The FileMaker Separation Model has been around for a long time. It started way back in the pre FileMaker 7 days. It's not right for every project, and sometimes you can go too far, (see update below) but it sure can help with large complex solutions. I am not going...
The modularfilemaker.org module, HyperList, is one of the best examples of what can happen when you get a community involved in developing solutions to common problems. HyperList v2 gains support for gathering multiple fields and it can optionally detect and use the...
ModularFileMaker.org has done really well in 2013. There are lots of modules available now, and the list keeps growing. One question that we are trying to answer is how do we organize our "Modules" into an "Application? This is a topic that will likely remain beyond...
Looping through and filtering lists of values turns out to be a common task in FileMaker. Having a few different techniques at your disposal is quite useful. In this post, we are going to look at a set of related techniques for processing lists. First we look at how...
I need your help. As some of you may know, Geist Interactive has been very involved in the founding and support of One Spark Academy, a non-profit learning center for middle aged school kids here in Thousand Oaks CA. When my wife, Lori Peters, and I founded One Spark...
Daniel Wood suggested a rather interesting idea on how to make HyperList and MasterDetail even faster. In short he suggested using FileMaker's built in record ID instead of the primary key. Its really rather brilliant and turns out to work quite well. You can read...
Update 08/07/16. SeedCode Subscribe is no longer available for sale Things have been so busy wit the run up to DevCon I didn't get a chance to talk about the new product that just launched with SeedCode. It's called SeedCode Subscribe. It's a simple way to get your...
FileMaker's GetField() function has always been struck me as a curious beast. Every since it's release back in Filemaker 5.5 or there abouts I had assumed that it returned the contents of the field specified by the parameter. But there were a couple of cases where...
Master Detail is mFM module that provides a master detail view for any table in your solution. It uses the virtual list technique to reproduce the found set in a portal. This lets you create any kind of layout that combines a list and the...
It has long been difficult to share code in the FileMaker world. Traditional FileMaker coding styles made it difficult, and I think many of us old school FileMaker Devs still have pieces of "6 think" burned into our brains. As a result we never really developed the...
Unit Testing is the practice of testing individual chunks of code to make sure they are working as designed. Ideally it is done with a single click of a button, so that you can do it all the time. Traditional FileMaker coding doesn't lend itself to this practice...
DevCon 2013 is coming back to California. YAY! It will be August 12th - 15th in San Diego, California. For more information, visit the conference web page. DevCon is always a blast. Lots of great tricks, tips, and techniques from the best FileMaker heads from all...
Tim Dietrich interviewed me for FileMaker Addict. You can read it here.