Custom Function Techniques

May. 29, 2015 by

Last time I gave some of my reasons for enjoying custom functions so much. I also pointed out a few of the limitations of custom functions that I hope will be addressed some day. Until then, here are some simple

Glorious Custom Functions

Glorious Custom Functions

May. 20, 2015 by

This is the first in a two part series of articles regarding FileMaker’s custom function feature. I’ve seen a number of opinions that deride the excessive use of custom functions for various reasons. In this first part I’ll outline what

Xcode 5: Start to Finish

Xcode 5: Start to Finish

May. 14, 2014 by

While most of my work is with FileMaker and PHP, I have been delving into native OS X and iOS apps, and was fortunate to be invited to perform technical editing and code review services for the new Xcode 5

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Naming Custom Dialog Buttons

May. 5, 2014 by

To increase the readability of your scripts, assign button values to script variables when using Show Custom Dialog. I usually use the dialog’s message calculation for this, but the title works just as well, or now that FileMaker 13 allows

define database

Field Comment Metadata

Apr. 30, 2014 by

Today an interesting puzzle came across my path. Well, I found the puzzle somewhat interesting, but I began to be fascinated by the solution I had come up with for it, which I think is rather novel. Here’s the puzzle:

Odd Password Restrictions

Odd Password Restrictions

Apr. 28, 2014 by

For what I hope are obvious reasons, over the last few years I’ve become a more security conscious, is particular, with regards to password selection. I only actually remember two passwords, both of which are fairly strong but easy for

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FileMaker, AppleScript, PHP, Oh My!

Apr. 22, 2014 by

This has been an interesting week for my development process. Usually I spend my time working predominately within a single language at a time, but this past week I’ve delved into Java, FileMaker, shell scripting, PHP and AppleScript, all for

A First Time for Everything

A First Time for Everything

Apr. 11, 2014 by

A Natural Born Reader I read. A lot. I read articles on the Internet about FileMaker and Objective-C and Cocoa and PHP. I read artciles about politics and copyright and libertarian ideas. I read books about history and philosophy. I

Changing Passwords Across FileMaker Files

Apr. 6, 2014 by

Ever since FileMaker 7 was released developers have had the ability to create solutions within a single file. While I tend to create single-file systems, there are times when it’s useful to break a solution into multiple files. Alternatively, even

filemaking-01

FileMaking 12: Incremental Progress

Nov. 7, 2013 by

Last time, we built the beginnings of a FileMaker database to track books. In this column we’ll build on this, providing some additional features that will be useful to us as the developers of this system. We’re going to touch