FM11 from my point of view

[RodSierra]

Well, quite frankly no surprise, but FM11 still has not corrected the issues with Thai Unicode entry. We will make a decision later this year as to our new DB core, as I'm no longer convinced FM is a solution for our clients, but I get ahead of myself.

Inspector, well should have been in FM7 or FM8, a basic intuitive feature, that is still lacking, (buttons and triggers not supported), so right clicking on fields will continue but at a somewhat lower rate.

Folder organization should have been done in one upgrade for all areas where needed. We are spoon fed these for obvious reasons, upgrade revenue, so for those added in FM11 obviously a benefit, but long overdue.

Graphing, well this is graphing 101, frankly never expected this to be a really useable feature, I've used xmchart for years and this new very limited graphing will have no effect on my decision to continue with xmchart in the future.

Filtered portals, good things could come from this, but too late for established apps, I'll continue with my legacy work arounds, as this is the only feature I think would be beneficial from FM11, and would require a major re-design of our applications, along with client upgrades with no real benefits on their side.

Text Highlighting?: you tell me on this one, I looked quick at the text formatting funtions, could not find any reference to it....well thought out button...?, I think not, the same can be accomplished via text fill color, maybe I'm missing something here, but sure is not clear what this is for in any of the on line documentation.

All in all, for me the decision has now come down to not if we migrate, but when we migrate to a different database solution for our applications. It's a big decision for us, as Fm is a comfortable platform that we've stayed with for many years,, but frankly our needs have out grown its limitations and their lack of response to what seems to be basic features is too hard to ignore and justify with my customers.

I'm sure we will be using FM for years to come with our legacy solutions, but most likely we will freeze our updates at FM10 compatibility and move on from there for new apps with a new core solution.

It simply baffles me that free ware such as Text Wrangler is fully Thai compatible, while FM will not even respond to a request as to why this is not correctable in FM, or fix the problem, and this has been an issue since FM7 when unicode was introduced!

[BrentHedden]

I must admit, XMCharts is going to be a very hard act to follow as far as the functionality that is available. It's difficult to understand at first, but once you get the basic concept, XMCharts is an extremely powerful plugin that I don't think native FileMaker will ever be able to match.

[liltbrockie]

The spoonfed remark re: folders organisation says it all really... A real shame Filemaker choose to advertise these as new features when they should have been there from FM6/7

[Cortical]

none of my clients will see any need to incur the subscription/upgrade fees

FM is becoming a legacy concept for some of them; already looking at strategies; 4D in particular.

[bruceR]

150 more horsepower for not much money. Still think it's a great product, extremely versatile and extensible, it is evolving nicely, and I expect another shoe to drop sometime soon.

[xoomaster]

I fully agree with you RodSierra. There is so little that is offered with this version that a lot of us are losing interest. I think FM as a company needs to learn from Apple.

Bring in the ability to view records "itunes" style.

Give us iphone version or something. It is shameful how FM still has not come up with any App other than Bento.

I am having a hard time justifying yearly pay for so little return.

While probably there are some who disagree with me, I see not much to get excited about in version 11, other than the new icon colors.

Xoomaster

[rigman]

Considering 4d here too.

Here's a couple of questions for you all,

What other development platforms are you seriously considering?

And what specific features are you looking for in those new platforms?

For me, bringing true multi-user capabilities to compiled or runtime generated applications is a must, which is basically non-existent in FM. Also high on my list is the ability to edit true code and provide a good environment for teamwork application development.

I think that the general feel for some of us is that leaving filemaker is not a question of if, but rather of when. I also plan to keep it around for a while mostly for legacy application support.

[Zcast]

My point of view is FM 11 is equivalent to the Windows ME OS. Big hype, 0 deliverance! The only good thing I see with FM 11, massive reduction in screen flickering! Charts are worthless, runtimes are worthless. I have switched back to using FM 10 Advanced. What a waste of money on the upgrade. Isn't it funny how all the "Hard Core" FM developers on this site

(Many of which, work with Filemaker) have nothing but praise for the new version, instead of telling us what they "really" think?

[Peter (duksis3)]

Upgrade to FM11 is to expensive.

[wimpog]

Some of the things, like additional triggers, new IWP toolbar, graphs, copy/paste custom functions should have appeared in 10.

Their sales rep told me (when 10 was just released), that they did not include everything they had planned in 10.

So 11 is really stuff that should have been in 10.

P.S. what about copy/paste/import layouts??? They have this functionality for scripts, custom functions...

P.S.S. wouldn't be nice to have line numbers, monospaced font, and syntax highlighting in the calculation dialog? What about search & replace in scripts? These are the features I've been looking for a long time!