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Blogs

Featured Entries

A Conversation About '2 Factor Authentication'

By Josh Ormond February 8, 2016

[ Edit: 3/16/2016 - With the help of some other people, we have been able to recover, or recreate some of the original images from original thread. ] Security is always a big topic when it involves data, or people, or possessions. Recently, over on the FileMaker Community, there was a very beneficial discussion regarding security. Unfortunately, that discussion was the victim of a necessary action...and was deleted. It was deleted, because the discussion was tied to a video that, as was det
- 1 comment
- 5,559 views
Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions

By Steven H. Blackwell April 7, 2016

Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions Should FileMaker Platform developers mount hacking attacks on their own solutions? At first glance, this may seem an odd question. But I believe that the answer is “Yes, we should.” Consider this. As developers we see our solutions from a totally different perspective than Threat Agents see them. Without practicing our own hacking skills, we can become blind to the vulnerabilities a Threat Agent can exploit to compromise the Confidentiality
- 1 comment
- 5,519 views

Phishing Attacks on FileMaker Platform Files

Phishing Attacks on FileMaker Platform Files Recently I made reference in several venues to an article that described a sophisticated and interesting exploit to steal iOS credentials from a stolen Apple iPhone. You can read the full article here: https://hackernoon.com/this-is-what-apple-should-tell-you-when-you-lose-your-iphone-8f07cf73cf82 The core element of the article was that when the owner discovered the theft that he activated “…all the ‘send me email when the phone retur

Steven H. Blackwell

August 8, 2016

FileMaker Pro Tip-n-Trick: Simple Column Sort

FileMaker® Pro Tip-n-Trick: Smart & Simple Column Sort By: RJ Carroll One of the most-requested features from FileMaker Pro developers is a one-click simple column sort. Trying to sort out how to sort can be a tricky business. The typical way to implement column sort from list-view is by using buttons above each column. First, the user calls a script by clicking on a field name in the column header. Usually, the script includes a number of hard-coded “Sort Records” steps. Then, the script

eXcelisys

August 4, 2016

Pill Menu Button Bars

I can’t recall a situation where some technology from the past isn’t superseded by the new technology which replaces it. In the context of FileMaker Pro, a good example of this is your basic button. Yes, it’s been there ever since FileMaker was created. There never was a FileMaker Pro without the button widget. Enter FileMaker 14 and Button Bars and we now have a lot of possible options. Especially when you combine the Hide object calc which arrived in FileMaker 13. You can control which segmen

FileMaker Magazine

August 4, 2016

Pill Menu Button Bars

FileMaker Magazine

August 4, 2016

Real Time Image Cropping

FileMaker Pro is always advancing its collection of tools in order to accomplish more and more every day tasks. It provides default widgets such as tab panels and sliders and offers useful functions such as GetThumbnail() for resizing images. GetThumbnail, however, will only get you so far. It will only resize an image to another size and provides no functionality regarding the manipulation of that image in any other way. This is where you need to turn to either a plug-in or JavaScript within a

FileMaker Magazine

July 28, 2016

Real Time Image Cropping

FileMaker Magazine

July 28, 2016

Life After Anchor/Buoy

INTRODUCTION Earlier this month I was contacted by a DevCon presenter asking permission to include some slides from my eleven-year old anchor/buoy materials as part of his presentation. I said I’d be honored, but then added, “You might mention that I haven’t used A/B on a new project in about eight years.” He asked what […] View the full article

Kevin Frank

July 28, 2016

FileMaker REST using BaseElements Plugin

REST (Representational state transfer) has quickly become the de facto standard for communication between services and apps. Before it, came SOAP and XMLRPC, but the two buzzwords you’ll hear over and over these days are REST and JSON. When it comes to FileMaker, you’ve always been able to do super basic REST with the Insert from URL script step. Later down the road, FileMaker added in support for the POST method of service interaction with the httpspost:// url scheme. While the basics are alw

FileMaker Magazine

July 15, 2016

Skeleton Key is headed to FileMaker DevCon 2016

top, right: Mark Richman; bottom, left to right: Calvin Cooper, Chad Adams, Greg Lane Mark Richman, President, Greg Lane, VP of Application Development, Chad Adams, Senior Developer and Trainer, and Calvin Cooper, Developer, are headed to Las Vegas from July 18-21 to participate in FileMaker, Inc.'s annual Developer Conference aka DevCon. They'll be staying at The Cosmopolitan, host hotel of more than 60 DevCon sessions. They will join over 1,500 FileMaker developers to network, catch up with

Skeleton Key

July 14, 2016

DevCon 2016 – eXcelisys Vendor Session: Tantalizing Tips-n-Tricks from the Trenches

