Happy Thanksgiving from AppWorks! We wanted to take this time of year to contribute potluck-style to a list of our best-loved FileMaker features. Feast your eyes on our all-time favorite FileMaker traits, and please let us know which features you think warrant a little extra holiday gratitude.
With the release of FileMaker 16 came the Card Windows feature, one that I’m still really excited about – seriously! You can read more about them here, but in this post we’ll be covering their ability to display layouts from external files.
This can be accomplished in two ways, depending on what type of information you are trying to display. The Go To Related Record script step (which we’ll cover first) can easily be configured to display related data from another file using a layout that already exists in that other file. This is a great time-saver if you already have an established relationship between the tables in each file. For a nearly limitless method, we can use the New Window script step to open any layout existing in another file (not just the related data) with a few extra steps. This second option is especially useful for modularization in your solutions.
Card windows have changed the way I develop. One of our other developers went over the awesomeness of card windows in this blog post, so I won’t rehash that content.
I was, however, incredibly disappointed when I learned that card windows do not function in WebDirect. Websites are one of the places you see that UI pattern the most! And now I have to script completely different on the desktop than I do in WebDirect! Darn it!
Except… I don’t have to rescript anything! Any step that I can use to open a card window works just fine in WebDirect. The difference is, if I open a card window in WebDirect, it will just take up the whole screen. Other than that, the user experience is almost identical. Closing the window will leave the user looking at the window they were on before the card window opened.
One of the new features in FileMaker Pro 16 (and one we’re super excited about!) is the Card Window, which is essentially a new window that lives within your current one. So why are we so excited? Cards have all the benefits of popovers plus all the benefits of a new window. In other words, you get to maintain the context you are in by not leaving your current layout, and still work within a different context since a Card can be based on any layout (and table) within your solution. Finally!
