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The collective talent pool here at Excelisys have spent years working with Filemaker Pro, MySQL and various other technologies. Having learned our fair share of tricks of the trade, we sometimes enjoy giving back to the developer & private community at large by sharing some of these quaint little tidbit collections of 1’s and 0’s. So here’s an assortment of various stuff that you can put to use right now as is, or tweak and use in your own solutions. Many of these demos contain embedded PDF white papers explaining their specific technique and useage. Have fun! And let us know if there’s a particular tip you’d like to see posted here! Enjoy!
PLEASE NOTE – THESE ARE “AS–IS” – PLEASE USE AT OWN RISK, WE DO NOT PROVIDE ANY WARRANTIES OR SUPPORT!
As–You–Type Search Filtering
FileMaker 10 introduced native script triggers as a tool for developers to utilize in their solutions. This example demonstrates the usage of a search filter, which many FileMaker developers are familiar with in complex portal filtering solutions. Now, with the use of script triggers, it is simple enough to implement the same functionality but you are not restricted to displaying results in a portal, and therefore have much more flexibility in the interface.
Color Picker
This demo provides a familiar, intuitive color wheel interface to allow users to choose a color. They can also enter either HSV or RGB values and the corresponding fields and the interface will automatically reflect those changes. Graphical and text areas preview the color for the user. The file is designed to be dropped into any solution easily. Simply change the interface of this file to match your solution, use it as a pop–up window, and reference the “Red,” “Green,” and “Blue” fields to set and retrieve the color. No plug–ins are used!
Emailing using the MailTo: URLThis useful demo shows you how to send email from FileMaker Pro using your default email client and the OpenURL script step. Simply fill in the fields for “To:”, “cc:”, “bcc:” and “Subject:”, etc. As you type, you will see FileMaker Pro compose the mailto: URL in the Result box.
Hierarchical Portals Advanced
It is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself with the basic concepts in the Hierarchical Portals demo (above) before delving into this one. The purpose of this file is to take a look at ways to extend the functionality of hierarchical portals with finds and sorts that take advantage of their unique characteristics.
Build a Professional Accounting System
With the right method of programming, you can efficiently deal with posting transactions, month- and year-end closing, printing checks, and financial reports. Authored by Geoff Ryle.
Mail Merge
It is easy to add mail merge functionality to your contacts databases in FileMaker Pro. This can be accomplished by adding a Letters table to your contacts database and a calculation field using the Substitute() function to insert actual data into a letter template used to print or email personalized letters. In this file, we will demonstrate the management and usage of letter templates.
Portal Line Shift
Let’s say your a capella band, the ‘B’ Naturals, has a gig coming up. You have a database of 12 songs that you want to be in your first set. Since you’re musicians, you will argue about the order of the songs, and need a quick way to reorganize them. Portal Line Shifter to the rescue! This demo shows how you can slide your songs up and down the portal to the optimum position.
Record Navigator
This is a sample of easy record navigation using a portal. Click on any of the listed records on the right side to navigate to that record. Notice also that the item on the portal itself becomes bulleted to indicate that you are viewing one of the selected records. This type of solution can be useful when you need to add access restrictions to your layout and or menus, and want to limit access to certain categories, or record types in an easy manner.
Selection Technique
This is an interface technique you could implement with your contact management modules, as well as other situations that require multiple selections, such as when you have checkboxes to select from a group of people you may want to send an email to.
Report Archiving
Taking snapshots of multi-page reports and store them for future retrieval. Authored by Geoff Ryle.
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