Ever wish you could generate a Google Map pin map from your FileMaker database of things like: a sales route a customer list a distribution list? Not a complex Cluster Map of large numbers of addresses, as I have detailed in another blog post, but a simple reusable script to display small groups of locations as […]
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Talk to FileMaker Pro on a Macintosh
December 31, 2013 
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Macs have had a built-in speech recognition system since the last version of OS X, Mountain Lion. Apparently things have been improved in the new version and I have been playing around with Mac OS X Mavericks latest iteration with FileMaker Pro to enter notes into text fields and even do numeric data entry. Set […]
Continue reading QR Codes in FileMaker 12 & 13 — No Plug-ins, No Custom Functions
December 18, 2013 7 Comments
A while back I did a blog posting on generating 2D Bar Codes, or QR Codes from Google’s Chart API. The demo was created back in the dark days of FileMaker 11, before the advent of the Insert from URL function (FM12). In the old demo I used a Custom Function and a free plugin […]
Continue reading FileMaker 13 – Use Base64Encode/Decode for Icon Storage
December 11, 2013 5 Comments
Another nice new feature in FileMaker Pro 13 is the set of Base64Encode/ Base64Decode functions. Base64 encoding is a method of representing binary data (for example a .png icon file) in an ASCII string format (suitable for pasting into scripts or calculation fields). This new set of functions have the potential to eliminate extraneous Global […]
Continue reading Bar Code Scanning in FileMaker Go
December 6, 2013 14 Comments
One of the new features of FileMaker Go 13 was the addition of the ability to scan bar codes directly into the database. It is a nice new feature but probably won’t replace a dedicated scanner in many situations — here is why. Bar Code Test database Setup is simple. Create a layout with a field […]
Continue reading FileMaker Pro 13 – First Thoughts
December 3, 2013 31 Comments
FileMaker Pro 13 is now available from FileMaker Inc. The marque features are the new WebDirect feature and a new licensing model based on concurrent connections. There are some very useful new interface and development tools which will get developers excited about using FileMaker Pro 13. When I read the system requirements, my heart sank […]
Continue reading Running FileMaker Scripts from Your Desktop with Launchy or Alfred
September 12, 2013 2 Comments
Here is a cool trick, a method of running FileMaker Pro scripts directly from the Desktop on Mac or Windows computers. My friend Joshua Paul of Neo Code Software sent me an email with the headline “Launchy/Alfred + FileMaker FMP URI = AWESOME“. Josh is often coming up with innovative approaches to technical challenges, so I […]
Continue reading Dialing Phone Numbers using SkypeOut from FileMaker Pro
September 3, 2013 11 Comments
A while back, I found a technique to launch Skype and using the SkypeOut URI scheme, dial a number in Skype. I tested the ability recently and was surprised to see that the technique seems to be broken. Back in 2006 Skype announced on their blog that a FileMaker plug-in had been created by Premium […]
Continue reading MailChimp Integration with FileMaker Pro – Part 5 of 4 – Importing Mailing Lists
August 13, 2013 2 Comments
A reader asked recently about getting a MailChimp list into FileMaker Pro. The work that I did on the MailChimp integration demo was based on a project that I did a customer who wanted to start syncing an existing FileMaker data set with MailChimp, so we were starting with the data in FileMaker. It was […]
Continue reading Cluster Maps and Instant Web Publishing
August 12, 2013 1 Comment
A reader asked how to make the Cluster Maps demo database work with Instant Web Publishing. A little bit of research in the documentation for Instant Web Publishing (IWP) suggested a possible solution. The Demo database has been updated to reflect these changes. Inside the FileMaker Pro folder is a folder called ‘Web’ Inside that […]
Continue reading Drag and Drop Images from a Web Viewer in FileMaker Pro 12 on a Macintosh
July 29, 2013 3 Comments
The Problem: FileMaker Pro 12 is turning out to be a great document and image management system with some of the new features to do with Container Fields. However there is one little annoying ‘feature’ holdover from previous versions —when using Drag and Drop of images from a Web Browser or Web Viewer (Sarari or Firefox) into container […]
Continue reading Resizing Images in FileMaker Pro 12
July 11, 2013 6 Comments
Sometimes it is the little things in an upgrade that take a while to percolate through to real world applications. FileMaker Pro 12 has its share of amazing marquee features, (Insert from URL, ExecuteSQL etc), but the humble GetThumbnail function didn’t cross my radar screen until recently. I read an article by DB Services on […]
Continue reading MailChimp Integration with FileMaker Pro 12 – Part 4 of 4
June 20, 2013 6 Comments
Readers have reported problems running this file on Windows in FileMaker 11. The problem is that with a Web Viewer on Windows, Internet Explorer, the underlying technology behind the Web Viewer on Windows doesn’t like raw JSON files returned from MailChimp. There are some other solutions for FM 11, but it is fairly simple to […]
Continue reading Cluster Maps Update – Running URL Scripts in a Web Viewer
June 18, 2013 6 Comments
A reader’s suggestion prompted me to try a powerful technique I have been wanting to experiment with: two-way communication through the Web Viewer. By that, I mean sending a calculated link into some HTML in a FileMaker Web Viewer via a script or calculation. Then with the Web Viewer displayed, the user clicks on the link […]
Continue reading Blast from the Past: FileMaker DevCon 2001 Report
July 7, 2012 4 Comments
Another Blast from the Past — This article about FileMaker DevCon 2001 first appeared in a short-lived Vancouver publication called Computer Tracker in September or October of 2001. The conference was held in Orlando, Florida, and FileMaker Inc. was promoting FileMaker Pro 5.5 at the time. FileMaker Developer Conference Report 2001 I recently attended the […]
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