The Separation Model – Part 5

by Matt Petrowsky

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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 I mean REALLY) shouldn't scare you at all, is HTML. If you're creating anything in FileMaker then you simply can't be ignorant about HTML/CSS. Beyond HTML, if you really want to harness some of the true power of a web viewer, then you learn a bit of Javascript and discover all the magic you can do with power tools like jQuery.

In part 5 of this series, I showcase how I use the web viewer to present the data being collected in the Attributes table. I show you how I extract the data and discuss why it's so flexible. While the effort to display in a web viewer may be a bit beyond simply adding a field to a layout, the presentation options is what makes it so appealing. Data displayed within a web viewer can optionally be shown based on access and hiding it is much easier than hiding a field on a FileMaker layout (which can't even be done unless using some sort of portal trick).