ISO FileMaker Magazine

by Matt Petrowsky 32 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File There are a lot of reasons to love using web viewers for the purpose of data display. Your data can be presented in a more compact fashion. You can style data in such a way that it looks like it's part of FileMaker. You can add in functionality easily, which may be more difficult using plugins - such as the ability to initiate a VOIP phone call right within the web viewer. Quite simply, a web viewer is always updating and being refreshed - and offers one of the most flexible ways to present data. The scary part, which really (and…

by Matt Petrowsky 33 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File It was 2002, and I remember working with FileMaker 5/6 and the concept of the Data Separation model being discussed at the annual FileMaker Developer conference. I remember thinking, back then, that FileMaker just wasn't the tool to even consider this concept - even though you had multiple files for one database. While an avid FileMaker user/developer, I was rapidly becoming familiar with PHP 4 and knew that true separation was similar to what you found in a PHP setup - a backend (mysql), middleware (php) and a frontend (web brows…

by Matt Petrowsky 28 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File In this Part 3 about the Separation Model, we head into the actual structure of the data. I start to address the issues you're faced with when trying to keep the data file as clean of "extra stuff" as possible. One REALLY good thing to ALWAYS remember is that adding more stuff to your FileMaker file means more to manage (and re-figure out) later on. When it comes to using the separation model, you've always got a few things to worry about. The first of which is creating related records. As with all things, there's always more tha…

by Matt Petrowsky 22 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Movie File This second video in the series about the Separation Model doesn't exactly talk data strategy quite yet. The tables are there, the files are ready, but in order to start, you need to have a rough idea of what things will look like. How users will start to interact with the data. The first thing to solve is getting the data into the database! In this video, I talk about the design approach and how I quickly get started on this new solution. I present a number of timesaving tips about working in Layout mode and focus on how conditional formatting is going…

by Matt Petrowsky 15 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File As with many other development environments, FileMaker offers just enough features to make things happen (and, in the case of FileMaker, a bit more). It's when you use certain features beyond their intended use where you need to get creative. One such feature are portals. These are primarily for the purpose of showing related data. However, it's just way too appealing to use them for many other things. One of the most common uses is for navigation. There's a problem, however, when you leave from one record to visit another, via …

by Matt Petrowsky 11 minutes Article options Watch Full Version Download Movie File Automation is one of the primary keys to reclaiming your valuable time. You're taking it back from any manual process or a system where it requires your direct involvement or supervision. When it comes to your solution, and the deployment model you pick, you're always going to have to invest some level of effort into releasing a new version. If you're doing this on FileMaker server alone, then the process may be exporting data from an older file and importing into the newer version. This can take many hours of time and also requires some downtime. Obviously, you can't hav…

by Matt Petrowsky 17 minutes Article options Watch Full Version Download Movie File FileMaker seems like such an easy software solution. You simply craft your solution and open the file to start hosting it to peers on the same network. If you're wise, you use a copy of FileMaker server and take advantage of backups and server side scripts. This is especially important for your data, right? It's your data that's important. The user interface is simply a representation of that data. Often, it's only when things start to bog down that attention is paid to performance and making things as optimized as possible. Fortunately, FileMaker client provides a very ni…

by Matt Petrowsky 22 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File FileMaker, for all it's ease-of-use, does things in a particular way to make things easy - on purpose. Checkboxes are a prime example. When searching for information within a database, people typically search based on what they understand. The word "Customer" or "Vendor" makes sense, because that's the term you use. However, there are times when storing things in a more optimized fashion is desirable. This is especially the case when you wish to disassociate the value displayed with what is stored in the database. Since FileMake…

by Matt Petrowsky 25 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File Many users, and probably some developers, of FileMaker may not even know, or forget to use, the hidden power tools which FileMaker provides by default. These hidden gems appear right under your mouse cursor when you right click on any field (better known as a column). When you know they're there, they make a lot of data maintenance and management much easier. The trick with teaching users they exist, isn't as much of a trick as it is just making them obvious. In this video, I walk through a technique called Column Actions. Essen…

