Category Archives: FileMaker

A developer review of the new FileMaker 11 – Part 1

I’ve been fortunate enough to use FileMaker Pro Advanced v11 and have been testing it since the 2nd week of February.  Per an email from FileMaker Inc, version 11 boasts the following top new features: FileMaker Charts – Create eye-catching reports using bar, line, area, and pie charts. Quick Reports – Make reports in a spreadsheet-like format. [...]
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Vertical Market Solutions in FileMaker, Issue 0

There’s not a lot of info, I realize, on the web or collectively disseminated about building a vertical market solution using FileMaker Pro as your development and user environment. Many people have built vertical market solutions, but few have actually spoken about it. Given this is something I feel passionate about and have had numerous [...]
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Designing for politeness

“If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.” — Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum I recently found an article on Viget Advance that nicely reviews what separates frustrating software from good software.  It summarily reviews designing “polite software”.  In [...]
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Announcing InBloom Shop Software 2.0

After a massive rewrite, I’m delighted to announce InBloom Shop Software version 2! This was a re-dreaming of what InBloom can and should do with FileMaker Pro’s growing ease of use and power, as well as what a good product should strive to be. This new version is designed for retail and resale business owners who aren’t [...]
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Who knew? Printing on a Mac CAN be sexy!

The folks at NRG Software put up a post about how Mac OS 10.5.2 now has Zebra printer compatibility. For the uninitiated, this means Macs can finally interface to the Zebra printers just about every retail business uses/needs. Dymos are good but not for heavy duty printing. I’m absolutely psyched and you [...]
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The FM10 Feature NO ONE is talking about

So here I am browsing through a solution I’m looking to update to FM10, when I see a new script step.  And it has me salivating and no one, not even the ebullient FM bloggers over at SixFriedRice, is discussing it.  It seems to effectively be a kind of way to tie a UNIX cron [...]
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Introducing InBloom, a new application from SWL

InBloom is the first-ever complete shop solution made to organize your store and run on your Mac, PC, or both. It's the only inventory management, point of sale, check printing, contact & buyer management, and more solution that is networkable and customizable. You can use and create the sexiest reports & receipts you've ever seen, share data and network computers with multiple users, and it doesn't require a whole technology staff to run. All you need is your computer and a printer.
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Data-Scrubbing A Ruse?

So I’m still tinkering with FileMaker 8.5 and I’m not totally sold on the data-scrubbing PR that’s being spun in the direction of users.  For example, is it easy to get prices from a live auction on eBay?  From the visual, we are led to believe that we have to hard-code parts of the example [...]
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Recovering FileMaker Passwords

For those who don’t know, Filemaker offers password and file recovery services in case you ever need to repair a version 7 or 8 file.  But recently, I learned of a tool careof Passware.com and LostPassword.com, called FileMaker Key. The tool resets passwords to any FileMaker file, though version 8, to an 8-character string.  [...]
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Secret Weapon Notes: Volume 8

So here’s the eighth volume of Secret Weapon Notes, and I’m reaching out to you readers as to your thoughts on such posts. Are they worthwhile for you? I love them in that they nicely consolidate a diverse and random set of links into a nice digest format and half the time I [...]
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