Discover the newest insights from Claris Engage 2024, where our team delved into AI, productivity enhancements, and developer strategies – watch the videos now!
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Discover the frustration of dealing with bugs that strike only at specific times and how logging can unveil the hidden causes behind these intermittent issues, offering crucial insights into debugging strategies for API interactions and server scripts.
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Spreadsheets really suck!... Long live spreadsheets, they're super useful! This simple contradiction, however, is likely a part of our technological lives for the rest of time. Unless AI removes the need for people to directly interact with data, spreadsheets are likely here to stay. And, for good reason. They're actually super useful!
As a software/database developer you need to realize that not everyone intuitively understands the solution you've created. In fact, the learning curve, may just be too painful - at least relative to what they may already know. Most users will tend to default to what they feel comfortable with. In the not so distant past, managing data was actually just words on paper. In fact, there's a word you're probably familiar with, it's 'list' - a very common development term. Yep, we still use lists.
Did you notice that? I referenced the fact that you're developing software and you can't really create software WITHOUT using lists. So, why not simply accommodate users' needs to simply default to using a spreadsheet. You just need a simple way to get the data in and out of your solution. Fortunately, this has all been solved by the tab and comma characters. If your users are using a lot of spreadsheets, then enjoy this video article and the associated technique file as we work with the MBS plug-in's super powerful Matrix.* suite of functions for some super functionality. Let's just Copy/Paste that spreadsheet data into a virtual spreadsheet and manipulate the data to fit our needs.
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Just because you can click the Create button to add a new container field doesn't mean you should do it. In fact, you might want to consider never adding a single container field to your main solution's tables. "Really?", you ask. Yes, because there are many advantages to segmenting a solution into multiple distinct parts. Most media, images, video and audio, is considered "heavy data" and that data comes with a big cost.
It may be that you're unfamiliar with how you can best structure your data within FileMaker. With images, you're often better served by handling that data in a very specific and dedicated way. This video, and the associated technique file, shows you how to approach the situation of handling images. It also addresses the display of those images. For the sake of images, you certainly need to see the image for the value it provides. However, you rarely need to transfer the full image which was capture or imported.
Watch this video in order to gain a full understanding of how it may be best to both store and view your images within a FileMaker solution.
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Providing users with some type of indication about where they are within the current layout is always a nice thing. People don't typically like that feeling of being lost and there are multiple ways to indicate where the user is. A simple header or label is always one of the easiest ways, but, what if you're using disconnected objects. In that case, the navigation itself can often act as the indicator.
The combination of either multiple buttons or a Button Bar, with a tab panel or slider is a very common thing within a more complex FileMaker layout. In this video, I walk through the process of adding some navigational indicators to an existing solution which is provided for free by Soliant Consulting. There's a lot to learn with regards to object management, some object naming and related trickery and making that disconnected situation between buttons and panels a connected one which will facilitate navigation that clearly indicates where you are within the layout.
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