by Matt Petrowsky 30 minutes Article options Watch Full Version Download Movie File You could just say I'm "too cool for school", simply because there are very few FileMaker developer tools I've found, which really scratch that itch. No, I don't really have that much ego, but using a plain old web browser to search for elements within FileMaker Advanced's Database Design Reports was always good enough for my needs. Storing my personal technique files in other FileMaker file also did the trick, it's a simple drag and drop. It wasn't until I finally sat down and spent some time with ClipManager and when I discovered Developer Assistant that I started to rel…

by Matt Petrowsky 50 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File Security negligence. Yes, it's a really sad fact - yet it's totally true in many cases. Security is often one of the after thoughts of many FileMaker systems. True, the really good developer always tends to think about this aspect of the whole system. Especially when starting to think about the overall system architecture. Yet, many FileMaker solutions are what I would call "hack-n-go" systems. Someone starts to hack away at the problem, and you arrive at some usable results pretty quickly. Then you host - and go. Heck, people ca…

by Matt Petrowsky 23 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File Isn't is great when you know what the status is? I'm sure you appreciate walking into a mall and knowing whether a store is opened or closed based on that sign in the front door - you know, the classic open/closed sign they just flip around. It certainly prevents you from having to walk over to the store and rapping on the door to see if someone is there - in other words, expend the extra effort to find out what the status is. The same thing applies to your user interface. Giving a visual indicator of status is a great feedback t…

by Matt Petrowsky 32 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Movie File While recently crafting a new layout theme, which is a darn close replica of the iPad UI for FileMaker Go, I discovered a number of issues one should pay attention to for mobile development in FileMaker. The iPad and iPhone 4 are pretty snappy devices - although I'm still using the 3G iPhone (can you say "getting slower each day") for my phone. However, FileMaker Go suffers from a bit of a "lag" in the UI department. It's great that you can access your data, but doing this over a slow 3G connection is likely painful (I've personally only got the wi-fi iP…

by Matt Petrowsky 25 minutes Article options Watch Full Version Download Movie File Would you ever expect anything less from a father who is so proud of his brand new baby? Of course not! So, I simply had to show you some more of my new baby in action. The good part is, the information is free. Here's a collection of some free tips about making things happen within your FileMaker UI Design. Whether you're using the Theme Studio or not, you can really accomplish some nice UI design if you know how to fully leverage FileMaker's tool set. Have some of your own tips? Leave them as comments on this article! Details: Released - 12/21/2…

by Matt Petrowsky 20 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File It's one of those somewhat trivial projects (or so you think) until you get down to the "nitty gritty" of making everything work. "All we need to do..." is always WAY more complex than what's thought. So it make sense that storing data in the most efficient and usable manner would go without saying. However, time and time again, I see database files where the data is stored the "FileMaker easy way" and this just shouldn't be done. There are those rare cases when you should make a value list with your common names …

by Matt Petrowsky 40 minutes Article options Watch Preview Video Watch Full Version Developer's Overview Movie Download Technique File Download Movie File Errors, problems and troubles - Oh my! It seems as if more than half the coding done is for solving problems created by writing the code in the first place. Don't worry though, it happens to all of us. It's part of the coding process. You simply can't know all the variables. You see, you're working in a known environment. The issues you fix are related to the problems which exist in your own computing environment. However, if you're putting something out there, you simply can't account for a…

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by Matt Petrowsky 23 minutes Article options Watch Full Version Download Technique File Download Movie File You hear the announcement about FileMaker 11 and you make a quick scan of the new features. You decide to investigate them as best you can, (because you have real work that needs to be done) and you tell yourself "I'll look into them later." Time passes and you've yet to use a few of those new features. This is my story with QuickFind. I've long created my own version of QuickFind with a scripted process which takes input from a global field and executes a search across multiple fields - even creating multi-query searches. No big deal. In fac…

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"> " type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="505"> More features, pricing and pictures at FileMaker.com Want to hear top developers discuss this new release? Listen to this Podcast by top FileMaker developers! Link to Source

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You've heard the rumors and now it's news. It's all about FileMaker 10. Released Monday Jan 5th, it contains one feature in particular, which developers have been asking about for years (quite possibly almost a decade). Script Triggers! Can I hear a HOOORAY? It really is finally here, and the implementation is quite good (despite my feelings about functionality being buried down into dialog boxes - it's just the FileMaker way) When it comes down to a full write up about FileMaker 10, I often find myself taking a bunch of time to explore features and details which are often covered quite well by other sources. Personally, I tend to focus on implementations of unique and…

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