FM 9 Rants & Observations

[jasongodoy]

Hello New FM 9 users. I've been playing with FM 9 Advanced all day today with an in house application and I really am both impressed and bothered by a some of the new features FileMaker has given us developers. Here's my 2 cents:

1. No Script Triggering via Enter, Exit field events. Don't even get me started with this issue.

2. The "Auto-Resize" is extremely cool and I'm sure a very welcomed feature of the FM community, however in my short testing, I've noticed a really big issue in terms of how content is being mis-displayed in portals. In a very simple example, most of us would figure that if a layout object can now resize (a portal) the objects in the object (fields in a portal), should resize accordingly. Well, after much tinkering and then finally reading the FileMaker Pro 9 Help file, under "Setting Auto-Resize", I noticed the Important Message stating...

"Important...Multiple objects positioned side-by-side or stacked vertically and anchored to either both left and right or both top and bottom margins move or resize relative to the window or container margin, not each other. Therefore, adjacent objects will not maintain a relative distance from one another and may overlap when the window is resized."

So for all of you that have nice wide screen monitors and expect your fields inside your portals to auto resize via the new "Auto-Resize", guess again. The portal will resize correctly, but the fields inside the portal will appear centered smack dab in the middle of the portal, not stretched relative to the neighboring field all while fitting perfectly in the portal like they should. To me this is a HUGE OVERSIGHT. Whats the point of having "Auto-Resize" on something like a portal if content (i.e. fields in portals) can not auto resize with it correctly?

3. I'm using Windows XP SP2 and I've experienced the dreaded screen flickering issue tremendously often. I'm wondering if anyone else out there has experienced more screen flickering with version 9 versus previous versions.

4. No Script Triggering via Enter, Exit field events. Don't even get me started with this issue. Ooops, already said that ;-) I'm sure I'm not the only extremely frustrated by this. This feature should have been in version 7.0! Is FileMaker really listening to developers? If I'm not mistaken, doesn't M$ ACCE$$ have the ability for field level script triggering? I was really hopeful that with FM 9, we developers would finally get this feature (NATIVE) to FM without the use of external plug-ins. When is version 10 coming out again?

5. Conditional Formatting = SUPER SWEET! Way less overhead creating the always annoying (can we display this field is red, blue, rainbow (jk), etc) via Case functions, multiple fields, etc.

6. Organizing Scripts into folders is very nice as well, but more than that, the ability to Filter through your scripts by typing bits and pieces of the script name in the new Filter box is really a welcomed feature and super nice touch.

7. There is no way to organize layouts into folders like scripts can now. This is really annoying because it is very easy to accumulate so many layouts (sometimes, more layouts than scripts). You never can have too much of a good thing. I guess FileMaker is waiting for version 10 or 11 to give us a way to organize the 25 - 250 layouts we have in our solutions.

8. Guess what, no keyboard shortcut for to get to the Custom Function dialog box (grrrrr).

9. While we're at it, there is no keyboard shortcut to the Value Lists dialog box (grrrr x 2). I'd really like to see this happen sometime soon.

10. PHP Integration - Haven't explored much yet, but from what I've read, very nice theoretically.

11. External Data sources looks very promising.

I'd love to hear what other user experiences have been like. Let the community know!

Jason

[xoomaster]

Brother , or sister or whoever you are, I feel your pain ;)

[JesseSFR]

So for all of you that have nice wide screen monitors and expect your fields inside your portals to auto resize via the new "Auto-Resize", guess again. The portal will resize correctly, but the fields inside the portal will appear centered smack dab in the middle of the portal, not stretched relative to the neighboring field all while fitting perfectly in the portal like they should. To me this is a HUGE OVERSIGHT. Whats the point of having "Auto-Resize" on something like a portal if content (i.e. fields in portals) can not auto resize with it correctly?

It is a little frustrating, but still a big step forward. Bear in mind you can always choose *one* field in your portal to grow. This field will take advantage of any increased horizontal space in the portal. Just anchor one portal field left and right, anchor all those to the left of it on the left only, and anchor the fields on the right to the right only.

