Karen - Field type “COMBO” is the field type of the stock Skuid template field. The template field provides an “edit” option using either the default popup or a custom popup. Dave is using all stock features here, nothing custom from what I can tell.
Dave - In looking in to this one, it looks like skuid is forcing the context of the popup to edit mode so all components on the popup will be built in edit mode regardless of their configured value (unfortunate in your case). Also unfortunately, Skuid doesn’t provide the ability to use a custom renderer on a template field (there’s a post somewhere asking for this but I can’t find it right now). In short, there’s no declarative way to accomplish what you are after, however you do have three options:
1) Add a TFG popup controller to the custom popup and use the OnOpen snippet option. In the snippet, you’ll want to look for your field editor (give it a unique id) and change it’s mode to read. You can use the article at https://community.skuid.com/t/edit-mode-button for guidance on how to accomplish.
2) Use a standard field (any field will do) and write a custom renderer that takes care of displaying a popup, etc. You would use the create createPopupFromPopupXML api to accomplish this.
3) Submit an new idea to Skuid asking them for support of this use case 
Hope this helps!
