Archive Posts (Page 47)

In our article about FileMaker 10, we promised some tips on using the new Set Field by Name script step, which gives FileMaker the power of indirection. This is a complicated concept, and we’ll be posting some real world examples along the way, as well. But first, we’ll give you a full explanation of the new script step and function that make indirection possible. Set Field by Name The core of the new feature is the Set Field by Name script step. Read more…

If you thought FileMaker 9 was a big update (and we clearly did) you’ll be thrilled with number 10. It starts with some flagship new features like Script Triggers (finally!) and infinitely more useful Sub-Summary parts, plus the usual round of small tweaks and improvements. But this release takes it one step further with a total overhaul of FileMaker’s most ubiquitous interface element. Gone is the Status Area, replaced by a freshly designed, much more useful Status Toolbar. Read more…

An interesting question popped up on the TechNet discussion list this evening: I have a list of records with dates, which often repeat from one record to the next. I want all the same dates to be one colour. Then the next date would be another color. The background color of the date field would alternate from one color to the other as the date changes. I’ve never run in to this need before, but it sounds like something that would come in handy. Read more…

FileMaker’s Save Records as PDF script step is, like, totally awesome. But there’s one teeny tiny issue: it sure likes to crash. We use this feature a lot with our customers, and under the right set of circumstances, we can see crashing on half or more of the machines our scripts run on. Luckily, it turns out this problem is easy to fix. It is such a frequent problem that I thought I’d save the googlers of the world some time and write up the solution here. Read more…

Most FileMaker Pro developers know the real power of FileMaker can be found in the Manage Scripts window. In all but the simplest cases, a database without scripts is like a four year old’s take on the Mona Lisa: “What does it do, daddy?” If you want your database to actually do something, FileMaker’s scripting tools are your best friends. Of course if you’re reading this, chances are good you already know that. Read more…

FileMaker is a powerful database: You can build full-featured business applications with relative ease, share them with hundreds of users, and pack gigabytes of data away for easy access. Despite all its strengths, though, not everyone uses FileMaker for every database need. The truth is there are lots of situations that call for something a little more massive, either to handle a higher transactional volume, or a large number of users. Read more…

This article is out of date now. If you’re using FileMaker Pro 10 or later, you can accomplish this goal more easily using script triggers. See this newer article for details. If you use Tab Controls a lot (and don’t we all?) then you may have run into a little snag: When you switch to a different layout, then come back again, the default tab panel comes back to the front. Read more…

These days, most FileMaker Pro databases are just one file. When you open this file, you see one window on your screen, full of all the data and interface you (or your colleagues) put there. And often, this one window is enough. After all, you can freely switch layouts, perform finds, and (with FileMaker 9 or later) resize the window to get a bigger view. But the truth is, FileMaker can do a whole lot more. Read more…

Many people were surprised by Tuesday’s announcement from FileMaker Inc.: A new “desktop database” application called Bento. Nobody I know had any idea this was in the works, and I’m pretty sure it is the first product from FMI that is not directly FileMaker Pro related since Claris Organizer was released back in 1827 or thereabouts. For a FileMaker announcement, Bento is getting a lot of coverage in the Mac media. Read more…

On the off chance you’ve been hiding under an old Microsoft Access box for the last couple weeks, let me be the first to tell you that FileMaker now supports direct links to SQL databases. In other words, you can use table from a MySql, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server database right in FileMaker with no synchronization, no imports, and no messy SQL programming. This is A Big Deal™ and many of you are justifiably very excited about it. Read more…

There’s a lively discussion on the TechNet mailing list right now about the pros and cons of FileMaker Pro’s Object Grids feature. [ed: TechNet is now Claris Community. The link has been updated accordingly.] This is certainly an opinionated discussion, and there is clearly no “right” way. A lot of people find Object Grids annoying because it makes it harder to line things up sometimes. Here’s a quick tip to help get Object Grids to behave themselves. Read more…

This is a quickie: If you were using the beta release of the PHP API for FileMaker, there are some things you should know. First, the beta API expires in October 7th, 2007. If you have a live site using the API, you must update to FileMaker 9 and the new API before then or your site will stop working. Now is the time to make the switch, before you have to do it in a pinch. Read more…