5. Conditional Formatting = SUPER SWEET! Way less overhead creating the always annoying (can we display this field is red, blue, rainbow (jk), etc) via Case functions, multiple fields, etc.

Agreed. This is one of my favorite new features. We did a tip on some cool things you can do with this, and the next issue of FileMaker Advisor Basics magazine will have an article, also with some cool Conditional Formatting tricks. This feature is like all the great ones: immediately useful, and it just keeps getting better as you play with it and get creative.

8. Guess what, no keyboard shortcut for to get to the Custom Function dialog box (grrrrr).

Amen, brother.

10. PHP Integration - Haven't explored much yet, but from what I've read, very nice theoretically.

I've used the beta PHP API a lot and it is very nice. A much better way to put FileMaker on the web than XSLT unless your output is an XML format. And now you can do Rails with Filemaker too. Yeah

11. External Data sources looks very promising.

That's about how my first reaction was...hmm...looks cool, but we'll see how well it works. In my limited exploration, it works *amazingly well*. Much better than I could have expected. This is a killer feature and will reinvent FileMaker with some of my clients.

I'd love to hear what other user experiences have been like. Let the community know!

Thanks for your thoughts. Good stuff :

[Genx]

Out of curiosity, what happens if you group the portal with the fields and then apply resizing to that?

[Genx]

.. Well at least it expands vertically

[davidtraveller]

It seems like there is still no way to copy layouts from one DB to another.

[Ender]

It seems like there is still no way to copy layouts from one DB to another.

Copy & Paste still works. ;)

[Genx]

Out of curiosity, why would you want to do that?

[JesseSFR]

I remember trying that exact thing Genx. That was definitely my first idea as soon as I figured out the portal weirdness.... unfortunately, it doesn't work too well. I can't remember what it does exactly... but it's not as good as I'ld hope:)

[jasongodoy]

Thanks for the responses everyone! I really feel like the folks at FileMaker really have done a great job with SOME of the features they've added to FM 9. My biggest complaint is that some other features seem more or less half done. I mean , they had to know that developers had a problem of organizing scripts into something that resembled some sort of relative order. So they addressed it with FM 9 was a slick implementation of the now "Manage Script" window. But, why stop there? HELLOOOOOOO LAYOUT MANAGEMENT PLEASE! I'm sure that developers would have rejoiced into song and dance if this feature were implemented. Just think about (at least on Windows anyway) not having to scroll all the way down to the bottom of your layouts list with the ******* arrow button (via mouse only - so annoying). Everything could be organized into folders nice and neat and you could have access to your layouts in a quick and easy manner, just like the Manage Scripts currently is. Even through in Filtering to WOOO the developers into thinking that you're really taking care of us.

I'm not knocking some of the features that are implemented well, I just think that if your going to do something, do it all the way and not half assed. That portal "Auto-Resize" issue I have (2. in my first post) is a perfect example of something so cool, but done in a totally half assed way.

See it would be one thing if I were asking for Load Balancing on FileMaker Server...that would be unbelievable, drool worthy even...but something totally not expected. I would even have to admit that I would be asking too much from FileMaker to come out with a Load Balancing feature in version FM Server 9. However, I'm not asking for something as powerful as Load Balancing; what I'm asking are with the little things that most developers deal with almost every single day not be overlooked with every version of FileMaker that gets released.

Jason

[Jonathan9]

I'm just testing one of my major v8.5 systems in v9 which I received today (testing with Advanced at the moment, but it will be deployed with standard and standard server). Feature wise I'm not that amazed with v9, certainly not for a full increment in a version number.

The conditional formatting is the best addition for me, but I've cheated with containers, colours and calculations for so long, it'll just tidy up a system and remove extra fields, if and when I get the time. I do like the way you can add conditional formatting to labels (and custom tooltips with calculations too), just a pity you can't to objects like rectangles (unless I missed something), for a coloured bar behind a list, so still have to have a long dead field there or a fix with some blank text?

However screen flicker/refresh redraw has got worse in my first tests, on XP Pro at least, and as soon as you add any conditional formatting to labels, every time to move to another record, the labels redraw too.

I've some large main menu options with custom tabs, rather than using the tab control, for design purposes, those with more buttons flicker more when switching layouts too.

