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When FileMaker Inc. released FileMaker Go for iOS 4 devices in July, it changed things for developers. All of a sudden we had a new platform for which to develop, and one that has unique opportunities and capabilities. It also left many of us scratching our collective heads after we played with it for a while and realized that using the same layouts designed for the desktop version of FileMaker Pro wouldn’t always be practical. I say scratching our heads because it forced us to ask ourselves, how exactly am I going to use this?

After playing with FM Go and doing some development with it, I’ve made some observations about the platform:

1. The iPhone interface is small, so the design of the database must be very focused on specific outcomes. In other words, don’t try to design a solution that is so open the user feels they should be able to wander about.
2. Keep it clean and simple. Don’t try to cram a lot of fields on these layouts; it will make your interface look too busy and difficult to read.
3. Look at lots of other apps to see how they designed their interface. And if it works, borrow the idea.
4. Icons are primarily grey on black and use little colour. (I’m sure that will change with the next major iOS release though.)
5. Portals work a bit differently: the scroll bar is smaller than desktop versions and to engage it you have to “activate” the portal by tapping in it first. This means that buttons on the portal row need to be placed on an icon in the row rather than fill the entire row like you might do with a desktop layout. In some cases, a list view may be a good alternative.

A recent project I developed to learn about FM Go had some screens that permit the user to browse some basic contact info. Overall, the primary function was to allow developers within our company to enter time records against projects but the screens for contact management allows other users some functionality as well, even from outside the office.

Organization Detail screen

My challenge with many of these screens was to decide where to place the various buttons and how to label the fields. On the desktop, there are standard locations and methods for displaying these elements. I examined other apps for inspiration but many have two states for displaying data: a view state and an edit state. FileMaker has always been one state for both viewing and editing (although it’s possible to create multiple states) and I wanted to keep that if possible.

Another challenge was navigation. On a desktop solution we might have large floating buttons at the top centre to differentiate between the (in this case) five modules of Organizations, Contacts, Projects, Time and Calendar. Within those modules would typically be tab panel objects (like above for Name, Contacts, Projects and Notes). Again, based on observation of other iOS apps, I decided the module navigation should go at the bottom in black. Tab panel buttons are graphic objects that move between hidden tab panels using Goto Object steps. A good selection of iOS icons are still a little hard to find, but one site I found most helpful was http://glyphish.com/.

Contact Detail screen

With FM Go as a new platform, we’re all still learning and it’ll take some experimentation before we figure out what works and what doesn’t. In the meantime, it’s exciting for developers to be able to go back to experimenting like this again. And now we wait to see what new features come out next from FileMaker Inc. and what cool challenges await us from our clients!

Steve Hearn

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