SSL certificates are a very common way to secure client/server network connections, and the FileMaker platform has made use of them for many years. Starting with version 15 however, FileMaker introduced a number of security changes, in handling SSL and certificates, on both the server and the clients. But where do they come into play, and how might this affect your deployments?
In the transit-planning universe, planners and economists often get excited about 5 minutes shaved off of a 30-minute bus ride. The individual rider might shrug at a mere 50 minutes saved per week, but the planners and economists multiply that 50 minutes by the number of people who ride that route during a typical week and see something much bigger.
Continue reading “Performance Optimizations Make Compelling Case for FileMaker 15 Upgrade”
FileMaker gave us the ability to integrate iBeacon technology with the release of FileMaker 15 last month. This is a great way to enhance existing apps with microlocation features as well as build entirely new apps to solve problems we couldn’t solve before.
Some potential app ideas that have been floating around in my head include:
Continue reading “iBeacons – Improve the Ranging Experience”
We develop FileMaker applications because we want a place to store information for the long term. We track events, tasks, contacts, finances—FileMaker can track almost anything. To update information, the application might ingest a spreadsheet.
Continue reading “Speeding FileMaker Performance with Truncate Table”
When you consider how to keep information safe, you might first imagine a team of hackers in a dank basement typing and clicking their way into your bank account.
Continue reading “Mask Data with Concealed Edit Boxes in FileMaker 15”
We are pleased to release another update to bBox, v0.83 of our free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to other programs, code libraries, or OS X functions (Python, Ruby, AppleScript, Perl, Bash/sh, XPath, SQLite).
In recent years, design, has become such an important aspect of what we do; luckily FileMaker has responded with a much improved design surface. With themes and styles, conditional visibility, SVG icon support, and new layout objects, we can now use design and color to communicate with users in ways not previously possible (see, for example, the “Priorities” example in the accompanying demo file).
Continue reading “Fun with FileMaker Button Bars: Check Please”
If you’ve developed solutions with FileMaker for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly created files using FileMaker’s native Excel exports. Although quite useful, this feature gives almost no control over the formatting, and definitely no way to set formulas, charts, or even text formatting.
Continue reading “Excel formatting and charts from FileMaker using XlsxWriter”
This post is about pretty code (with examples in Ruby), plus how to get nil out of the way and be more confident.
Does this code look familiar?
user && user.ask_for_email
Continue reading “Avoid nil-checks. Code confidently. Be happy.”
We are pleased to release another update to bBox, v0.82 of our free FileMaker utility plug-in.
Using a combination of AngularJS, HTML5, CSS, WKHTMLTOPDF, PDFtk, bBox and FileMaker scripting, we can create PDF reports from a FileMaker solution, taking advantage of the design and development flexibility afforded by using JavaScript and web tools to accomplish the task.
Continue reading “JavaScript-driven PDF Reports in FileMaker using AngularJS”
Xhtml2pdf is a cross-platform Python module that allows easy conversion of HTML or XML to PDF files. Its dependencies, ReportLab & Pisa, also have a host of very useful functions, including programmatically creating or modifying PDF content & creating barcodes.
This week the Beezwax crew found a fun way to give back to Oakland by participating in the Computer Science Education Week (CSEdW), Hour of Code. The Hour of Code exposes children to the basics of computer science, including sequential instructions, loops and conditional statements.
Continue reading “Computer Science Education Week…Hour of Code!”
For quite a while, the documentation and product information for bBox has mentioned it as a way to run PHP scripts, but I only just recently realized that we never had any examples of how to do this.
Here are two methods to try.
Its been almost a year since we’ve mentioned bBox on this venue, but we are now pleased to announce that version 0.80 is publicly available.
Now more than ever we’re relying on Perform Script on Server (PSoS) to maximize FileMaker performance, so naturally a need arose for a way to proactively monitor how many concurrent scripts are being triggered. This type of logging helps us see if we’re reaching our maximum limit, or have a rogue script eating up processing power.
Continue reading “FileMaker Log Files: Episode VII – PSoS Awakens”
I have a few scripts, including some Facter reporting “facts”, that make heavy use of FileMaker Server’s fmsadmin command. After a 14.0v4 on install on Yosemite I was puzzled to discover that one of the scripts wasn’t working.
We’re thrilled to announce the availability of the Publish To Apple News plugin for WordPress. It’s an open source plugin for the WordPress web platform that enables publishers to push their blog and website content to News, Apple’s all-new app available with iOS 9.
Continue reading “Introducing ‘Publish To Apple News’ – Open Source WordPress Plugin”
If you are a developer, chances are very good that you know what Object-Oriented (OO) code is. You might have also heard about OO Design Patterns, things like single responsibilities, decoupled code, and my subject here: Dependency Injection (DI).
With everything that we’ve learned with our last post, Communicating with a Web Viewer in FileMaker, it makes sense to wrap up the functionality into a FileMaker module and JavaScript library.
