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Our Library of Videos
FileMaker 13 introduced a number of new features. While the feature list seemed a bit short, at least to the feature greedy developer, the new mobile specific features of Gesture taps, Popovers and Sliders will provide a wide variety of new functionality for months to come.
In the case of mobile design, the number of UI patterns which can be emulated now within FileMaker has grown significantly. Beyond straight-forward popovers, you can combine both older and newer functionality to accomplish some really cool stuff.
In this video, I showcase a UI pattern which provides a hidden menu. This is done with a new Slider control and is a very common pattern within the mobile space.
Beyond the simple slider/menu implementation, I also showcase the use of the Gesture controls and how you can determine if a tap is within a predefined area. This level of UI control allows you to decide when a script should fire or not. Very empowering stuff!
You can Watch the HD version on YouTube
Crafting a complex security setup within FileMaker can be a bit daunting. Possibly, because of how you interact with and establish security within FileMaker. Despite what may seem obvious, it isn't just about what FileMaker's default security provides, but how you integrate the controls which you have access too. When solution security setup and testing is the after thought, there's a lot of potential for accidental holes in the security model. However, if you take the upfront steps of setting things up from the beginning, the whole problem is a much easier nut to crack.
This video and the companion technique file will walk you through the process of establishing your security model. It offers some useful tips and tricks for working with FileMaker's cumbersome security dialogs and helps you test your security in a much more fluid way.
If you've felt like your solution was lacking in security and you knew there was more to take advantage of, then you'll certainly learn a few more things in this video. If you've never even worried about setting up security on your FileMaker solution then make sure to watch this video!
Prior to FileMaker 13, my interest in any of FileMaker's default themes was pretty much zero. Being that I personally enjoy the process of designing a nice user interface, I was content with creating, and hacking, whatever user interface I needed. I did this on pretty much every layout, one-by-one, using the Classic theme selected as the default.
Enter the world of FileMaker 13 and my perception of FileMaker themes has now made a full 180. You see, the advantage of custom themes, custom themed objects and the ability to have an unlimited number of these, themed objects that is, makes the process of truly theming a solution an EXTREMELY powerful proposition.
Envision this, your solution needs an update. It's looking a bit tired and some big company, like Apple, releases a new OS. This new OS starts to make your solution look even more tired and you would desperately love to update the look and feel. However, you seriously dread the prospect of walking through hundreds of layouts making individual changes to hundreds of objects - NO THANK YOU! Well, worry no more, this problem is all but solved if you really understand how FileMaker 13 implements new custom themes. If you're still wondering how powerful they are, then make sure to watch this tutorial video for a comprehensive understanding.
FileMaker 13 was released on December 3rd 2013 and this release is a very worthy upgrade! Many of the features are specific to mobile centric solutions but many other valuable new features were added as well.
Whether you need access to your FileMaker data via the new WebDirect functionality or you've been waiting years (like I have) for some features to be completed, like calculation based tab names and dialog buttons, there's sure to be something within FileMaker 13 which you'll appreciate.
This video provides an high level overview of all the major new features and updates to FileMaker 13.
You can Watch the HD version on YouTube
Once you understand the logical branching of an If() statement, it's easy to start combining a bunch of chunks of text for the purpose of data display. The problem, however, is things get really convoluted when you start to combine a variety of fields for consolidated output. You end up with a larger collection of many If statements and things become harder to read.
On the upside, one of the more enjoyable aspects of coding is discovering the elegance of concise and efficient code by using various functions in order to arrive at your desired output - without having the overhead and complex looking code.
The List function is one of those powerful functions which can be used to combine a bunch of text and then manipulate it into the desired output.
In this video, I showcase a starting point which has a number of conditional If statements and break this down into using just a few List functions.
I also show you how to leverage the list function in order to extract aggregate data which might otherwise add a good amount of overhead to the complexity of your solution.
