Tag Archive for 'FileMaker'

Matt O’Dell on HTML5: Example Files

Matt O’Dell of FileMaker Inc. presented this past Tuesday at the Philly FileMaker User Group, providing an overview of HTML5 and possible applications in FileMaker Go.

We’re happy to share that Matt has graciously provided his complete demo files and presentation slide deck for download!

Included are some pretty slick iPad geolocation demos, graphical seat assignment, canvas drawing and charting, web chat, and more!  All in all fun stuff.

Thanks Matt!

Edit 1/30/2012:

While this was probably clearer during the presentation, some of the code in Matt’s DevCon 2011 offering should be credited to Todd Geist of Geist Interactive who shared his expertise with Matt for this portion of demo.  Todd has coincidentally released – today – a packaged tool for performing canvas drawing in FileMaker Go, so if any of this has whetted your appetite for this kind of thing, you’re in luck.

It’s called GoDraw.  It looks pretty slick, the lite version is free, and the full version offers editing saved drawings, Save as PDF and more.

 

Please Join us September 27th: Kyo Logic Presents: Barcode Readers in FileMaker using Script Triggers; What does that affordance tell you to do?

Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, September 27th 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=1221

Kyo Logic Presents: Barcode Readers in FileMaker using Script Triggers; What does that affordance tell you to do?

John Mathewson and Tim Neudecker from Kyo Logic LLC will showcase two short presentations to the group!

Part 1: Implementing a Barcode Reader in FileMaker using script triggers and no input fields
John Mathewson

Recently Kyo Logic developed a barcode reader that works on any layout in the application and captures input using script triggers. To optimize performance and respect the user’s current operating environment, this work required careful planning and testing. John Mathewson will review using script triggers for this purpose and will demonstrate how the code was developed and tested.

Part 2: What does that Affordance tell you to do?
Tim Neudecker

The concept of affordance in a user interface is critical to a user’s understanding of how a system works. We will review several examples, both good and bad, of affordances. Visual perception of controls in your software is very important. Developers must avoid false affordances that mislead or confuse users. The first half of this presentation will be a review of real word affordances and examples of improvements to improve user interface controls. The second half of the discussion will be a review of members user interfaces and open discussion about how to improve the controls. Please bring screen shots or sample files on thumb drives you would like to review and improve and the collective mind of the group will help you make your users happier.

About the Presenters

John Mathewson is President and co-founder of Kyo Logic, LLC. He is a growth management and organizational design expert. While President and CEO of AGA, a New York advertising agency, the company reached the final rounds of the Malcolm Baldrige National Performance Excellence Awards. He has spoken frequently at industry conferences on such topics as Implementing High Performance Organizations. He is a Board member of The Connecticut Audio Society and is a former Adjunct Assistant Professor of Information Analysis at New York University. He has been developing database applications using Visual FoxPro, SQL and FileMaker Pro since 1986. He is a certified FileMaker 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 developer.

Tim Neudecker is the co-founder of Kyo Logic. Tim is a leading software engineer who has worked for large companies such as Federated Department Stores and AGA to small offices such as The Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Chess in the Schools. At AGA, Tim led the design team that developed high-speed workflow and digital asset software, an advanced human resources intranet and a customer extranet that greatly enhanced customer access to the creative process. These and other innovations helped bring the agency to the top of its industry segment.

Tim attended the University of Arkansas School of Engineering and is a published author on topics from network engineering to database design. He is the founder and president of the New York FileMaker Developers’ Group where he leads fellow developers in continuing education around database development.

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.

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

 

DevCon 2011 Recap

2011 FileMaker Developer ConferenceOver the past ten years, the annual FileMaker Developer Conference (DevCon) has been a truly enjoyable experience for me. It’s the one place on the globe that the best and brightest FileMaker talent gather for a little under a week to share ideas, learn techniques, find answers to challenges, collaborate, and get a few hints about the future of FileMaker.

This year’s conference was held at the gorgeous San Diego Hilton Bayfront where we enjoyed temperatures in the 70s with low humidity and a pleasant breeze. The accommodations and facility was top notch, with plenty of space for the conference and all of the normal hotel patrons.