I've yet to see the effect under Citrix Terminal Services (which I use at some sites), so hopefully screen redraw won't be worse...

Performance wise I haven't run any major search and report tests, things seem a little more sluggish when navigating in a large system, but no doubt it's a larger application that v8.5.

I agree with Jason regarding the script management, it's a nice touch (I've been using FileMaker since v3, so long overdue!), but layouts really need similar treatment. Customised toolbars, more funky toolbar icons in Windows, they look sooo dated, Office 2003 look fantastic, and that's old now compared with 2007. FileMaker catch up please!

Also a much better report creation wizard too would be very useful.

Haven't tried the portal resizing, will have a play. Sadly I think the external data sources and PHP will pass me by at present, but probably cool features.

I had so many problems with complex report layouts for brochures using the internal save to PDF before, that end users were using Acrobat or other PDF creators. So that may (or may not) be better in v9.

Checked the limited new features on the web-control, they are just tweaks rather than anything stunning in my opinion.

The start-up screen is a complete waste of time for power-users and developers rolling out systems in user environments, hardly the most exciting feature, a couple of hyperlinks on a form, yep, and - and that's a "major new feature"!

I'm looking forward to testing Server v9 on a multi-site system I'm going to upgrade to v9 shortly, the new admin console looks better and more coherent. Load balancing, that would be great, especially for one of my large multi-site systems, one day...

The new "features" in the tab control, are hardly features, one tiny addition about sizing and a default setting, it's still a clunky tool, the ancient one in MS Access is far superior, and has nice, if a little dated, tiny icon options.

Trigger actions / events, if that had been added, then it would have been a worth v9 update! Once again I've been using this is Access since I started developing custom systems in 1997, and I can't believe it's still not available natively as a behaviour in FileMaker Pro.

Personally I can't see how they can justify this as a v9 upgrade, really it's just v8.6.

However small progress if what we have, let's hope v10 is released before Christmas (or should that be v9.1?!).

[xoomaster]

I think you are completely right: 8.6 !

And what's up with adding a tiny change to the Tabs ? we already knew how to achieve that !

Also progress / status report on Web viewer ? Not really an improvement to brag about.

I think 8.0-8.5 were the biggest and most important versions so far.

I get a feeling that FM staff do not want to step on the toes of the Plug-in developers and this is costing the users of FMP.

FM staff need to know that 2 bad versions in a row, would probably kill off a lot of users :(

[Lee Smith]

You can always vote with your money.

Lee

[xoomaster]

This is the problem. FM is not just another software for a lot of us, it is our livelihood and hoby and job not mentioning our passion. So it hurts to think of this in this manner !

Edited July 12, 2007 by Guest

[The Shadow]

I think the new features look good, and I can see the ODBC access makes complete sense for those who need it.

What I am bothered by is the simple things:

  - no dynamic SetField

  - no cut/paste of custom function and valuelists

  - no menu key for getting to define custom functions, etc.

These things seem like they would take only a tiny fraction of the total development time, and would be greatly appreciated by many developers.

It often seems to me like things get started moving in the right direction (copy/paste of field/table definitions), but never get around to being polished off in future releases (with copy/paste of everything else).

[Ender]

What I am bothered by is the simple things:

- no dynamic SetField

- no cut/paste of custom function and valuelists

- no menu key for getting to define custom functions, etc.

Hey, my thoughts exactly. It's like "the Shadow Knows" or something.

I don't really care about event trigger stuff right now, but it's these little things that would be handy.

Hey Shawn, do you suppose some of the missing features were omitted to maintain .fp7 compatibility? Probably not the case with the Copy/Paste of CFs, or the keyboard command for the CF editor, but maybe for some of those other things??

[The Shadow]

My feeling is that marketing doesn't care much about features that are not large enough to justify a bullet point, so they are the first things to be cut when the knives come out.

The SetField problem is related to backward compatibility, but I'd settle for a completely different step (DynamicSetField) in addition to the existing Set Field staying around unaltered, but I doubt the UI designers would agree to such a travesty.