If saving table occurrences and relationships is part of your solution agenda, then this video will have some useful information.
If your FileMaker solution doesn't currently have any type of error handling built in, there may come a day when you need to know what's going on. Especially when things don't work as expected. You see, here's the crux of the situation. While you can certainly control the behavior of your solution and how things work on the inside, you can't control the external operating system and other aspects beyond the guts of your own solution.
What this means is your Export Field or your Import Records script step may break on one given client for some reason or another. You've also built logic into your solution in which inevitable dependencies exist. If script A must run successfully, in order for the follow-on script B to run as well, you need to trap for any possible errors which may happen within script A. This is when you need your own error handling for your solution - beyond FileMaker's error handling for it's own environment.
Since error handling is one of the more boring aspects of programming, it's beneficial to have an easy-to-use and quick-to-implement system which can be added to any FileMaker solution. This technique file and video provides just such a solution!
A technically simple, yet highly functional FileMaker solution seems like the ideal type of solution. You won't have a maintenance nightmare and the end user payoff feels really good. The trick is meeting user expectations with simple solutions to problems not solved by FileMaker natively. Such is the case with remembering layout state within a solution. This can happen with tab panel objects quite easily - as this video will show.
By using a combination of script triggers and global variables, a "just-in-time" method of addressing this problem can be used. This keeps the solution light weight and more fluid within mobile only or hybrid deployments.
If you're looking for an easy solution to maintaining tab state then look no further than Remembered Tabs.
Pop-up menus are the de facto widget for making selections from multi-option fields on mobile devices. Sure, checkboxes are possible, but they take up as much space as you have items. Not very efficient given the limited space on smartphones and tablets.
So, on mobile, the two most viable solutions for making multiple selections for a single field are either portals or a pop-up menu. You can use an additional window as well, but that's a technique for another day.
FileMaker has long supported making multiple selections in a pop-up menu via the Shift modifier key. In FileMaker 11, however, this feature went way on Mac OS X. The feature went away but the functionality did not. In fact, we still need this functionality for keeping things nice and compact in mobile only or hybrid designs.
This video showcases a wonderful technique, which works on both desktop and mobile, for supporting a default multi-selection option on fields formatted as pop-up menus.
If you're tight on space and need to offer more than one selection within the same field then look no further than this powerful technique!
So, how exactly, do you debug your FileMaker solution while coding? I'd love to hear about it - seriously! It's always great to pick up a few new tips and tricks along the way. Speaking of tips, I shot this most recent video about the process of debugging.
Personally, I've used the Data Viewer for watch variables and environmental information, but I always ended up with some sort of FileMaker crash and had to revise how I approach things. FileMaker stores your watch variables within its preferences file and they get deleted if FileMaker crashes. Just in case you didn’t know.
When developing for mobile came onto the scene it became a bit more challenging to debug. You can't just open the Debugger within FileMaker Go and walk through the various steps of any given script.
Adaptation was required and has resulted in my latest methods of debugging. Over time I’ve learned about new tools and methods but the core of debugging often comes down to the tried and true method of using a Show Custom Dialog and just looking at what the output is. Hopefully, this video will have some more tips you can use to make the process less painful!
So you've integrated support for managing notes, and you'd really like your users to be able to view the full length of each note. The problem is FileMaker's portal object.
With portals, you get a fixed field width and height and it's the same for all related records shown within the portal. Sometimes it will chop the text off and other times it will show a lot of extra white space. Never fear, it's the wonderful web viewer to the rescue.
The trusty web viewer not only provides the dynamic resizing of objects based on how it renders content, but comes included with the powerful support of Javascript.
"But I don't want to learn Javascript." you say. Never fear, it's just one function and the rest is up to how you integrate within FileMaker.
This video will provide you with the technique file and content necessary to manage notes in a very effective manner. Learn the concepts used, and you'll expand your knowledge of FileMaker to a level where you can leverage that knowledge across many other aspects of your development!