The last two releases of FileMaker Pro have seen a lot of buzz surrounding them with regards to the new charting features that are present.  After having spent some time with these charting tools, I can definitely understand the reasoning behind it… and let me tell you, it’s a lot more than just hype.  Charting seems even easier in the newest version (v12) of FileMaker Pro, and it even has a couple of new charts for you to take advantage of.  Seeing as though most of you have probably had a couple of years to learn how to set up ... Read More

My relationship with checkboxes has been one of those love/hate ones.  They’re amazing because they allow for text to be entered exactly how I want it to be, but they’re a pain because of the fact that checkboxes with large value lists take up so much screen real-estate.  Well, I’ve started taking a new approach to handling them, and I think it’s a relatively elegant one, so wanted to share it with you.  This technique will let you enjoy the benefits of the tidy data-entry that checkboxes allow for without ... Read More

Over the years, there have been a number of different file formats that the various versions of FileMaker Pro have used.  Currently, we at CoreSolutions Software Inc. are only supporting the .fp7 file format which pertains to FileMaker Pro versions 7 through 11.  If you’re using one of the earlier file formats in your database system, I would highly encourage you to upgrade.  There are of course many reasons to upgrade, and these reasons range from richer feature sets, broader compatibility, and even faster development time (which ... Read More

I’ve run into the problem a number of times (while developing in FileMaker Pro) that I make a change to some data on one of my layouts, and the related data that I was expecting to see does not instantaneously get updated.  My simple old approach was to use the “Refresh Window” script step that takes advantage of the “Flush cached join results” option.  I’ve recently learned that this can be a very bad practice.  Especially when your FileMaker Pro solution is being served to multiple clients.  The ... Read More

Picking up from where Matt left off last week, WordPress does flex its muscles in terms of themes, plugins and apps for the mobile devices. Navigating to the free themes directory as WordPress.org, there are currently 1321 themes available for download.   If you are looking for a theme to record a recent trip and travel adventure, the Adventure Journal might just be for you.   If you want “add a touch of colour to life”, the Nanoplex Theme may tickle your fancy.   There are many themes to choose from, and the best part about this is ... Read More

As Mark had mentioned in the first post of this series, we’re now using WordPress to power our website. For those of you who are unfamiliar with WordPress though, this might not mean all that much to you.  If you fit into that category, then this post is for you. WordPress is an example of a “Content Management System” (CMS).  So, what exactly is a CMS?  A content management system, is essentially a system that allows one to have multiple people posting content to it control access to the content on it simplify the ... Read More

It makes perfect sense to use “Auto-resize Layout Objects” in order to show more content from within the fields already showing on your layouts.  Another example of how you can use this feature would be to show more fields on the layout when the screen size is large enough to allow for it.  In this quick (18 seconds) video, I demonstrate how you can combine anchoring with the z-order of your layout objects in order to conceal the least important fields unless the screen real-estate warrants the display of ... Read More

There are a few ways to create new related records within FileMaker Pro. Each of them has its own pros and cons.  The technique that I’m discussing today is an undocumented one (its main con).  I’ve been using it for a few versions of FileMaker Pro now, it’s extremely fast, and has never before let me down.  Discussing techniques that don’t have a name can prove difficult though, so I’ve been using the goofy name of “Complicated Relationship With The GF”.  Let’s look into how it got its name, ... Read More

We all know that some things can get lost in translation from one language to another. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/72213316@N00/3405698843 Something similar can happen when you try to translate an idea from your native tongue into a computer language.  Unfortunately, when this happens to me, it’s usually my fault (computers are extremely good listeners — if something goes wrong, it’s usually a matter of us not speaking the language properly).  This kind of thing can happen easily when working with a calculation ... Read More