I've complained to my FMI contacts about the cut/paste issue too. Someone just need to spend a couple days working on it, maybe for 10. :(

[Lee Smith]

I have been a long time user of FileMaker, and will continue to be in the future.

There was one other release I didn't go for, and that was 5.5. It was a very similar thing to this. Very little change, and wasn't worth my money.

So far, I haven't seen anything in 9 that I can't live without, and I can still eke out a living using my old version 8.5.

I think that if they lower the price, then I would upgrade for the Script Organizer, and the Conditional Formatting Features.

Lee

[Fenton]

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think a lot of people are going to wonder whether to upgrade. If you want the SQL connectivity, you will happy to upgrade (at even twice the price -). But otherwise one cannot get terribly excited right off the bat about the "self" function; though I bet there will be some great time-saving uses for this. I'm all for (reasonable) modularization.

For me, well I've already got it, so I may be rationalizing. But I just had to do some serious script analysis and tweaking, and I have to say, the ability to jump around, both between script windows, and anywhere else I wanted to, while the scripts were still open... I got a little giddy :-] I can see that it will require a little discipline, to close the several windows, but it is going to save me time, consistently.

Then I folderized the many scripts; much better organization, much less scrolling.

BTW, 5.5 brought in conditionally filtered value lists for the 1st time (I believe?); so while not a critical upgrade, it was worth it.

[Genx]

Well, you could always just use 9 to organize your scripts, and develop in 9 and just not use the 9 functions like self, get(hostapplicationversion) etc.

That way you get a better dev environment and given that they didn't actually add anything critical like script steps etc, no real difference...

[Vaughan]

Could anybody now live without 8.5's script variables? That's how I feel about 9.0's layout resize and non-modal scriptmaker.

The layout resizing feature allows me to make layouts that are soooo much nicer to look at and to use, even it it isn't perfect.

I'm making my "base" layouts quite small, then setting everything to centre in the screen and letting elements like portals and some fields expand down and across for users who want to resize the window to take advantage of their larger monitors. The great thing is that these layout features *still work beautifully* in FMP 8.5 (haven't tested them in 8.0, might work in them too) so I'm building everything with resizing layouts even though we have no plan to upgrade our organisation for six months.

And the non-modal scriptmaker is a real time saver.

Come on, there are heaps of reason to upgrade.

[Genx]

Like i said, you can just upgrade your one Advanced Copy and develop for your FM 8 Clients using that...

As per the layout resizing - meh, not really something I was desperate for.

[mr_vodka]

My feeling is that marketing doesn't care much about features that are not large enough to justify a bullet point, so they are the first things to be cut when the knives come out.

The SetField problem is related to backward compatibility, but I'd settle for a completely different step (DynamicSetField) in addition to the existing Set Field staying around unaltered, but I doubt the UI designers would agree to such a travesty.

I've complained to my FMI contacts about the cut/paste issue too. Someone just need to spend a couple days working on it, maybe for 10.

You my friend need to go back over there and fix all the outstanding issues. It may only take you 10 days or so... lol. :

[Paul Spafford]

We didn't get script triggers -- which is a hell of a shame -- but we did get scheduled scripts in Server ... and it can email! I'm still thinking of a ton of uses for that.

Another thing that's cool is the ability to append pdfs. For anyone who has ever had to script muli-layout reports to a single pdf, that one's worth it's weight in gold.

I won't be recommending that all my clients upgrade, but I will be sure to tell them of some of the cool things I can do for them if they do.

[jasongodoy]

Good points Paul! The Append to PDF is really nice and the scheduled scripts in Server could be quite useful for performing boring DB maintenance tasks that should be done off hours anyway. It's not script triggers, but I guess it's a start.

For anyone out there who has received their copy of FM 9 Advanced, have you been experiencing the excessive screen flickering issue with this release (especially if you resize your layouts as users navigate from screen to screen)? I have and am currently investigating the difference between my FM 8.5 Adv vs FM 9 Adv.

Drop a line if the screen flickering has affected any of your solutions.

Jason

[AudioFreak]

I'm seeing less screen flicker than before using 9 Adv. Although screen flicker was'nt horrible on my computer using 8.5 Adv. I'm hoping it gets better after we upgrade all the clients here.

