At its core, InspectorPro v4 is a FileMaker database. The previous version, Inspector Pro v3 was originally architected as FileMaker Pro 7 file, and continuously remodeled as we moved all the way through FileMaker Pro 11. InspectorPro 4 on the other hand was rebuilt from the ground up as a FileMaker 12 solution. I wanted to tell you more about the approach I used, including extensive use of the new ExecuteSQL feature. Hopefully it will give you some ideas as you start to re-think, and ultimately rebuild, solutions in FileMaker 12.

In this post, we'll learn two lightweight techniques that give full control of button appearance and behavior: the <em>conditional overlay</em> and the <em>conditional clear</em>. These techniques provide the methods needed to successfully resolve the conflict between 'interactive formatting' and 'semantic misinformation' posed in our previous <a href="http://buzz.beezwax.net/2012/12/15/button-up">Button. Up.</a> blog post.

We needed to quickly know how often various databases were being opened on a client’s server. If you have Access logging enabled and are using a Mac OS based system, this shell snippet will give you a nice summary of how often each database has been opened: awk -F” ‘{ if($3 == ” opening database […]

Improve security on a Mac OSX based FileMaker Server with Fail2Ban.

I was trying to test out some HTTP post transactions with the curl command, and things weren’t working. One glitch was due to how the curl command parses its options. All characters, including spaces can be significant, so “-X POST” is not the same as “-XPOST”. This difference might be hidden if calling from the […]

Besides being a bit of a mouthful, debugging Apache configuration issues has gotten slightly more complicated after Apple released the Server 2.2 update for Mac OS X Server. Formerly, you could do a basic configuration check this way: apachectl -t

I wanted to code sign a runtime to avoid issues with users who had the higher security level set on their 10.8 based systems. Although lowering these permissions or holding down the control key when the app is launched will all help with this issue, code signing seems a reasonable and desirable, and removed the […]

Consider the humble button. We lavish design and development attention on fields, portals, tab controls, web viewers – virtually every interface element except the unassuming button. Several new techniques are available in FileMaker 12 to greatly enhance a button’s appearance, behavior, and meaningfulness. The button’s simplicity will help us isolate and demonstrate several modern UI and UX concepts, which we’ll then be able to apply not only to buttons, but throughout our interfaces.

Creating a great solution begins with the most basic of tasks. Don’t let your experience and technical knowledge get in the way. The Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) can wait!

In FileMaker 12, here is how you can dynamically slice off a set of values from a repeating field in a related table, like you would grab a column of values in a spreadsheet.

The bBox plug-in now supports XPath queries. Here are some basics on its use.