designing the same solution on different platforms

[overrider]

hello all,

i am not sure if this is the right place for this question, but it is my best guess.

when i develop a filemaker solution anything bigger or more complicated then to print a few labels or something, i ONLY develop on my PowerBook G4. I have it cleanly installed, always updated to the latest patches. Other then filemaker, excel and maybe a graphic program i do not have any other software on that mac. also, as my own rule i would never copy the file over a network to a different system, develop a little, then later copy it back. especially i would never copy my document to another operating system because it contains a different filesystem...

now that is actually very annoying. what i wish to do is: while in the office develop on my mac, in the evening put it all on my FAT32 memory stick, drive home, upload the stick to my windows xp ntfs formatted system, continue to develop, and in the morning reverse the whole routine. is there actually a reason to my paranoia, or could i do what i described above without fearing weird quirks or even data corruption? except a bad disk on one of the systems it should be all fine, but i just dont dare to do break my habit...

[Vaughan]

I do something like this all the time. In fact, running the solution on multiple systems needs to be done as a part of systems testing. Avoids funny surprises later on.

The only paranoia I have is with file corruption: if FMP crashes for any reason (inclding forced quits) then that file is dead and I revert to a backup. What if there isn't a backup? That's the difference between a pro and a wanna-be.

[overrider]

hey. sure ti should be tested on multiple systems, for that i make a copy and run it there. after testing delete the copy. i am just not used to copy the original back and forward...i remember when there was the only way to make a solution look perfectly on windows and mac was to design it under os9. but i guess thats history

[Vaughan]

I've been making cross-platform solutions since FMP 4.0, there is no magic involved. Just keep everything simple (especially fonts) and allow 1 or 2 pixels entra height for field boxes on MacOS to allow for the extra text height in Windows.

Of course separate print layouts might be necessary, but that isn't hard, just more work.