Today’s Find mode article is short-and-sweet. If you ever feel it would be easier to tell FileMaker what you don’t want it to find, the Omit checkbox is your friend. In fact, you can use this esoteric Find mode widget to create incredibly complex queries that target exactly what you want. This article is part of our series on Find mode. Click here to visit the first in the series, which links to all the others. Read more…

FileMaker has some pretty powerful reporting tools. You can decorate your layouts any way you see fit, control which record show, in what order, and with any particular fields arranged to your liking. You can even summarize your data in numerous ways to produce totals, subtotals, and other aggregate analysis. But until FileMaker 9, there has been one glaring restriction: A report can only show records from one table. If you want to show new products on one page, and new customers on the next, you’re out of luck. Read more…

Did you know that if you shift-click on a field formatted as radio buttons, you can select more than one choice? Even if you don’t know this, chances are some day some user will figure it out. Yuck. Here’s a short-but-sweet technique to deal with the problem. And you’ll see how to apply the same concept to do some cool stuff. Just in case you think I’m foolin’, here’s a picture. Read more…

If you have a relational database (one with several connected tables) and you do any scripting at all, you’ll almost certainly ask yourself a question at some point: How can I tell if the record I’m on has related records? This article explains the scenarios you may run in to, and how best to deal with them. Before I start pontificating, let’s set up a scenario. I have the simplest of all possible relational databases. Read more…

Date values (and to a lesser extent, time values) are exceptionally common in database applications. And it isn’t at all unusual to want to ask you database interesting date-related questions, like “How many orders do we get on Tuesdays?” or “What was our total enrollment for the first quarter?” In fact, it is probably more common to look at ranges of dates than any particular date. Of course, if you’ve read our previous article on Find mode, you know how to find whole ranges of dates easily using find symbols. Read more…

Once you’ve mastered multiple requests, you’re ready to move on to the next Find Mode gem: Find Symbols. Using these bits of punctuation, you can tell FileMaker, when it goes about matching records to your find criteria, to be a little more flexible, or a little more strict. In this article, you’ll learn about each one. This article is part of our series on Find mode. Click here to visit the first in the series, which links to all the others. Read more…

The show has officially started. I’m seeing faces I haven’t seen in ages and having a blast. Here’s a quick recap of the highlights of DevCon so far, from my perspective. The Keynote The day began with the keynote presentation. Dominique started with the classic “Here’s what we’re doing” presentation. The biggest highlight was a slide showing strong growth of TechNet (vs. the old Associate FSA program). This is great news because it means more people are getting more involved in the greater FileMaker community. Read more…

I’m excited to let you all know that Jesse and I will be participating in a cool new dealio at DevCon. If you haven’t heard about it, here’s the scoop: Chris Kubica (author, developer, and all around FileMaker powerhouse), arranged for a special booth at DevCon to be staffed by reasonably good FileMaker folks like us. You can bring your problems, questions, and FileMaker challenges to the booth and get free advice. Read more…

Back in the late 19th century, when FileMaker Server 5.5 was released, one of its stellar new features was AutoUpdate. FileMaker Server can automatically install plug-ins on the connecting FileMaker Pro clients as needed. This is very cool, but there are a few gotchas, which are explained here. Note: AutoUpdate has been around since Server 5.5, and everything here applies in general. But this article was written with FileMaker Server 9 in mind. Read more…

[ed: This was the most popular post on Six Fried Rice by far. The diagram I made was translated into French and Japanese by community members (with permission) and passed around for years.] FileMaker Server 9 represents a pretty significant redesign of the FileMaker Server product line. One consequence of all the changes is that things may not work properly without reconfiguring your firewall(s). Improper firewall configuration can lead to all kinds of problems, some obvious (I can’t connect to my server) and some not-so-obvious (the Server Admin Console opens, and then hangs). Read more…

FileMaker’s find mode is a great feature. You can tell because, like all great technologies, it is easy to understand the first time you try it, and yet has a depth of capability that can be unlocked if you know a little more. Unfortunately, many FileMaker developers (and users) never venture beyond the simplest of finds. This series of articles aims to change that. The Basics Everybody knows that to do a find, you first switch to find mode (View → Find Mode). Read more…

