Okay, everybody looks at the new FileMaker Pro 11 and sees the new features: charts, portal filter, quick find, inspector, snapshot links, cf import, …
But you actual have to work with the new version to discover hidden gems.
I am not talking about unexpected features – these you would find in the FileMaker Help section “New features in FileMaker Pro 11″. I rather talk about these little changes, that get rid of annoying things. Or little things that could make your life easier.
Previous versions had flaws and annoyances, requiring you to create workarounds or avoid certain situations at all – again and again. Finally we got used to it and would not talk about it anymore. “Do not think about it and it might vanish!”
But now I work with FileMaker Pro 11 and I find little gems:
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Currently I work a lot with the script triggers in FileMaker 10. They are a great tool to create a user-friendly interface. But working so intensively with triggers also reveals some missing features. For example, a script trigger is active all the time. As soon as a trigger event is assigned to a script, it will always fire, whenever the event occurs. But this effect is not always welcome. The script command New Window opens a new window with the current layout. If it has any layout triggers assigned, it will fire and process the related scripts.
Before FileMaker 10, when we were using plug-ins like zippScript, we had the chance to disable the triggers. Something similar I like to see in a future FileMaker version: a way to deactivate triggers. And chip in an effective trigger management:
- Controlled trigger deactivation (hard- and soft-coded)
- Trigger logs with information about the trigger event
- Additional trigger information, e. g. a list of all defined triggers for the current layout (perhaps in the Layout Setup window)
- Enhanced Script Debugger with more control regarding trigger events, e. g. a ‘Pause on trigger event’ option
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The basis of each computer operation is binary logic. Zeros and ones are transformed with simple operations into zeros and ones again. FileMaker is hiding its binary roots very successfully. Only now and then the user can catch a glimpse of it. Some custom functions use binary elements, e. g. Get( ActiveModifierKeys ). And of course you can build logical expressions for If and Case functions, using and/or/not operators, but every value is used as a single logical value. Every number different from 0 is taken as the logical value 1 (True). There is no difference between 1 and 999, for FileMaker both values are a logical 1.
Bitwise operation
I need bitwise opertion for my projects. You might run into the same situation, perhaps managing a collection of flags. Each bit represents a flag. To set flags or ready the status of one or more flags requires binary calculations. In that case you have to take whatever FileMaker has to offer and build the missing parts yourself.
I wrote some custom functions to provide basic logical operations: bit.not, bit.and, bit.or, and bit.xor. Two more functions complete the package; bit.isSet for bit testing and bit.bitset to display decimal numbers in their binary representation.
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In my projects, I often use modifier keys (SHIFT, CTRL, …) to offer the user additional features. For example, I use buttons to go to the previous or next record. This behavior changes, when the CTRL key is pressed. Now, the buttons redirect to the first or last record.
A function from my Custom Function Vault makes it easy to work with modifier keys. It creates variables, representing the state of the modifier keys:
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