ISO FileMaker Magazine

As the number of web sites hosting icon collections has grown over the years, it makes little sense to have your own collection of icons custom created at a costly premium. Typically, you can find pretty much any icon you could ever want to use and in many cases, you can even modify the icon to fit your specific needs if you need a slight variation.

With the release of Creative Commons licensing, a wide array of freely available collections and the easy ability to modify icons, you can quickly create exactly what you need for most any FileMaker app.

In this video, I go over the recently released Elemental FM Icon database and I cover all the details and specifics about my own personal icon workflow. From finding the right icon to getting it into FileMaker quickly, you'll learn all kinds of information about working with SVG icons.

Don't get me wrong, FileMaker has a lot of cool things it can do all on its own. In fact, they keep adding more and more useful tools which makes it easy to create great working software.

There are, however, those certain things that FileMaker just can't do on it's own. For example, you can't interact with images within container fields quite like you can certain web pages. Yet, right in front of us, we have the wonderfully powerful Web Viewer which exposes access to the power of JavaScript and all those wonderfully free libraries.

Enter the common scenario where an easy-to-understand image file directly represents a nicely complex data structure. We'd like to use the image to navigate the data and we can certainly add it directly to a layout and overlay buttons over it. But, hold your horses there señor gung-ho developer. What if your image is so complex that it would be absolutely tiny if you placed it on the layout at 100%.

Well, that's when we ring up our wonderful friend Mr. SVG. He'll take care of us. He's scalable you know! So, how about a zoomable and clickable SVG which directly represents how we'd like users to navigate the data? No problem!

While barcodes have been around for decades, and we all know how fundamental they are to everyday life, it doesn't mean your last implementation is still the best way to integrate them. Technology is always changing and it's moving forward while new technologies replace older ones. A barcode which used to be in JPEG format can now be in the scalable SVG format.

In this video, I walk through the use of a JavaScript library which allows for the easy creation of SVG barcodes. This works without a specific font and allows for a scalable file which can be integrated into a PDF or any other type of output. Need barcode support on FileMaker Go on iOS? Need to generate barcodes client side on either Mac or Windows?

If you're building a solution which needs to use barcodes, and you're looking for the least expensive option, then you can't get much better than a commercially free JavaScript library. All it takes is a little bit of know-how and you're creating barcodes in very little time!

What would software be without icons? Would it be like looking at a tree without leaves? For some reason, a tree just looks more like a tree when it has leaves. Right?

So, this video is about how FileMaker uses SVG icons within it’s buttons. If you’ve always wondered how to make the most of FileMaker’s support of SVG icons, then look no further. In this video I’ll show you my own personal workflow for creating and integrating icons into a FileMaker solutions. You can integrate icons into your solution in a surprisingly quick fashion if you’re willing to get familiar with a bit of node and gulp.

Of course, even if you have no desired to install node.js, you may very well find tips and tricks which will help you expedite the process of integrating icons.

When you attempt to translate human interaction from the real world into a database, that translation isn’t always the most ideal.

Within a database, you’re storing data within rows and columns and the real world isn’t always laid out so neatly. This is where using an image or graphic fills the gap and shortens that bridge of understanding for the user.

A good example would be a dental office and scheduling appointments within 2 hour blocks of time throughout the day. The office has a physical layout and a fixed number of stations. True, your standard calendaring application can take care of this, however, the person interacting with that data has to interpret it and translate it into understanding which relates to the physical world in which they are interacting with the chairs and equipment. What if certain procedures require certain facilities - as they most often do?

The ideal solution then, in many cases, is to allow a person to interact with that data in the most visually accurate way - with an image or graphic. The problem is, people move things around. But, what if this process can be accomplished super easily - why not go for the image?

In this video, I showcase how you can easily take the output of a standard SVG graphic and provide a level of interaction which allows for solving a lot of real-world data translation issues. If you like making “easy-to-use” solutions, then make sure and add this knowledge to your FileMaker tool belt!