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Part 2: What Should You Consider When Selecting a Development Partner? What Questions Might You Ask a Potential Developer?
Hiring a developer is about creating a working relationship. You want someone who gets your business and gets you. Having a good working relationship often determines the success or failure of a development project. Hire someone you are comfortable with who also has the skills necessary to make your project successful. Beyond the quality of the working relationsh
Michael Layne from Gearbox Solutions presents on FileMaker’s new JSON functions. He does a deep dive into FileMaker’s new JSON functions and demos several examples of how they are using JSON for passing parameters, populating form data, validation and rollback, managing session info such as value lists as global. Michael also demos REST client and REST server with new data API.
The post FileMaker JSON, REST, and the Data API appeared first on Blue Feather - FileMaker Developer, Android, We
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
FileMaker offers many different options for charting, but if you need a chart that is not available in FileMaker, you should consider using Google Charts. Google Charts is a free Javascript framework that can be used in conjunction with web viewers in FileMaker to extend your charting capabilities: https://dbservices.com/articles/google-charts-in-filemaker/
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WidgetStudio makes it easy to use, design and share powerful interface widgets, like calendars, gauges, charts, and timers. Pick from the constantly growing set of included widgets or build your own. Freely share them with your customers or friends.
The post Announcing WidgetStudio – FileMaker WebViewer Widgets appeared first on Geist Interactive.
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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.
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
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
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/
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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 […]
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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...
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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 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
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/
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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 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/
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Frequent FileMaker Go user? Learn more about FileMaker Go Touch ID and 3D Touch adding more security and convenience to your FileMaker experience. Video included. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-go-touch-id-3d-touch/
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As FileMaker Inc adds new features and functionality to FileMaker, it’s really easy for older projects to start to feel like they’re aging pretty quickly. Fortunately, one of the easiest fixes to make is to give things a brand new look and feel.
The process, however, of going about a re-theming isn’t always as easy as it seems. You’ve got new layout objects which may have been added and there are a ton of “older tricks” which may be replaced with newer ways of doing things.
Without going down
FileMaker Server Top Call Statistics Log gives the ability to track the heaviest client usage periods, pinpointing the client requests that take the longest, allowing to quickly and efficiently investigate. Learn more and watch the video here: https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-server-top-call-logging/
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Nothing screams responsive more than text which grows or shrinks based on the device upon which it’s being viewed. The sad part of the previous statement is that FileMaker does not provide a native way of doing this. There’s no Conditional Formatting which says when Get ( WindowContentWidth ) > 768 scale the font size by 120%.
There is, however, a quaint little trick you can do with a few of FileMaker’s native functions along with a powerful Custom Function named CustomList. When you know ho
With the focus on protecting data these days it's nice to see FileMaker improvement of security. Learn more by reading our article and watching the tutorial video: https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-15-security-enhancements/
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When FileMaker Go is running a script and the user locks the device or switches to another app, the script is paused and FileMaker Go enters a suspended state. Check out this video for a simple technique to allow a script to continue to run while FileMaker Go 15 is in the background. This can be a great way to help ensure a long-running script isn't interrupted by an impatient user.
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The post FileMaker Go 15 background scripts appeared first on FileMaker Development Company.
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Edit Records Privileges
I have heard reports recently about some confusion regarding the behavior of the Edit Records privileges. These privileges are set in the Privilege Set Custom Privileges area; they are part of the Record Level Access (RLA) privileges for a specific table.
Record editing privileges can be set to Yes, No, or Limited. Developers select these options from the drop-down menu under the Edit area in Custom privileges in the Privilege Set. What happens to a user’s priv
The FileMaker platform is a constantly evolving and improving ecosystem. The latest version of FileMaker has overhauled the user interface in a number of ways. The FileMaker application UI is extremely important because it is the backdrop of every FileMaker app. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-15-user-interface/
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FileMaker 15 provides us with the ability to interact with iBeacon devices using FileMaker Go. This means with some setup we can associate data in our FileMaker solution with physical locations and have our iOS devices access them via the iBeacon technology. Free Sample File included. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-beacons/
dbservices.com
Learning how to efficiently create scripts within FileMaker is a never ending process. It's a balance of leveraging what you know and mixing in newly added features along with new ways of doing things. Optimization and cleanup will always be part of the ever growing software solution.
In this video, I present the topic of using utility scripts in order to save precious development time. You know, those reusable scripts which prevent you from writing unique and dedicated scripts for every possib
FileMaker WebDirect has been redesigned to be compatible with mobile phones. In the previous release, FileMaker added support for tablet browsers. FileMaker 15 takes it a step further by providing support for mobile phones. Although you could access WebDirect with a phone before, it was not officially supported, mainly due to dialogs being too small for user interaction. https://www.dbservices.com/articles/filemaker-webdirect-phone-support/
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