BizzyBee’s BizzyThoughts

Hidden rows, hidden borders

The problem

Below you see a little table. It has some rows, some colors, some borders, the usual. As table as a table can be.

One remark: the last row has a hide-when formula on the cells, so when certain conditions are met, the row is hidden and this is how it looks like then:

The hide-when formula not only hides the cells, but also the top border of them, resulting in a table with an open end. Obviously, that’s not what we wanted here!

A good solution: table borders to the rescue

Tables have also table borders (apart from cell borders). If we hide the top border for the hidden cells and add the bottom border for the table, it looks like this in designer:

Theoretically, this is a good solution, but when the row is shown, you’ll notice an ugly extra space of 1 pixel (watch close enough):

The ghost-white pixels even follow the table when the row is hidden:

A better solution: adding another row

I added a row between the shown part and the part that can be hidden.

This row is special for 2 reasons:

1. Font-size is only 2pt to keep the row height small, but nevertheless selectable in Designer.
2. The row has a hide-when formula that is exactly the opposite of the hide-when formula of the row below.

Here’s the proof. In “shown” modus it looks like this:

In “hidden” modus it’s also ok now (almost pixel-perfect, there’s one pixel missing in the right corner for the real perfectionists)

When the row-to-hide has the same color as the other rows

… then it’s a bit easier: add an extra row, font-size 2pt below the hide-when row. The border we need is now at the bottom.

The little downside is a row a bit higher than the rest of the rows.

Demo

I added my little demo tables as a downloadable borderdemo database, because it’s often clearer to see things work than to read about it. Take a look at form test in Designer and in the client.

Alternatives?

Maybe I overcomplicated things? Maybe I overlooked the obvious? Maybe I’m simply not using Designer as intended? Feel free to comment and add your own way of dealing with this Notesquirk!

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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2 Responses to “Hidden rows, hidden borders”

1. Rajender says:
   November 20th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

   Hi,

2. Mike Amberg says:
   December 6th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

   That’s a nice work-around, I am sure I will use it.
   I have been using a single pixel row below the last row that never disappears to get around this issue.The row is colored the same as your header row.

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