FileMakerHacks

Level: Beginner, Macintosh, Version: FM 8 or later

Keychain Mitigation

September 3, 2011February 10, 2014 Kevin Frank

Recently I developed a system where the client wanted each user to only be able to see his or her own entries, and thanks to Custom Menus, some judicious scripting, and a bit of trial and error, this was accomplished.

I was feeling rather pleased with myself when the client asked, “What about the Keychain?” Well, what indeed? The Macintosh OS has a feature called the Keychain that “helpfully” offers to remember login credentials so that users don’t have to repeatedly type them in.

So imagine a situation where User A has instructed the Keychain to remember login credentials. What happens if User B gains access to User A’s computer, and opens the database? That’s what the client was wondering… actually, he knew what would happen (User B would gain access to User A’s entries). The question he was really asking was, “What are you going to do about it?”

Continue reading “Keychain Mitigation” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 9 or later

Conditional Invisibility, part 2

August 20, 2011February 7, 2014 Kevin Frank

One of my favorite aspects of FileMaker Pro is reporting, and I appreciate it when a client poses a reporting challenge, because the phrase “we can’t do that” is not in my vocabulary (except when used as an example of a phrase not in my vocabulary). But recently I was given a reporting request that momentarily tempted me to utter those forbidden words.

Background: the client gives away prizes. Each prize falls into a “category”, and each category has one or more “types”.

The request: For a given date range, display and summarize prizes by category, and by type within that category, with each category starting on a fresh page… so far so good, right? The hierarchy is Prize Category → Prize Type, and FileMaker developers can crank out reports like that in their sleep.

But then came the twist: show different columns of information depending on category and type. And yes, the client wanted this all in a single report.

Continue reading “Conditional Invisibility, part 2” →

Level: Beginner, Version: FM 9 or later

Conditional Invisibility, part 1

August 18, 2011August 24, 2022 Kevin Frank

I mentioned this technique in passing a few months ago (Portal Sorting, part 2), but today I would like to examine it in greater detail. Have you ever had a text object or a field that you wanted to selectively change based on some logical condition? For example, say you have a check box, and want the label next to the check box to change depending on whether the box is checked or not, like so:

In the old (pre-FileMaker 9) days, you could have used auto-enter or calculated field trickery, but now, thanks to the modern miracle of Conditional Formatting, you can make this happen at the layout level, rather than having to pollute your table schema.

Continue reading “Conditional Invisibility, part 1” →

General

Anatomy of a Logo Design Process, part 2

August 9, 2011April 1, 2025 Kevin Frank

[This is a continuation of the exploration of the FileMaker Hacks logo design process we began in part 1.]

I was impressed with the first color example the designer, Nick Henderson, showed me…

…but I was absolutely floored by what he came up with next. Continue reading “Anatomy of a Logo Design Process, part 2” →

General

Anatomy of a Logo Design Process, part 1

August 8, 2011April 1, 2025 Kevin Frank

When I work with new clients, I sometimes use the phrase, “It’s not a product; it’s a process.” That certainly was the case last fall when Nick Henderson at Henderson Graphics worked with me to come up with the logo for this site — I was fascinated by the process, and perhaps you will find it interesting as well. At any rate, I think it’s worth sharing an abbreviated version of how we arrived at this:

Nick is a long-time friend and has been my designer and advisor for more than 15 years. One of the reasons I like working with him is that he is an artist first, and a computer geek second. Like me, he does a lot of his best thinking away from the computer, with an open notebook and pen or pencil in hand, so it was fitting that the process began with a series of sketches. Continue reading “Anatomy of a Logo Design Process, part 1” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 8 or later

Magic Key, part 2

August 1, 2011August 24, 2022 Kevin Frank

I ended yesterday’s article promising a couple improvements on the techniques showcased therein. To avoid unnecessary repetition I am going to assume you have read it.

The first improvement is to eliminate the highlighted steps in the “parse current field” script. Is it really possible to create a related record and populate multiple fields in that record using a single Set Field step?

Absolutely, and you can follow along in today’s demo file, magic-key-multipredicate-check-box-reporting, if you are so inclined. Continue reading “Magic Key, part 2” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 8 or later

Magic Key, part 1

July 31, 2011August 24, 2022 Kevin Frank

Today we’re going to look at a technique called Magic Key, which allows you to flexibly create and populate related records. I believe that the name originates with European developer Ugo Di Luca, and we’ll get to the details in a moment, but first let’s look at a scenario where it might come in handy. Have you ever built or inherited a system with data stored in text fields formatted as check box sets?

There are pros and cons to this approach, and one of the cons is that data stored in this manner can be a pain to report on. But I have good news: Magic Key can help alleviate that pain Continue reading “Magic Key, part 1” →

Chart, Level: Beginner, Version: FM 11 or later

A Charting Tip from the Old Advance Man

July 17, 2011February 28, 2014 Kevin Frank

Here’s a tip I picked up from Steven Blackwell the other night on Friday Night FileMaker Chat. FileMaker 11 doesn’t provide an obvious way to prevent a user from interacting with a chart in browse mode (e.g., copying, clicking on, dragging, or mousing over to view tooltips).

Continue reading “A Charting Tip from the Old Advance Man” →

Chart, Level: Advanced, Version: FM 11 or later

Array Charting, part 2

July 14, 2011August 24, 2022 Kevin Frank

Last week we looked at building a FileMaker 11 native chart based on data that has been parsed into a field-based array.

2011-07-11-b

I happen to like field-based arrays, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute, but is a field-based array really necessary to generate the above chart? Continue reading “Array Charting, part 2” →