FileMaker Developers' Monthly Meetup
Details
Off to a great start this year with 3 top notch presentations ... Join us Thursday (1/5/2012) at Tekserve for the monthly meeting of the New York FileMaker Pro Developers' Group. Meeting Location: Tekserve 119 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011 (between 6th & 7th Avenues) https://www.tekserve.c... (https://www.tekserve.com/about/hours.php) Times: 5:30 pm Meet & Greet 6:00 pm - 8:00pm Presentation 1) Randy Bince of Legends Photography will present a simple solution that showcases a workflow for scanning, cleaning and creating high resolution signatures using Adobe Creative Suite and a smartphone. 2) Dan Shockley will present on setting up and using an External FileMaker Solution Helper App FileMaker provides a lot of power to developers to rapidly plan, build, and deploy a business software solution. Plugins can extend its capability, but there are some ways that require a side-along helper app that can send data into your FileMaker from the rest of the operating system. This can essentially bring your FileMaker solution to a point where it can act as a more fully-featured application for Mac OS X. A helper app can add the following features: Custom File Extensions files with your custom file extension(s) display in the Finder (and elsewhere) with an icon that identifies them as being associated with your solution. When double-clicked, those files are sent by the Finder to your helper app, which can then send their path(s) to your FileMaker solution, where they can be stored into container fields automatically, have data imported from them automatically, or any other action FileMaker can perform. This allows your FileMaker solution to act like any other document-handling application. Custom URL Handler: Full applications have the ability to handle custom URLs. FileMaker has its own the fmnet: protocol. Those links launch the application and have it perform some action. An http link launches your web browser and loads the specified web page. A mailto link launches your email client, with the To, Subject, and other fields already filled in. Similarly, a custom URL in your helper app can provide the ability to run specified reports, find sets of records, load a specific view, all by just clicking a link, perhaps sent by another user. FileMaker 11 provides something like this with Snapshot Links, but those are limited to displaying a set of records, and require an actual attachment (i.e. they are not really links, but rather a file). With links, you merely need to transmit text with the link included, and can design your solution to perform almost any action based on the content of the link. Launcher: Many developers distribute a locally-stored launcher file that provides easy access to their central hosted interface. That is a single FileMaker database that each user keeps on their own computer. However, if the launcher file is embedded within a helper app, it can be kept in the application section of the Dock (Mac OS X), and again makes your solution act more like a regular Mac OS X application. Building a helper app requires bringing together the following: a fairly simple AppleScript application, modifying the Plist file within the application bundle, and building and embedding within the application bundle custom icons and other resources. All of these pieces will be demonstrated, along with a sample app that you can re-purpose for use with your own solutions. 3) Karen Stella of Graffiteria, Inc., will provide demonstration of 2empowerFMs Developer Assistant plugin, followed by a raffle of one free license, and a little something extra for 25 additional attendees. 4) Bring your FileMaker questions and ask the audience. It is amazing how many problems a group of FileMaker developers can solve. For the latest meeting updates, please check https://nyfmp.org/cate... (https://nyfmp.org/category/events/) We look forward to seeing you at the meeting!