DevCon 2016 – eXcelisys Vendor Session: Tantalizing Tips-n-Tricks from the Trenches Attend the eXcelisys vendor session on Wednesday July, 20 2016 from 2:00pm – 3:15pm The eXcelisys vendor session will be lead by our very own Mr. Doug West and assisted by some of the eXceptional eXcelisys FileMaker Pro talent. With a team of developers working on thousands of projects over the last 14+ years, we’ve stood our ground against a variety of challenging customer requirements. eXcelisys, a FileMaker

eXcelisys

July 12, 2016

FileMaker Tools

Archiving Email in FileMaker

Want to improve your CRM? FileMaker email integration allows you to view and archive emails directly in FileMaker! Learn more and check out the free sample file: https://www.dbservices.com/articles/archiving-email-in-filemaker/ www.dbservices.com

dbservices in FileMaker Tools

July 12, 2016

List View Record Jumping

When developing your solutions for users, you can’t always account for how easy they think things should work. You do your best, but without user testing, they’re essentially stuck with what you initially create. You can, however, put in features which you think will make usability more convenient for them. Many times, these convenience features can be a bit complicated to implement. Fortunately, with more recent versions of FileMaker, the task of adding in such features has become much easier.

FileMaker Magazine

July 8, 2016

Capturing data with Google Forms

One of FileMaker’s best advantages is its ability to quickly provide an interface to common data tasks. Sorting, filtering and analysis, via automated routines, make a database system better suited to routine tasks. Primarily, because you can control the user interface. Typically, spreadsheet users don’t think in terms of disjointed data. Boiling data down into a relational model is something which takes a bit of patience and know-how. Data collection, however, is easily done within a spreadshe

FileMaker Magazine

July 1, 2016

Sizing layouts for Android devices for FileMaker 15 WebDirect

With the release of FileMaker 15 Server the Chrome browser on the Android operating system is now supported for use with FileMaker 15 WebDirect when using devices with a five inch or larger screen. I have spent some time testing this out and I've found that things seem to work as well as it does on the other platforms. However, during my testing I did come across something I found to be a bit odd and not quite as intuitive due to the variety of Android screen sizes and resolutions. iOS has hist

Skeleton Key

June 30, 2016

FileMaker 15

FileMaker 15 Starter Solutions

If you are looking to build a new application but don't want to start from the ground up, there is a Starter Solution for you! We review the Starter Solutions available in FileMaker 15 and what is best to begin with. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-15-starter-solutions/ dbservices.com

dbservices in FileMaker 15

June 28, 2016

Virtual List Reporting, part 2

Welcome back for the second and concluding installment in our exploration of Virtual List Reporting (a.k.a. VLR). Demo file: VLR-part-2.zip This approach to reporting can be ideal in situations where the “shape” of your data is known in advance. I don’t mean to imply that VLR cannot be used with more open-ended reporting challenges, but the sales data we […] View the full article

Kevin Frank

June 26, 2016

Re-frame your work or just Compose it – PHP Frameworks

In this post I will talk about the trending PHP frameworks. Over the past 6 months I have been hearing a lot about the Laravel Framework. Being a more database focused developer I have tended to use Yii. After exploring Symfony 3 and the doctrine component I started to like the way it was put... View the full article

Paul de Halle

June 23, 2016

Re-frame your work or just Compose it – PHP Frameworks

In this post I will talk about the trending PHP frameworks. Over the past 6 months I have been hearing… View the full article

Paul de Halle

June 23, 2016

Dynamic Record Tagging

One of the best parts of developing within FileMaker Pro is that you don’t need to create every single thing from scratch. For example, having a Popover widget at the ready for immediate use in any layout is a really big benefit. It’s an automatic space saver. However, what FileMaker doesn’t have built-in are certain features you might expect in most modern day software. How about a tagging feature which allows users to tag records and find those records on demand. This is something which isn’

FileMaker Magazine

June 22, 2016

Product Review of FMPerception

FileMaker Database analysis has been around since the days when FileMaker made its meta data available through its Database Design Report - or DDR for short. The report, for as long as I can recall, has been available in the human readable HTML format and also in the machine language format of XML. Various developers have always made use of this verbose collection of tidbits about a database, but none have made it as fast as FMPerception. This newly released database analysis tool is the faste

FileMaker Magazine

June 16, 2016

FileMaker Tools

FileMaker Portal In-Line Progress Bar

The Portal In-Line Progress Bar, one of FileMaker 15’s new performance-based features, brings with it the separation of a layout’s non-portal and portal rendering tasks. This means users are no longer forced to wait for cumbersome portals to load before being able to interact with a window’s content. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-portal-in-line-progress-bar/ dbservices.com

dbservices in FileMaker Tools

June 9, 2016

Developer Time Savers

When you’re in the “zone” while developing, it feels really good to get stuff done. You feel like you’re “flow”-ing through the problems and simply knocking them out one by one. That feeling which comes from achieving “flow” is often hard to have when you hit situations where you feel like you’re being hindered by the environment or a lack of knowledge. Having to stop for research or fumbling through the development environment is one of those necessary evils. It’s the learning part that takes

FileMaker Magazine

June 9, 2016

FileMaker Tools

FileMaker App Extensions

FileMaker has made it easier than ever to share data with other apps with the introduction of app extensions with FileMaker Go. Check out the article to learn more and watch the video. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-app-extensions/ dbservices.com

dbservices in FileMaker Tools

June 7, 2016