My blog celebrates its 1st birthday. One year ago I started with a long post, supposedly leaking early information about FileMaker Pro 10. At that time, the newest version FileMaker Pro 10 was out three months. A couple visitors read my post, got confused, got exited, and finally got it when they read the last line of the post that everything was just an April Fools’ joke.

But was it just a joke? I though about it more as a wish list or an suggestion for new features in FileMaker. Did it helped? At least some visitors had their fun reading the post. And I know, it got the attention at FileMaker Inc. It is up to you to decide, if any of my suggestions were picked up by FileMaker and used as inspiration for the new program. FileMaker Pro 11 is finally there. It offers many new features, many of them have not been on my published wish list (I never wrote about charts).

But some new things were not so far from my suggestions. The new Inspector for example was mentioned in my post – not under the name Inspector of course, but I extended the old Info box to offer the developer better access to change object attributes. And I said something about merge fields and the problem with the long names and therefore over-sized merge objects. FileMaker allows now to use Merge Variables, and these can be as short as a simple “$i”. So, am I responsible for these new features in FileMaker Pro 11? I do not think so. I rather like to think, that some people at FileMaker and I are thinking in the same direction.

April Fools’ joke 2.0?

Some friends and developers, even some people at FileMaker reminded me of the upcoming April Fools’ day, and suggested, I should write another joke post. But I decided not to do the same thing again. First of all, FileMaker Pro 11 is out for just some weeks. I think it is way to early to talk about FileMaker Pro 12. I am still discovering new features (and some bugs) in the current version. Some of them are not even advertised or documented (or I have not found it in the help pages yet). For example, typing a Tab character in the Expression Editor is now possible. And they fixed the window sizing bug (– kind of).

Instead of looking for information about the next version, you should discover all the features in the current one. If you have not get your hands on a FileMaker Pro 11, go to FileMaker’s website and download a free trial. But for everybody out there, hoping for a new preview of FileMaker Pro 12, I will post my new wish list some day. In the meantime, you might enjoy this little game.

Do you remember? By heart?

FileMaker Pro 10 is now ‘snow from yesteryear’. You are working with FileMaker Pro 11 now. But have you already forgotten, how FileMaker Pro 10 looks like? I took a screen shot of my FileMaker version and publish it here. But something happened – I guess, April Fool has his finger in the pie – some errors made it into the pictures. This is not what FileMaker looks like. Can you spot these errors? By heart, without starting your own FileMaker program to compare?

You are not bad, when you spot 10 differences. You are good when you find 15 errors. If you know your tools, you keep looking. I made over twenty little changes in this picture. Who finds all of them?

Sorry, there will be no price for the winner, except of course endless bragging rights – until the next picture game.

FileMaker Pro 10 Picture Puzzle - Can you find 20 or more errors?