In FileMaker 9 Tip #6 we explained how to use the new Append to PDF feature in FileMaker 9. With it, you can build up a PDF file over many steps in a script, to produce a much more complex and data-rich PDF than was ever possible before. One of our readers, Norman Foster, asked a very sensible question: This Append looks great but can it paginate across the entire set of PDF files. Read more…

This question came up on Macintouch: Can you import an ASCII (.txt) file into Filemaker Pro 9 that uses a dollar sign ($) as a field delimiter within a record? The file is too big to bring into Excel first (on the way to filemaker). Macintouch Reader [ed: Alas the Macintouch link seems to be dead and it appears the site was blocking archive.org. I’ve left the original link in place. Read more…

One of the most exciting new features in FileMaker 9 is Conditional Formatting. I think this is awesome because now you can apply dynamic custom styles to layout elements without adding dozens of crufty unstored calcs to your table. When I first started playing with conditional formatting, though, I felt a little let down by one thing: There’s apparently no way to make something disappear using conditional formatting. I often have the need to show something to my user — an informational message, indicator icon, or even a button — only under certain conditions. Read more…

In the old days, we used to joke that FileMaker’s user interface tools were stuck in the 1970s. You could make a long list of things every application in the world did that were hard to do in your own FileMaker-based systems. In the last several years, though, FileMaker Inc. has knocked a lot of biggies off this list: Custom Menus, Tab Controls, modern-looking check boxes and radio buttons. Oh wait, scratch that last one. Read more…

FileMaker Pro 9 has another awesome new feature: Autoresize. Now your layout elements can stretch their legs when you give them a bigger window. Auto-resize lets you tell FileMaker how different elements on the layout should stretch and move as the window is resized by the user. But it can be a little tough to understand exactly how it works. Here are three tips to help you take best advantage of this awesome new feature. Read more…

There comes a time in every FileMaker developer’s life when they need to export a file temporarily. Maybe you’re exporting records only to import them right back in again later. Or perhaps your creating a PDF file that you only want to email to someone. And with this need comes an eternal question: Where should you put it? Finally, in FileMaker 9, we have an answer. In fact, every modern operating system provides a perfect place for this sort of thing: The so-called “temp folder. Read more…

How many times have you wanted to produce a report that showed two different lists of records? Or a couple pages of summary information, then a list of raw data? Or a title page, then a few pages of charts, then one list of data, then a few more charts, then a second list? In FileMaker, reports are tied to layouts, and a layout is tied to just one table. Of course you can just print several reports one after the other, but that doesn’t help if you want to email the report as a PDF, or store it on the file server. Read more…

FileMaker Pro 9.0 made its debut a few short weeks ago, and it seems like its ability to connect directly to corporate databases is all anyone wants to talk about. ESS is great and all, but you may be wondering how 9 helps regular FileMaker folk like us. In point of fact, 9 is chock full of fantastic new features that even the most humble database can benefit from right away. Read more…

A recent post on the TechNet mailing list posed an interesting question [ed: TechNet is now Claris Community. The link has been updated accordingly.]: When displaying an image in a web viewer, is there any way to scale the image to fit? Of course container fields have this ability built right in (by way of the Format → Graphic command). But there are several reasons you might want to show pictures in a web viewer instead. Read more…

One of the least talked about features of FileMaker 9 is a new calculation doodad called Self. Although the primary purpose of this function is to facilitate the Conditional Formatting feature (which can perform calculations on such unnamed items as text objects and buttons), Self comes in handy in lots of common situations. The Self function is simple in concept: it returns the value of whatever object it lives in. For instance, if you put Self in a validation calculation, it will return the value in the field being validated. Read more…

Another day, another awesome new FileMaker 9 feature. Today’s special: so called data URLs. In a nutshell, you don’t need a web site to use web viewers anymore. Now they can easily (read: without crazy exports and obscene path hacks) show data pulled right from the FileMaker database itself. This is, like, way cooler than it sounds. Live HTML Previews Perhaps the most immediately obvious way to use data URLs is to allow live preview of HTML data right in FileMaker. Read more…

