When Add-ons were announced, it sounded like they were going to be the holy grail of transportable code within FileMaker. Thus far, I don't know exactly what the adoption rate is and if the effort is paying off for Claris. I think the concept still has legs; as you can see that the new experience Claris is putting into FileMaker currently leverages what was built.

While I have my own personal strong opinions about how Add-ons were implemented and are currently used, there's no doubt you can save a lot of time by using certain add-ons within your solution. For myself, the question tends to center around build-it-yourself or leverage someone else's efforts.

Fortunately, if you're comfortable with your own assessment skills regarding FileMaker development, you can determine if a given Add-on is worth using or not. In this week's video I take a look at installing and using an add-on download from the Claris marketplace. The experience is somewhat telling of what a new or even intermediate user might go through. It all comes down to implementation and the condition of the UI/UX. If you've not used a lot of add-ons or experienced how they might (or might not) be useful in your own development then give this video a once over.

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