A couple days ago I received a package from April L’Assange. She is (in her own words) “currently not working for FileMaker Inc.”, but she had something I might be interested in. In the package I found a DVD with screenshots, sample files and a program, supposedly FileMaker 12 in alpha status. The files I saw were really exciting. Some of the things I found are described here. I might add more soon.

New File Format

First the bad news. I could not open the sample files (extension fpc) with my current FileMaker version. It looks like the file format will change with the new version; understandable with all the new features that were added to the program.

On the other side I was able to open fp7 files. A dialog popped up, asking my if I like to convert the file. Press OK and the database will be converted into a fpc file.

Manage Database

Developer Access

Before FileMaker 12 you had to go to the actual file to manage the fields and tables in this file. Now you can manage the database from all related FileMaker files as long as they are defined as external data sources and you have full access to the current and the related files.

This saves a lot of time when you manage bigger projects, especially when you try to separate data from layouts.

Table Comment

A minor new feature are table comments. You can add a comment to your table (similar to comments for fields), allowing better documentation of your database.

Field Alias

Each field may have an alias. There are different reasons why and when to use an alias. For example:

• The alias is used as the field label when the field is added to an layout. Without an alias the original field name is used.
• In import/export and sort dialogs you may use alias instead of field names. In case you use cryptic field names with pre- suffixes (_uc_TestSample_limit_n) alias are a great help. The common user will see a more readable name like “Sample Qty” and, if exported into Excel, the column will have the same name.

In privilege sets you can set the option whether field names, aliases, or both are accessible. This will definitely help an inexperienced user to select the right field in the sort dialog.

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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.
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