The Support Group Blog

Using the Web Viewer as a “Field” in FileMaker Go

One of our customers recently needed a field to be both non-editable and scrollable in FileMaker Go.  Here’s his request:

I need to build a system for someone to read a form on an iPad and capture their signature in a container field.  The forms are of variable length and will change over time.  So I want to put the body of the text into a field for each form for each signature. Since the form can be very long, the user will need to scroll to read the whole thing.  But, when you click into a field, the keyboard pops up on the iPad.  Is there away to suppress that?

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Checking Screen Orientation in FileMaker Go

A reader asks:

When developing for FileMaker Go, is it possible to write a script that does one thing if the iPhone or iPad is held vertically and another if it’s held horizontally?  How it could be done?

“Yes we can!” (my son has been watching a lot of Bob the Builder). We need the Get ( WindowContentHeight ) and Get ( WindowContentWidth ) functions.

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Quick Find, Error Capture, and Omit All

A few months ago, I delivered a webinar on advanced scripting and calculations. Along with the video demonstrations, I made available the FileMaker file for download. Dennis watched the webinar, downloaded the file, and asked a most reasonable question:

Thanks for your example of a Quick Find.  I am having trouble understanding the find definitions in the Quick Search script [shown below].  I understand that the 401 error traps the situation where none of the search argument finds a hit in the table, but I dont understand what the omit statements are supposed to do.  Could you please elaborate?  Thanks!

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Attacked by Old Custom Menus

A reader wrote in with a problem:

We just started using FileMaker 11 with databases that were created in previous versions.  In Browse, mode the text formatting button in the layout bar is grayed out.  Is there a way to make this active?

The key clue here to solving the issue was the fact that these files were created in previous versions.  The culprit? Custom menus.

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Double-Check those Calculation Result Types

A reader asks:

I created a full name field by calculating First & " " & Last. All are text. It works on the layouts. It works when printing to PDF and preview. I actually see the full name.

I then export the fields to a basic file. All the fields all are what they should be, except for the full name field. It is “0” in every single instance. Why does it not produce text instead of 0?

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Portals Without Scrollbars

A reader asks:

Is it possible to create a portal paging system with filtered portals in FileMaker 11?  I am interested in showing a portal without the scroll bar.  Buttons will take the user to the first, previous, next, and last set of records in the portal.  I know this is possible when the filtering occurs on the Relationship Graph but I can’t figure out how to do it when the filtering occurs on the presentation layer in FileMaker 11.
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Running Totals in a Portal

Reader Deborah wites:

I want to get running totals or summaries in my portal rows for number fields. Also, I want my portal rows to show a row number in a “self” relationship portal (I tried the Get(PortalRowNumber) function and could not get it to work). Hope that you can help. Thanks!
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Combinations: Turn Multiple Values into Records

This article originally appeared in our old Get ( Answers ) newsletter.  I recently heard again from Marcelo, announcing his new consulting company and FileMaker 11 certification (congrats!), and thought I should update this.  With some new features introduced in FileMaker 10, this technique is even easier to implement.

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Geolocation with FileMaker Go

UPDATE 4:

Geolocation is now natively supported in FileMaker Go 12 with the new mobile functions Location()and LocationValues().  Yay! For FileMaker Go 11, read on…

Elizabeth in San Francisco is one of many to ask this interesting FileMaker Go question:

Is there any way to get the latitude and longitude of the phone in FileMaker Go and store them in a database?

My first reaction was “unfortunately, no.”  FileMaker Go can’t access the GPS features of the iPhone, and since we can’t use plug-ins with Go, there’s no opportunity to add that feature.  But never say never, right?

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Will There Be an iPad App for FileMaker?

Frank asks:

Is there, or will there be, an iPad app for FileMaker and Server?

My guess?  Absolutely.  I mean, there has to be, right?  Mobile apps are all the rage, and I can’t imagine that FileMaker is not seriously investigating this market (they’ve already done a great job with their Bento app).  But there are existing solutions available today as well.

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