ISO FileMaker Magazine

Within the world of FileMaker development, there are always those golden gems which become the hallmarks of "how to do something" - despite there often being more than one way to solve a problem. For managing lists of data, prior to the existence of the While function, the go-to custom function is CustomList. When it comes to variable output display using a portal you'll almost always reference Virtual List as the commonly understood approach.

When it comes to saving user state, there's always been a number of ways accomplish this. But, for my part, I'm going to declare Layout Variables as the way to solve many issues when it comes to saving user state in FileMaker.

While the term "Layout Variables" can apply to either locally scoped variables or global ones used within the layout, the concept is such that you're using variables to store things for the specific layout the user is on. When it comes to saving state, whether for the specific session or in order to persist, there has to be a simple and easy way to store, reference and retrieve these values and I think that solution is finally here. In this video, I showcase the Custom Functions and methods I use to implement Layout Variables.

If your FileMaker solution has a need to maintain state and make it easy to both store and restore global variables used for the user interface, then you simply must watch this video.

When you need to display data which is dynamic by nature, it tends to boil down to who's viewing the data and how do they need it presented. There's typically more than one way to solve the same problem and knowing what your options are helps you make a good decision when it comes to displaying that data.

In this video, I showcase what I would consider are the top three methods of displaying dynamic data. Starting with the easiest method first, we talk about how to make things easier by using a templating method to get the dynamic data on screen or for hard copy output.

From there, I discuss the other options you can use for presenting data dynamically from within FileMaker.

Hopefully, we can all agree that when something is more fully refined, it's the craftsmanship which showcases the higher quality of the work. The time and effort put into making something that much cleaner and that much more efficient.

Such is the case with enhancing FileMaker's portals. Sure, you can use portals as they're provided, and you'll certainly get all the benefits of using them "as is". But, what happens when you want your solution to be that much easier to use and that much more impressive?

That's when you take the opportunity to enhance your portals such that they're more attractive and more user friendly. In this video, we take a look at the various steps you can take to make your portals a bit more attractive and in most cases more useful.

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.