Configuring Firewall Ports for FileMaker 9

FileMaker Server 9 represents a pretty significant redesign of the FileMaker Server product line. One consequence of all the changes is that things may not work properly without reconfiguring your *firewall(s)*. Improper firewall configuration can lead to all kinds of problems, some obvious (I can’t connect to my server) and some not-so-obvious (the Server Admin Console opens, and then hangs). This article attempts to explain in full detail exactly how each participant in the FileMaker ecosystem communicates, so you can jump right past these problems and get to developing awesome databases.

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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?

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Announcing FREE FileMaker to JSON Converter

If you do any so-called AJAX development, you may be familiar with [JSON][1]. This terse “object notation” lets you turn just about any set of data into a compact plain-text string that can easlily be shuttled across the network or from one program to another. Most AJAX libraries have built in support for JSON. We’ve just posted the [FileMaker to JSON Converter][2], an XSLT template that adds direct-to-JSON support to FileMaker Server Advanced. With this little beauty installed, dynamic web applications, ruby scripts, dashboard widgets, and gadgets can talk direclty to FileMaker with ease.

[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Json
[2]:http://www.sixfriedrice.com/wp/products/filemaker-to-json-converter/

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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.

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