There are a few here that I worry about thier health due to the flickering.

Michael

[hayesk]

Regarding keyboard shortcut to Custom Functions

FYI, I don't know about Windows, but on a Mac you can assign a keyboard shortcut to any menu item. Go to the System Prefs and click on Keyboard. There is a section for assigning shortcuts to menus.

[Reed]

that is the best tip ever! I don't know how long that's been a feature of OS X, but it sure isn't advertised much...

[Fenton]

Yep; they can be application-specific also. Of course now I have to go add them for FileMaker 9 -]

I also highly recommend a multi-button mouse (like 5) and software, with the button on top assigned to the Close Window command. It is helpful with the new ScriptMaker windows.

[Lee Smith]

Hi Fenton,

I purchased a little program called Menu Master for the ability to access Custom Functions, and the it works in 7, 8, 8.5 and 9.

Lee

[The Shadow]

FYI, I don't know about Windows, but on a Mac you can assign a keyboard shortcut to any menu item. Go to the System Prefs and click on Keyboard.

I agree with Reed - best tip ever. Thanks for removing one of my complaints. :(

[Jonathan9]

In reply to Jason's point earlier, I'm Definitely experiencing more screen flicker. I mentioned it earlier in this thread, and over v8.5 - I noticed it immediately on opening a solution in v9 (testing with Advanced at the moment, rather than normal).

Adding conditional formatting to fields and labels (especially labels) seems to make it worse when scrolling through records.

Custom tab screens (using buttons to switch layouts, to simulate tabs, rather than the new tab controls), flicker more too.

I'm concerned one of my large systems runs through Citrix, and you get minor screen issues added there, so will have to test further...

[bluearrow]

... I'm Definitely experiencing more screen flicker. I mentioned it earlier in this thread, and over v8.5 - I noticed it immediately on opening a solution in v9 (testing with Advanced at the moment, rather than normal).

I agree with the comments. A LOT more screen flickering than before. I am not sure of the reason, neither how to minimize the effects, but it surely is much worse than version 8.5v2 in XP SP2. It seems to flicker every time there is a layout change in a script/subscript.

[LR Steve]

To all... I would suggest that you spend more time with the app before expressing too many absolute opinions on whether this or that works or is a worthwhile feature.

For example, the opinions expressed about auto-resizing of a portal and content within the portal. That frustration is misplaced. It took me a little extra time to get the hang of it, but once you have a true understanding of the anchors concept and the resulting behavior, you can get the desired behavior with no problem. I can set up portals, as well as the respective portal rows and fields to resize in a perfectly symetrical and expected way.

Regarding SQL connectivity... This is major. Think about being able to exchange live financial data with MS Dynamics(Great Plains) or other enterprise SQL systems... building reports, analyzing business metrics, and tying to your business logic in a fraction of the time it would take in Crystal Reports or in the Dynamics report engine.

Re: Screen Flashing- I suggest you study the way your layout is built (stacking order) as well as gain an increased understanding how calcs, graphics and other objects are refreshed, relative to backgrounds. I agree that FM still needs to improve the consistency and controls in refresh behavior and window updates. But you should be able to eliminate most of the flashing in general and during running scripts.

I'm not sure what that "Email your database link" is all about and at first blush, I can't imagine what use it might be to me...But I haven't played with it, so who knows?... there may be some real power and utility there.

Yes, I am disappointed that field level script triggers did not make it into this rev, and I would like to see layout organizational tools, but that's not enough to dismiss the overall significance and leap forward by FileMaker in 9.

Improvements in Server are possibly even more significant than in the client app, but that's for another post, another time.

[K1200]

Screen Flashing- I suggest you study the way your layout is built (stacking order) as well as gain an increased understanding how calcs, graphics and other objects are refreshed, relative to backgrounds. I agree that FM still needs to improve the consistency and controls in refresh behavior and window updates. But you should be able to eliminate most of the flashing in general and during running scripts.

Where can I find the "rules" on this (i.e., how calcs, graphics and other objects are refreshed). From everything thing I've read on the forums, what progress has been made in this area has been based more on "alchemy" than on computer science.