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Instant web publishing (IWP) was first introduced to FileMaker Pro in version 4 as a quick way to publish FileMaker data on the web. It’s not a solution you are going to use in every case, however there’s quite a bit you can do with it. While your layouts won’t appear exactly the same way in the browser as they do in FileMaker Pro (you’ll probably have to play around with the layout a little bit to make it look right on the web), virtually everything on the layout will work the same way as in FileMaker.
One example of this is the web viewer; it works the same using instant web publishing as it does in FileMaker pro. For example, if you have FileMaker set up to display information from Google maps in the webviewer in FileMaker Pro, it will show up in the browser using IWP without any additional programming. This even extends to new functionality in FileMaker 11; the Charting tool works exactly the same in IWP as it does in FileMaker Pro, so you can now add charts to your webpages with ease.
Of course, there are limitations to IWP. While most script steps now work with IWP, there is still some that do not. You will need to check your scripts to make sure that they are compatible with IWP (there is Show Compatibility option in Manage scripts that you can set to Web Publishing); any script steps that are not compatible will be grayed out. One of the biggest limitations is that FileMaker Server only allows 100 users at a time to connect to a FileMaker database via IWP, so if you are expecting heavier traffic to your website, you’ll want to consider using Custom web publishing. However, for a smaller solution that will only be used within your organization, it’s a great tool that can really add value to your FileMaker solution.
