ISO FileMaker Magazine

Most everyone likes to know what's going on when something is happening. Being kept in the dark is something which causes possible anxiety and certainly a fair amount of impatience. So, it's always nice to provider your user with a little bit of status when there's some type of progress happening.

Fortunately, this is a very easy thing to solve when a lot of the work is already done for you. All you need to do is wire things up within a FileMaker web viewer.

Using the information within this video you can easily present your users with an indeterminate progress indicator. At least letting them know that something is happening rather than nothing.

One of the most enjoyable things about working in FileMaker, or any development environment where looping is supported, is the pure joy of automation.

Even thinking about checking off any more than a few records at a time brings me to a mental state of counting the number of seconds it takes for the single action itself, then multiplying times the number of objects I need to affect.

So the question arrives. “How do I automate this?” or “How do I make this process easier for the user?”. The answer, quite simply is applying the knowledge you have about solving it. There are, however, times when you just don’t know what can be done to make it even easier.

In this video, I showcase a technique and method for offering users with the ability to checkmark whole sub-ranges of records by simply clicking a button within a sub-summary area of a list view. It’s a wonderfully sublime method of solving the problem. And, understanding the fundamentals means you can use the method for a lot more than just a simple checkbox.

When developing in FileMaker, the feature set it offers accounts for a good number of common tasks and provides easy solutions for most of these problems. There are a few issues, however, which FileMaker either hasn’t addressed or wants to leave up to the developer.

One of these is saving the current window state. This applies to tab panels, sliders and moving from layout to layout or when closing the file. The desired result, for the end user, is to simply return to where they left off when returning to a layout.

Obviously, it’s very comforting to come home to the same arrangement of furniture after leaving your home. If a user leaves a layout having made a complex selection of tab panels, sliders and button bars then it makes sense to be the courteous developer and put them back into the same state.

This video showcases a powerful method for saving the state of windows. It applies to all panel type objects and even when closing the file. If keeping your user interface nice and tidy is something you’re interested in for your own solutions then make sure and watch this video!

For me, it's always been one of those itches I could never quite scratch. You know, the fact that in order to show some of your user interface graphics you needed to store these graphics within your database - along with your data.

In fact, it's pretty much accepted that you create container fields, many times within a dedicated table, to store graphics and resources.

The issue I had with this approach was not that it needs to be done, but the fact that the user interface graphics were not separated out from the rest of my data. I wanted to be able to simply "draw" graphics onto the layout.

Well, this itch can now be scratched with FileMaker 13's new Base64* set of functions. While you still need at least one container field in order to render your graphics, the new additions have reduced the number of fields in total.

Watch this video to gain a full understanding of how this works and just how easy it is to integrate into your own solutions!