Another day, another awesome new FileMaker 9 feature. Today’s special: so called *data URLs*. In a nutshell, you don’t need a web site to use web viewers anymore. Now they can easily (read: without crazy exports and obscene path hacks) show data pulled right from the FileMaker database itself. This is, like, *way* cooler than it sounds.
Advanced Techniques
Not of the faint of heart, these posts talk about advanced (and oh-so-cool) FileMaker Pro tips and techniques.
FileMaker 9 Tip#6: Append to PDF
How many times have you wanted to produce a report that showed *two different* lists of records? Or a couple pages of summary information, then a list of raw data? Or a title page, then a few pages of charts, then one list of data, then a few more charts, then a second list? In FileMaker, reports are tied to layouts, and a layout is tied to just one table. Of course you can just print several reports one after the other, but that doesn’t help if you want to *email* the report as a PDF, or store it on the file server.
Luckily, you can do all this (and more) with the new Append to PDF feature in FileMaker 9. Once you see it in action, you’ll agree it is very useful.
FileMaker – Passing Multiple Script Parameters
I can think of hundreds of times when I found myself pounding my head against the desk because I had to define yet another global field just to pass a simple value from one script to another. Like you, I myself hate to have lots of cruft clogging up my databases. Luckily, FileMaker 7+ gave us the wonderful addition of script parameters to help relieve this plight. Sometimes, even this isn’t enough and that’s where passing multiple parameters takes over.
Scaling Images in a Web Viewer
[technet]: http://www.filemaker.com/technet/index.html
[regex]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression
[replace]: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_replace.asp
[center1]: http://www.jakpsatweb.cz/css/css-vertical-center-solution.html
[center2]: http://d-graff.de/fricca/center.html
[center3]: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~laurirai/www/css/middle/
A recent post on the [TechNet][technet] mailing list posed an interesting question:
>When displaying an image in a web viewer, is there any way to scale the image to fit?
Of course container fields have this ability built right in (by way of the Format -> Graphic command). But there are several reasons you might want to show pictures in a web viewer instead. Most notably, the images might already be on a web site. There’s no reason to copy them into the FileMaker database too, wasting space and adding more to your already busy schedule. Is there any way to give web viewers container-like scaling ability?
Up to Speed with the FileMaker PHP API
So you’ve heard about the new FileMaker PHP API. You want to put FileMaker data on the web, but you’re not sure where to start. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, but using PHP to publish FileMaker to the web is *easy*, *fun*, and *totally awesome*. This (admittedly lengthy) article tells you everything you need to know to get started.