Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Please Join Us March 1st: Pause On Error Unconference Recap

Published on February 21, 2011. 0 Comments

Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, March 1st 2011 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office.

(NOTE: This is a date change from our usual schedule.)

414 Commerce Dr., Suite 150, Fort Washington, PA 19034
Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/37mhhh

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting:
http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=1167

PAUSE ON ERROR NY RECAP

Four members of PFUG trekked up to New York for Pause On Error this month to present, listen, discuss and debate. During this meeting we’ll share what we heard and learned, and share our thoughts.

Jason Mundok, Colin Keefe, Kevin Ayers and Dan Stein attended POE, and depending on who’s available we’ll see what we can glean from them.

We’ll also be giving away a door prize, courtesy of our User Group membership with PeachPit Press (it’s the one I forgot to give away last month).

Drupal 7: Visual QuickStart Guide
- Tom Geller, author

http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321619218

About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group

The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group was founded in 2004 as an initiative by FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum member IT Solutions Consulting. The group’s goal is to provide an open forum for FileMaker developers and those interested in FileMaker to meet, brainstorm and network.

We hold meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month at 6PM, in the office of IT Solutions Consulting, Inc., at 414 Commerce Drive, Suite 150, Fort Washington PA.
Meetings are open to all, regardless of background and there’s no charge to attend.

Please subscribe to our Mailing List to get announcements on upcoming meetings. The list is set to Announce only, so the volume is typically between one and 2 emails a month.

http://fmpug.com/mailman/listinfo/philly_fmpug.com/

You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps:

http://www.phillyfilemaker.org/

Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/phillyfilemaker

We’re also an FMPug Chapter: http://www.fmpug.com/ Consider membership today, especially if you purchase training, plugins, 3rd party products, or web/filemaker hosting – FMPug membership affords considerable discounts across a range of offerings.

Finally, The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group is hosted by:

IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.
Employee ownership – fueling our innovation, strengthening your business.
http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/
Learn more about us on our new Videos/Blog Page!
http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/videos_blog/index.html

 
Published in Conferences, Meeting Announcements and PauseOnError by Colin Keefe. Tags: Tags: , , , , , , , .

Use “Set Window Title” Script Step to Give Users Feedback on What They’re Waiting For

Published on February 7, 2011. 1 Comment

Problem: Users are waiting for your FileMaker solution to perform an action, but it takes a long time.

How to help ease the pain: Use “Set Window Title” script step to give them feedback.

FileMaker has no built in progress indicator, so whether your scripted processes take 10 seconds or 10 minutes, your users might not know what’s going on. You can create layouts or pop-up windows to tell them “Hang on, I’m working on something,” but it’s hard to give them live feedback. If you’re jumping around to different contexts and doing other things, you usually use a “Freeze Window” script step to hide the ugly guts of the system from the user. So to update information for the user, you have to return to the status layout and refresh or re-freeze the window.

As a developer, that adds a lot of work for you. That’s time you could be spending on making your processes faster, or making your user experience better.

In steps “Set Window Title”. It’s a fast, easy to maintain way to give your users some insight into what you’re working on, or how much longer they need to wait. The best part of it all is you don’t need a “Refresh Window” step to update it. The window title gets updated and is not context dependent. Just set it and forget it.

Set Window Title doesn't need a window refresh...

 
Published in FileMaker, Tips and tricks and Uncategorized by Chad Sager. Tags: Tags: , .