn how it works. You can download the demo file that accompanies this article below. We always try to build easy and user friendly demo files for our articles and this one is no different. I wanted the drawer to look and feel as native as possible, and leverage all the tools that FileMaker provides to give the user the most native experience. The menu was to work on both FileMaker Pro and in FileMaker Go. Recently I began development on a large client solution and decided to overhaul this technique and make it both easier to implement, and more usable and reliable. The technique while workable had some limitations - the plugin on FileMaker Go and WebDirect being one of them. That article went a little over the top by having the menu open/close simply on a mouse-over action through the use of a plugin and tooltips. A couple of years ago I wrote an article about how they can be built using sliding panels. We have covered these types of menus in the past.

After all - what we build is for people to use all day every day. If we can build controls that are easy to drop into a solution and use (even if they are complex underneath it all) then we should be doing this for the betterment of the user experience. We need to step our game up and become great designers and developers of applications, not just databases. It is my belief that as FileMaker developers we should no longer be settling for 'just good enough'. We have been restricted by controls that were limiting in their functionality, and often needing to resort to plugins or simply putting things in the too hard basket. Until recently this has been quite a challenge in FileMaker. That means building controls that both look and behave to the same standards as if they were developed in any other platform. With FileMaker edging closer every day to being a fully fledged mobile and desktop application platform, as developers we should be striving to build the best user experience possible. FileMaker is no longer simply a database development tool.

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