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Our Library of Videos
Because of the rich UI experiences which JavaScript provides within a web browser, it makes sense to take advantage of the various possibilities. The difficulty may be putting all the pieces together in order to get something working correctly.
Fortunately, JavaScript isn't just for those "other developers". Those who already know what they're doing. You too, can easily integrate and use JavaScript within your own solutions. You simply need to be ready to learn enough in order to integrate successfully. You need to be a JavaScript integrator.
When you're comfortable with getting data in and out of FileMaker, then you're able to have all those rich experiences which are found within the world of the web browser.
An open source project named Carafe, created by Jeremiah Small, and released by Soliant in April of 2019, has provided a very easy way to integrate various JavaScript resources. In this video I walk through the tool and some of its features. I then show how to take one of the bundles and integrate into a brand new FileMaker file. If you're looking for more reasons to explore the use of JavaScript within your solution then this video provides a great place to start.
JavaScript, it may sound scary because learning any new technology, which includes so much more than FileMaker, feels like an overwhelming amount of new learning. The great thing is, learning just a few little pieces at a time is the best way to learn - little-by-little. So let's start with just a few little pieces.
In this video, I walk through the basics of how you get started with JavaScript within FileMaker Pro. How it's implemented and how to execute things. The great thing about getting started is once you learn a little bit, you tend to get addicted to learning more about what's possible.
It turns out, when a technology, such as JavaScript, takes off as much as it has, you gain a significant amount of technological leverage. You don't have to spend as much of your own time creating "all the things", you just piece together the "various things" to make the "one thing" which is "your thing"! But, as with all things, you need to know what's going on behind the scenes so you can fix, change or troubleshoot what may not work quite right. Which, seems to be the case with all kinds of software development.
Solving real world problems within FileMaker can actually be quite fun. It's a certain type of challenge which includes making something fast, efficient and easy to maintain. It's the type of thing which keeps us developers and learners going.
Like most all software products, which allow for a high degree of creativity, it boils down to knowing the feature set and what's possible. When you learn the underpinnings, and you can really wrap your head around what the limitations or consequences are, you can often come up with really creative data solutions.
In this video, I provide a solution to a problem which I had long forgotten about and previously solved. Yet, there it was, the same problem needing to be solved. The issue is related to sequencing a list of values so they sort in a specific order. When the order of values can be arbitrary and up to the user, you want to facilitate the sorting ability as easily as possible. When you try to solve this problem, you come across various issues related to how you chose to implement the UI portion.
So, with this video, I present to you the underpinnings of how I go about solving these types of problems by understanding how you can manipulate data within FileMaker. Sit back and relax as we take a look at Optimized Sequence Sorting.
Over the years, I've created a number of videos which showcase saving the state of various situations. For example, saving how many and which windows a user has open, saving the window positions and also saving the state of which panels are selected on multi-panel objects. Such as tab panels and sliders.
In this video, we revisit the topic because we now have a newer function within FileMaker 18 which makes it even easier to save which panels are frontmost within your user UI. While I personally think this is something FileMaker should do natively, it's currently under our control. With a little bit of code, we can easily keep track of which panes are frontmost and then restore those panes when navigating through the solution.
If keeping things clean and easy for your users is something you desire, then this video will have both the sample code and the instruction you need in order to take full advantage of FileMaker's While() statement and how to keep track of what's going on in the UI while the user is using it.
While it's been around for a few years now, there aren't too many developers in the world of FileMaker who have explored Node-RED. Created by IBM and made open source in 2016, this visual programming tool may start to make waves in the FileMaker world.
A wonderfully generous developer named Lui de la Parra has made it possible to use Node-RED with FileMaker's own Data API. This means that anything in the world of Node-RED is now accessible to FileMaker. This is an amazingly powerful technology for connecting all kinds of things, both physical and virtual, into the FileMaker ecosystem.
In this video, I walk through my own personal use of Node-RED and showcase how I use it in order to capture XML data from an online store and process that data directly into FileMaker.
Whether you need to collect moisture data from physical hardware in a vineyard to interacting with any online web service or API, Node-RED, in conjunction with the Data API, will allow you to realize all kinds of powerful solutions!
When first learning about file operations, while working with PHP, I remember having to learn about the concept of buffers and buffer streams. Fortunately, we're not quite there yet within FileMaker. But, we have arrived at the point of learning about the nitty-gritty details of understanding all the details of files and how they factor into the FileMaker universe. FileMaker 18 released support for file IO and we're certainly going to be taking advantage of it in this new world of APIs and inter-connected applications.
If you've been using various FileMaker plugins which support the input and output of file data, then this video and its lessons may not be necessary. However, if you've rarely or never dealt with file IO (input & output), then you will certainly gain a lot of knowledge when watching this video and using the included file.
If your solution has the need to either output or input data from external systems or files, then understanding line endings and encodings is the key to working with files. Beyond the basics, we have FileMaker specific implementation of file IO. And, that's exactly what this video covers!
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.
Within every industry there's a certain terminology used to express how things work and how to accomplish things. FileMaker is obviously no different.
So, with this video, we start discussing some of the FileMaker specific terms and terminology.
You may be familiar with the routine when you have multiple duplicate records in your database. You end up having to reference multiple sources. Which can be a real pain. Ultimately, you end up needing to decide which record is the master and then merging as much of the data as possible from any of the duplicates.
This is a common scenario with any multi-user database system. Where, anytime you have more than one person working on the same data, you can inevitably end up with duplicates.
There are a few ways to deal with duplicates. The first is to try to prevent them in the first place. While this is certainly possible, there are other times where routine imports come from external sources or you've simply allowed duplicates to be entered into the database.
The question now is, "How do you identify duplicates?" and how do you address the fact that our eyes can trick us when we're looking at data which appears exactly the same - yet it's not. This video will show you how to truly approach duplicates and how to deal with them by giving you full control over defining what determines a duplicate or not.
It's just like when you see someone who is well-dressed, clean and sharp looking, your FileMaker user interface is no different. You're more impressed by that sharp, clean look. In this regard, not having something on your user interface is quite possibly one of the very things which makes your user interface look that much cleaner.
Portals and list views, pretty much anything which repeats itself many times, can be very overwhelming when there are a lot of options. Quite simply, if there are too many buttons, it's too cluttered.
In this video, we talk about getting those buttons off your user interface and making them available only when needed. It's a great way to start to clean up your user interface and make sure that certain option are only available after the user has made the selection of where they want to go next.
It's a simple concept, but one which is often ignored by newer developers because the examples they are shown do not take advantage of the opportunities to hide these types of buttons. So, we end up with FileMaker solutions which are littered with buttons on every list view row and every portal row. So, let's get rid of them until they are needed!