Continue reading ‘DevCon 2011 Recap’

 

FMPHP: Passing an array of values and performance testing on adding records

In my previous post about the difference between the createRecord() and newAddCommand() functions in PHP, Anders Monsen asked in comments:

I’ve never tried the createRecord method, but the ability to send an array of field values in the method seems very interesting. How would you format this data in the $values array?
$rec =& $fm->createRecord(‘Form View’, $values);
The PHP API lacks good examples of each of the methods in the class, and this post brings attention to an alternate method to set data, though I’m not certain when it might be useful, aside from bypassing the large XML array in the $result. Might be worth a try to see the differences in performance.

So two worthy questions, for which I have answers! Continue reading ‘FMPHP: Passing an array of values and performance testing on adding records’

 

I’m just a stupid developer, don’t confuse me… part 3 of 3

I’ve been posting about a few principles that have helped me minimize the pain of understanding complexity in my own code. See part 1 of this series where I briefly discussed leaving yourself and others notes about the “why” of your design decisions. And see part 2 for discussions about simplifying your code.

Continuing with the movement towards simplicity; whenever possible make functions and scripts single use and encapsulated. We can think about breaking functions (or scripts) down into their smallest useable parts as simplification, or we can talk about it as encapsulation. We broke down a confusing custom function into separate parts in order to improve readability. What we also gained was some compartmentalization and modularity. It’s difficult to separate the two principles of simplicity and encapsulation.

Continue reading ‘I’m just a stupid developer, don’t confuse me… part 3 of 3′

 

I’m just a stupid developer, don’t confuse me… part 1 of 3

Our human brain has the amazing capacity to remember and understand the things we do. What’s more amazing is our brain’s capacity to overestimate how much it has the ability remember and understand the things we do. My average shelf life for remembering how my code works is about two months. That is to say if I don’t touch a part of an application for up to two months, I can jump in and get back to work, no problem. After that I have to study it a bit and get my bearings again. The longer I go the worse it gets. Your mileage may vary, but no one can escape this problem.

There are a few things that have helped me minimize the pain described above, which I’ll be posting about over the next couple of days.

Continue reading ‘I’m just a stupid developer, don’t confuse me… part 1 of 3′

 

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

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

 

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

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...

 

Please Join us December 7th: 6th Annual Year End Bonanza!

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, December 7th 2010 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

This is our Sixth Annual Year End Bonanza!

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting:
http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=1108

Continue reading ‘Please Join us December 7th: 6th Annual Year End Bonanza!’

 

Please Join us October 26: Integrating FileMaker with Amazon Web Services

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker User Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, October 26th 2010 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://bit.ly/d7L05o
As always, pizza and soft drinks will be provided.
Please  RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting.
INTEGRATING FILEMAKER WITH AMAZON WEB SERVICES

With Alan Deffenderfer, CEO, ABD Enterprises

This presentation will provide a brief overview of Amazon Web Services and then focus on performing a REST request to return product data from the Amazon product advertising API.  Amazon API credentials, requirements and limitations will be discussed as well several strategies for performing a REST request from FileMaker that is AWS compatible.  A use case that employs SmartPill PHP and XML/XSLT will be presented as one way harness and deploy Amazon Web Services in the real world.

About the Speaker

Alan Deffenderfer is CEO of ABD Enterprises, Inc. and has been developing with FileMaker since 2004.  He has been a college professor for the last 14 years and has worked in the book industry since 1993.  He currently uses FileMaker to run his own online book business.

Jason interviewed Alan before the 2009 DevCon recap; you can see the interview here.

Door Prize

We’ll also be giving away a door prize, courtesy of our User Group membership with PeachPit Press.  Assuming we can obtain interesting stuff from PeachPit going forward, this may become a regular thing.

Undercover User Experience Design

Undercover User Experience is a great little primer on UX work, written by Cennydd Bowles and James Box.

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.

You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps.  Twitter here.  Facebook over there.

We’re also an FMPug Chapter.    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 about IT Solutions in our new Blog and Videos section of our website!

- Follow ITS on LinkedIn and learn more about the company:

IT Solutions Consulting, Inc. on LinkedIn