We’re a FileMaker User Group serving the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware Region
At our DevCon Recap meeting earlier this week I mentioned MightyData’s FileMaker Feud session at DevCon. MightyData recently posted a video of the first round so we could relive the magic…or live the magic if you weren’t lucky enough to be there when it all went down! Check it out here: http://www.mightydata.com/blog/filemaker-feud-2011-round-1/
For those OS X users itching to get onto Lion, but FileMaker compatibility is holding you back, you have a dim green light. FileMaker just posted some details on FileMaker’s compatability.
Proceed with caution since there might some hidden ‘gotchas’ that haven’t come to light yet. But if you don’t use Web publishing, older excel exports (Pre-Excel 2007), Asian characters and 0 and negative decimal place, you might dip your toe in the water.
OS upgrades are serious business, especially with production systems, so we don’t recommend jumping in cold. Test on a development server and non-production clients first, and be sure and have a full backup of both your computer and custom FileMaker solution.
Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,
Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, April 26th 2011 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office.
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=1176 Continue reading ‘Please Join us April 26th: John Sindelar and Jesse Barnum’
Here’s the complete video feed of our PauseOnError recap meeting. Kevin Ayers, Dan Stein, Jason Mundok and Colin Keefe went to POE, and we share our many thoughts.
Shout out again to Kevin Ayers for handling all things video, so we can share this with the group and the interwebs.
As usual give it some time to load, it’s over an hour in length.
If you can’t see the embedded video, try downloading here.
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...
You might have said to yourself after reading my last cheerleading post on starting a FileMaker User Group (Why User Groups Matter), “Well, that’s all well and good, but you’re not the one trying to start a group in a virtual vacuum. Cheerleading’s easy.” Fine, point taken.
I realize that many of you are in regions that, on initial consideration, might not seem fertile ground for a user group. You may feel that being located in a smaller metropolitan area or rural region is an insurmountable roadblock to getting a group started. What’s the point of holding a first meeting if there’s no one else around?
Your first step is finding the 2 or 3 or 10 people you can connect with and agree to meet in person. We’ll get into the meat and potatoes of managing the group later; there’s no point talking about it until you’ve got enough interest to fill at least the seats around a kitchen table or bar booth. Finding people is, admittedly, hard. Luckily, there are plenty of online resources to datamine for prospects.
I ask for forbearance from those of you for whom all of this is painfully obvious. It’s not obvious to everybody, and this suite of blog posts is oriented to those at the beginner/intermediate stage of social networking (remember: user groups were perfecting social networking when Twitter’s founder was still in diapers). Continue reading ‘FileMaker User Groups: Thoughts and resources on getting started (Post #2)’
This is a side note – nothing to do with the upcoming meeting on the 26th (you have rsvped for that, right? Details here and RSVP here ).
Andy Gaunt at FMPug has generously offered to set up a second listserv for us, for group members to engage in discussion. It’s called PhillyFMTalk.
It’s opt-in; you won’t get on the list unless you explicitly send a subscribe email. Use it to talk about FileMaker, network, suggest meeting topics/agenda, post availability for work, or…whatever you like, really. The point is to get you all engaged with each other outside of the monthly meetings. It’s not meant to replace the FMPugTalk mailing list or Technet – this is meant as a purely local, group oriented resource.
The existing listserv will remain announce-only, so if that’s all you’re interested in, you don’t need to do a thing.
To subscribe to the new list, look for the subscribe links in the sidebar to the right.
On another note: I’ve set up a tab on the blog for Members (right overhead, yep, right…there!) and am mulling over what to do with it. So a good first topic for the PhillyFMTalk list might be what I should be doing with this space.
Since a large part of our December meeting was given over to a discussion of the goals and direction of the group, this recap post serves the added function of discussing some of those goals and how we plan to work toward them.
Two dozen FileMaker enthusiasts converged on the the IT Solutions office for the 5th Annual PFUG Year End Bonanza on December 15th.
We continued our annual tradition of vendor discussions and giveaways, of course – congratulations to Dan Stein, Todd Chronister, Walter Burns, Preston Cabe, Tim Lynott, Mike Ahern, Bryant Minard, Gale Raspen and Michael Reddy for winning bonanza prizes from our generous sponsors! And a big thanks to SolutionMakers, Ben Waldie, ProofGroup and Seed Code, Thorsen Consulting, 360Works and Real EVO for participating and contributing to our event.
Our 2008 predictions for 2009 were, as usual, mostly wrong, but I don’t think anyone can be faulted for not guessing all the twists and turns 2009 held in store for us. We’ll have to wait until December 2010 before we can weigh in on the latest batch – though I somehow doubt “BJ and the Bear” will make it to the big screen this year (sorry, Jason).
Continue reading ’2009 Bonanza Meeting Recap; 2010 Goals’
October 27th Meeting
- Matt O’Dell of FileMaker, Inc: The Power of Automation – Exploring Script Sequences in FileMaker Server 10
— About the Presenter
- Stump the Chump on holiday!
Other News
- October 29th: FREE FileMaker Seminar from IT Solutions; iPod Shuffle giveaway (details below)
- New Training Classes from IT Solutions
- FMPug News: “The Everything Reference 3″ available to all as a FREE download, free PRINT version with new FMPug Membership
- About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group
Have you ever been too lazy to click twice and select Tools>Script Debugger when you were about to run a script from the Script Manager? I thought so, because I am. A quick shortcut is to hold down the shift key as you click on the Run button. Voila! The Script Debugger magically opens and pauses on the first script step.
Mailing Lists:
Discussion List Subscribe Page
RSS Post Feed for this blog:
here. And while you're at it, follow IT Solutions here!
Recent Comments