The new version of SeedCode Complete is almost here. This is the platform we use to start new projects and this new version lets us share a lot of what we’ve learned about FileMaker 13, about WebDirect, and about making solutions that are easy to maintain.

If you’re new to Complete, this unlocked template links contacts to projects, invoices, and activity on the calendar. Added to that in this version is purchasing, inventory, and shipments. We’ve wired up the tough stuff: you add the specifics for your business. Checkout the current version of Complete here.

Our Approach: designing with constraints

We’d been working on this new version of Complete for a while and at some point Jason was inspired to ask, “What if WebDirect were the only platform for FileMaker?” “How would we design things differently?” He thought about that for a while…and then he started over as if that were the premise. I think it was kind of an experiment at first, but he stuck with it and a lot of good stuff fell out of working with that kind of constraint. The SeedCode Complete we’re previewing today is a result of that change in direction.

Some of the things that came out of this are Selector Connector: this new way of managing the graph that focusses on simplicity and portability. We’ve also had to be very sensitive to the number of layout objects that are in WebDirect, lest the layouts bog down, so the layouts that are in SeedCode Complete are very simple: they don’t have a lot of stacked objects on them. We’ve taken great care to make them look elegant, but there aren’t a lot of objects a developer needs to wade through. (You’ll see some more of Complete in layout mode at the end of the video below.)

Contacts in Layout Mode

That means you end up with layouts that are a lot easier to modify–and that’s the whole point of Complete: giving folks a platform that’s both powerful and easy to work with.

One of the biggest things that came out of this is that Complete is so fast. You work so hard to make something perform well in WebDirect, you end up with an app that performs really well in FileMaker Pro. And of course we worked with a big sample data set in there while we were building so any speed issues showed up right away.

This is not only a platform for us to use for our own projects–and a platform for our customers to use as they’re starting new solutions–it’s an opportunity for us to share all the stuff we’ve learned since we’ve started digging into FileMaker 13 and WebDirect. Things we’ve learned about animations and how to get them smooth across all platforms, things about speed and slimming down layouts. We’re really looking forward to sharing all this more widely, in a format developers can really take advantage of.

A Preview

Here are a few screenshots, followed by a video of how this all feels in action:

Look for the new version some time in the next few weeks: it will be on sale through year end.

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