http://sixfriedrice.com/wp smart business solutions Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:56:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en An interesting question popped up on the TechNet discussion list this evening: >I have a list of records with dates, which often repeat from one record to the next. I want all the same dates to be one colour. Then the next date would be another color. The background color of ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/alternating-colors/ FileMaker's `Save Records as PDF` script step is, like, totally awesome. But there's one teeny tiny issue: it sure likes to crash. We use this feature *a lot* with our customers, and under the right set of circumstances, we can see crashing on half or more of the machines our ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/filemaker-pdf-crashing/ Comparing dates can be confusing. It's tough to tell exactly when FileMaker will treat the values that you are trying to compare as dates or as numbers or as...something else. Hopefully, I can point you in the right direction. http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/comparing-dates-in-filemaker/ Duplicating in a Record in FileMaker is very easy.... but a found set???? That takes a little bit of thought. Here is how I would approach the task. http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/duplicating-a-set-of-records-in-filemaker/ If you use Tab Controls a lot (and don't we all?) then you may have run into a little snag: When you switch to a different layout, then come back again, the default tab panel comes back to the front. This is usually not a big deal. But sometimes you ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/restoring-active-tab-state/ Many people were surprised by Tuesday's announcement from FileMaker Inc.: A new "desktop database" application called [Bento](http://bentotrial.com). Nobody I know had any idea this was in the works, and I'm pretty sure it is the first product from FMI that is not directly FileMaker Pro related since Claris Organizer was ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/filemaker-gets-bento/ Tab controls have added a wealth of options to FileMaker developers looking to better organize and present data to their clients. The only limitation is that the tabs could only be placed on the top of the tab controls isn't always ideal. FileMaker 9 provides a much more ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/tab-controls-without-the-tabs/ One of the common complaints our customers have is that they can't tell which field they are in when using FileMaker. Before FileMaker 9, there was no way to fix this for them. With the addition of conditional formatting, not only can you highlight the active field but ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/highlighting-the-active-field-in-filemaker/ There's a lively discussion on the [TechNet](http://filemaker.com/technet/) mailing list right now about the pros and cons of FileMaker Pro's *Object Grids* feature. This is certainly an opinionated discussion, and there is clearly no "right" way. A lot of people find Object Grids *annoying* because it makes it *harder* to line ... http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/making-filemaker-object-grids-behave/ This is a quickie: If you were using the beta release of the PHP API for FileMaker, there are some things you should know. http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/migrating-from-the-beta-filemaker-php-api/