Optimizing FileMaker 12 Layouts

Wow! The FileMaker 12 release has either been a "love it" or "hate it" experience for a number of developers. Regardless of where you stand, the new file format and the layout changes are here to stay. It's the future of FileMaker and how things will be rendered.

Speaking of how things are rendered, there was a very enlightening session at the 2012 Annual Devcon in Miami, FL. FileMaker Inc, in particular Andrew Paulsen, presented a topic named Under the Hood: FileMaker Pro 12 Layouts & Themes. In this session it was covered that FileMaker Layouts act and behave very much like web pages do - hmmnnnnnnn...

Sure, many developers want to be protected from having to know yet another language (such as CSS), but those developers will quickly be left behind - as their solutions won't be optimized.

In this video I extend what was discussed, and cover how layouts can be optimized for the best network performance possible. If you want your FileMaker 12 solution to have the best possible chance of being both fast and flexible then you need to know what is going on!

Comments

Extremely well put together video, Matt. Very informative and this knowledge will be very helpful for me.
Thanks a lot.

Watching your video here on Optimizing Filemaker 12 layouts a few times is awesome. I love the ability it has but was wanting to know if changing things in the tweak tool on an object and pasting it back in like for instance a box with round corners and the borders to different colors and shadows etc that ive seen you do a couple things on a box here, does it keep that effect even in IWP? We have a current solution thats IWP and to get rond corners on buttons we have to make an image in photoshop with different sizes we need for each one and then import the image into filemaker increasing the size tremendously.

I know IWP doesnt support round corners as of yet, at least if i make a box with round corners for the client side, its square hen viewed in IWP.

Mark Johnson
Aroma Impressions
mark@aromaimpressions.com