So you’ve heard about the new FileMaker PHP API. You want to put FileMaker data on the web, but you’re not sure where to start. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but using PHP to publish FileMaker to the web is easy, fun, and totally awesome. This (admittedly lengthy) article tells you everything you need to know to get started. Way back in version 4, FileMaker added built-in web publishing capabilities to FileMaker Pro. Read more…

If you’ve used a computer sometime in the last five years, chances are you’ve seen tooltips. These informational little boxes pop up to help you out when you point at just about anything on the computer screen, from a toolbar icon to a truncated file name (Figure 1). Tooltips are so common, in fact, that many users know to look for them whenever they’re not sure what a particular button, icon, slider, or knob will do. Read more…

The fastest growing platform for data-rich interactive applications is not Microsoft Window, Mac OS X, or Linux. Instead, more and more businesses turn to the Web to deploy software systems. Theses so-called “Web Applications” are not limited to high-traffic public Internet services (like Google, MapQuest, or the Internet Movie Database). A web-based system can be made available only to key partners, clients, off-site employees, or even just in-office users. Although developing a web-enabled database is sometimes not as simple, straightforward, or inexpensive as a traditional FileMaker database, in certain circumstances, it is an excellent option. Read more…

It seems like Microsoft Excel is installed on just about every PC in the world. As such, a lot of new FileMaker developers are already Excel wizards. In fact, many new FileMaker projects begin life as a replacement for an Excel spreadsheet that has outgrown itself. If you are an Excel star trying to wind your way through the FileMaker universe, you may be stymied at first by all the things you thought you knew that just don’t seem to apply anymore. Read more…

Relationships hold a special place in the world of a database designer: They’re simultaneously your most powerful tool and the most difficult to figure out. If your first trip to FileMaker’s Relationships tab left you scratching your head, you’re not alone. FileMaker goes a long way towards making relationships easy to set up, manage, and use. But the real trick is understanding the concepts behind relationship building. In this article, you’ll learn how to add a sprinkling of relational capability to your own FileMaker database. Read more…

One thing we miss about Mac OS 9 is the ability to print Finder window content for media archival purposes. Sure, you could select all items in a Finder window, copy them, and then paste the data into a text editor, but you’d wind up with a chaotic list of file names with no order. Fortunately, Unix can take organization up a notch. Using the Terminal, you can create a file that lists a folder’s contents, which you can then edit and print. Read more…

Apple’s accomplished the impossible with AMac OS X: It’s created an operating system that geeks, grandmas, creative types, business-minded peeps, and even kindergartners can love. And not only does it offer a user-friendly and stylish graphical interface, but it’s got Unix at its core. While a productive Mac-head need not care a whit about Unix, that’s not to say a little Unix can’t come in handy. When a Mac quick-fix eludes you, the Terminal-OS X’s handy portal to its Unix side- can save the day. Read more…

What You Need Mac with DVD-ROM or SuperDrive and Apple DVD Player Mac OS 10.2 or later ($129, www.apple.com) iTunes 3 or later (free, www.apple.com) OSEx 0.0110a1 or later (free, www.cs.buffalo.edu/-afaversa) mAC3dec 1.6 or later (free, http://sourceforge.net/projects/mac3dec) DVD with music Norah Jones: Live in New Orleans, KISS: Live in Las Vegas, Schoolhouse Rock—we’ve invested a good chunk of change building up our DVD collection, but must we remain trapped in our abode every time we just want to listen to the music? Read more…

FileMaker Pro is generally considered the easiest to use powerful relational database available, but it does not have built in support for graphical charting of Data. To accomplish the common and powerful task, developers had two options: Get fast flexible charting from a separate application, which required a time consuming multi step process, or get slow inflexible charting in FileMaker through incredibly complicated and tedious tricks. øAzium Charts puts easy to use, flexible and fast charting right in FileMaker Pro. Read more…

øAzium Strings is a FileMaker Plug-in that provides you with new calculation functions for working with text strings. Among other things you can: convert a text-string into your desired format extract an item from a list within a text string distinguish between upper and lower case extract sub-strings Most of what this plug-in does can be accomplished with normal FileMaker calculations, but øAzium Strings significantly simplifies common string manipulation formulas. Your calculations will be easier to write, easier to read, and easier to modify. Read more…