Recently, Alan discussed how flexible FileMaker can be, by letting you select a different custom menu for each layout.  While that kind of flexibility is invaluable, managing a large number of custom menus can be quite tedious.  I think it’s also rather noteworthy that FileMaker Pro’s custom menus can be set up in such a way that you won’t need multiple custom menus in order to accurately represent each layout.  Since the dialog box for defining a custom menu lets you override a menu item’s name, I should point out ... Read More

In today’s webinar, I discussed some of the advantages of bringing data from Google Analytics into FileMaker Pro. I also illustrated how simple it can be to accomplish. In order to make this task even easier for you, I want to provide you with some helpful links, and even some sample files to get you started. Helpful Links: Getting Started –> This explains the basics like what you need in order to begin using the Google Analytics Data Export API PHP GAPI –> This is where you can download the PHP file that contains the ... Read More

For quite some time now, it’s been commonplace within the FileMaker development community to lock-down FileMaker’s interface in an effort to take control over various native behaviours that FileMaker Pro exhibits.  With the dawn of newer releases of FileMaker Pro, and their new feature sets, I’m seeing less and less of a reason to do this anymore. Doing this interface lock-down involved hiding the status area (and locking it), which contained a lot of useful controls on it (i.e. Record navigation controls). When these ... Read More

FileMaker, Inc. launched a new thin client called “FileMaker Go” for the iPhone and iPad on Tuesday, July 20th. This is exciting news because it means that FileMaker databases can now be easily accessed while on the go. This client application will be able to open .fp7 files which are the same files that can be opened with all versions of FileMaker Pro since version 7. FileMaker Go was completely re-written from the ground up, so that it will fully take advantage of the native features of the platforms that run it… features ... Read More

It’s common among systems that are used by many people of varying security levels, to have buttons on your layouts that some users can execute and others can’t. If you’re designing for such a system, then you’ll probably want to provide the end-users of your system with some kind of visual feedback that will let them know whether or not they can perform those actions. There are various ways of tackling this task, but all of them revolve around defining a set of conditions that will ultimately determine whether or not the end-user has ... Read More

Having worked on mission-critical databases on a regular basis, I can never stress enough just how important having a clone really is. While in some cases, it’d be nice to have a copy of myself running around and helping me out, that’s not quite the type of clone I’m talking about… so, if you manage a FileMaker database,and that’s the only type of clone you know about then you owe it to yourself to continue reading. FileMaker provides a very nice feature allowing you to create clone files of your database. These clones are exact ... Read More

It seems only logical that new functions are necessary for new functionality, so knowing what new functions you have at your disposal (and how to use them) is key to mastering the new functionality that becomes available with the dawn of any new release of FileMaker Pro. In this article, I’ll be discussing the various new functions that you’ll have in your arsenal with this newest release of FileMaker Pro 10. One of the new enhancements to FileMaker 10 that can potentially have the most impact on your development and workflow is the new ... Read More

Typos, and Fat-Fingering can happen to any one of us, but if they happen in your database, they will dramatically reduce the integrity of your data. This article illustrates an attempt at trying to prevent this very thing from happening. Its focus is on the use of an auto-enter calculation that will be performed after modifying the contents of an email address field. Since there is no way to know whether or not the email address entered is the proper email address to use for this person, being able to catch invalid or improperly formatted ... Read More

One of the best kept secrets of FileMaker Pro 9 would have to be the addition of support for the data protocol.  The data protocol is not a FileMaker creation, but its support is new to the application, and it should be a welcome addition to both developers and end-users alike.  Now that FileMaker’s web viewer control supports this protocol, it means that the viewer itself no longer has to look to a web site on the world-wide-web or even one that is stored locally on the end-user’s computer.  Rather, it can now display an HTML document ... Read More

Editing records is a very familiar task in any database application, and FileMaker Pro is certainly no exception. When editing records, you will often need to make changes to a set of records that all share common data. “Find Matching Records” is a simple, yet powerful, functionality that FileMaker offers to help you do this. Also, it can be used from the very same screen where you perform your editing. When you are making modifications to records in your database, find a field containing data that will be common in all of the records that ... Read More