A Look at the Interface for Tap Forms 5

In this video, we’re going to take a look at the interface for Tap Forms 5 on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s open up tap Forms 5. I have my Applications folder in the Dock here, so I click on it and then I swipe up until I find Tap Forms 5. I select it, it opens up.

Now, if you do not have a database document open, this is where all of your different databases or your different forms are stored, in a database document. If you do not have a database document open, you’ll get this window here where you can open up a database document. This window here is also where you can delete them, share them as well as get information on them. I have a separate video on that. To open up a database document, all you have to do is just double click on it. So we’re going to go with my forms here. I click on it and now it opens up.

So what am I looking at here? Well, over on the left, we have all of our different forms. These are all the different tables. If you’re familiar with database terminology, a table is basically where all of your records are. Well in Tap Forms 5 they’re called forms. So all of these different forms here are tables. They can be completely separate from each other. Or what you can do is you can relate them together. You can create relational forms or relational databases with Tap Forms 5. So this is where I can find all of my different forms.

To the right of that, depending on which form you have selected, I have my albums here selected. So this is a database of all of my albums that I have, to the right of that we can see all the individual records. This is in a list format. We can see I have 73 records. To create a new record, I just click on the plus. If I want to modify the look of this, I can go over to this icon here and I can change the look of it or go to a specific section. I talk a little bit more about this in another lesson as well. Again, basically, we’re just kind of looking at the interface.

Here now to the right of all of our records here, we have our individual record that we have selected. So right now I have, phil Collins. Hello, I Must Be Going album selected. By default, there’s going to be one layout called Default Layout. So when I select any one of these, let’s go to Face Value here, when I select this, it shows me all of my data for that record. So I can see the album, the year, the artist, the rating. I can see the album cover.

We can create more layouts than the Default Layout, you’re going to see I have here covers and detail. I’ll talk about this in another lesson as well, but we can create more layouts as well. So if I just want to view all the covers, I click on covers, and now I can view my records by cover here. To go back to our Default Layout, we click on Default Layout, and we’re back. We have our forms on the left, our databases, our tables. We have the individual records. Whatever we have selected and then whatever record we have selected, we can see the detail of it in our layout.

Let’s take a look at our tool bar. You’re going to see, we have Forms List. If we want to hide this list where we have our forms, maybe I just want to work on my Albums here, all I have to do is just click on this and hides it. So now I’m just looking at my Albums. To show the Forms List again, I click on it and it shows it. To lock a table or a form, I click on this and it’ll lock it. We have different views here. I have separate videos on these different views. But what we’re able to do is view our records in a calendar format or in a map format, or even a picture grid format.

If we keep going over to the right, you’re going to see, we have form. When I click on form, what I’m able to do is edit my form. This opens up the inspector for the form. So I’m looking at my Albums here. I want to change the name of the form, or maybe I want to change the icon. To do that, we go back over to our inspector, click on it, and now we can see we have all of the different options for this form. I can see what the fields are. If there are any scripts attached to it, the name of it, and then I can also set what’s going to show in my column lists, which is where all of my records are. You want to add a new field, you click on fields and now I can go and add a new field.

Much like form, we also have a layout inspector. When I click on this, it closes the form, and now I’m looking at my layout inspector. Now, right now just says No Layout Selected that’s because I have my Default Layout selected. We can not modify the Default Layout, but watch what happens when I go over to my Covers, this is a layout that I created. I select it, and now I have an inspector for that. I can set what fields are going to be shown in that layout. I can layer them. I can format them. To close the inspector, we just click on it again, and it closes it.

To the right of that. We have our filter and search. Search is pretty simple. I just clicking here and I search, but also what I am able to do is filter. I click on this and from here I can filter them, basically add different rules to my search. If you want to go back to your Database Documents, where he can see all of your different Database Documents, all you have to do is just go up under Window here, and then you can go over to your Database Documents and open that back up and select another Database Document.

We can open up multiple database documents at the same time. The interface for both of those documents, Database Documents is going to be about the same.

So that’s a look at our Tap Forms 5 interface on the Mac. As you can see, it’s pretty simple. We have all of our forms over to the left. When we select a form who can see all of the records for that form in a list. And then when we select one of those records who can see the detail of that in our default layer. When we go to our toolbar, we can hide the forms list. We can lock it. We can also switch to a different view. And then we have our form inspector, which allows us to edit our form, including our fields. And then we have our layout inspector, which allows us to create new layouts and edit our existing layouts. And then to the far right in the toolbar, we have our search and filter.

So that’s a look at the Tap Forms 5 interface on the Mac.