Category: FileMaker Resources

Hi folks. Ma.gnolia is a lot like del.icio.us. It is a bookmarking sharing site. But it’s a little newer and nicer than del.icio.us. Three distinguishing features are that it looks better and it has powerful support for groups and has an easier to comprehend UI.

The advantage of these kinds of sites at minimum is that you get humans (your peers) helping you find cool stuff on the web rather than relying solely on your own efforts to find cool stuff that matches your interests and priorities. If you find some people who share some of your interests, sharing bookmarks saves time and increases the value of your internet time.

When you join Ma.gnolia, you can join any of the existing groups or create your own. There’s a FileMaker group already that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention thus far but I thought I would tell you about it and encourage people to start sharing FileMaker-related bookmarks in Ma.gnolia’s FileMaker group.

By the way, you don’t have to join Ma.gnolia. The FileMaker group is open to the public. If you do register, it consists of selecting a username and password and giving them an email address of some sort. Easy.

I like playing with new social software like this and hopefully sharing with fellow FileMaker developers to our mutual benefit. Places like this keep things interesting and afterall we are software developers and like to play with new software don’t we?

Update March 23, 2008. Since telling you about the Ma.gnolia FileMaker group, I’ve discovered Diigo which seems to be a more full-featured, firefox-supported bookmarking site. Anyone like that? Let me know if you have a preference or even prefer del.icio.us. One major advantage of del.icio.us is that it is most widely adopted. There are also rumors of a new version of del.icio.us and more social bookmarking features in Google Reader. No matter. But I would love us to collaborate around sharing links pertaining to filemaker. Let me know your thoughts here or via email.

Bob Bowers, FileMaker book author and CEO of Soliant Consulting, one of the top FileMaker consulting firms, has written a very practical and experience-based guide to migrating pre-7 solutions to 8. It is available as a pdf at FileMaker’s website. It’s called Best Practices Upgrading to FileMaker 8: Migrating pre-.fp7 solutions to FileMaker 8 and getting the most out of the new FileMaker 8 features.

Read this before you upgrade from FileMaker 4/5/6 and you should be in good shape. Much better shape than you would be without it. Don’t forget to complete the checklist.

Many of the other technical briefs are now referring to FileMaker 8, but some seem to have just be superficially refreshed. There may be some important changes here and there, though, that I haven’t spotted yet. Please let me know what you find. All the technical briefs are available here.

Technorati Tags: filemaker, filemaker8

A couple weeks ago, FMPTraining announced their new 8-CD set. The trainer, Jerry Robin, is known to be a great FileMaker trainer, so I was very interested to see this new offering. I spoke with Jerry and found out that it’s a hell of a lot of work to do something like this.

The price for each CD is a VERY reasonable $39. The set goes for $299 but there seems to be a special on right now for $269. Each CD has about two hours worth of training on it.

Here’s what he’s got:

Volume1: Using FileMaker Pro

Volume 2: Building a Database

Volume 3: Layout Design

Volume 4 & 5: Relational Database Design (2 CDs)

Volume 6: Importing, Exporting, and Reporting

Volume 7: Security

Volume 8: Introduction to Scripting

The material is beginning to intermediate. If you don’t know FileMaker 7, even if you are a hot shot with FileMaker 6, you are probably in the intermediate category with a lot of this material, especially the relational database design and security CDs.

As I see it, CD training provides us with a great compliment to our other FileMaker learning resources:

• Books
• An array of Classroom Training options
• The FileMaker Developer’s Conference
• User Group meetings
• One-on-one tutoring
• Matt Petrowsky’s FileMaker Magazine Online Training
• FileMaker Advisor Magazine

What I like about the CD’s is that they fill needs that the other alternatives don’t such as:

• Stimulation. More compelling. Lots of people these days have trouble getting through a technical book. Instead, you’ve got a real person talking you through a series of training exercises. A lot more warm and fuzzies than you can get from a book (Of course, a CD can’t beat the engagement you would have in a live training with a top trainer like Jerry).
• Timeshifting and Personalizing the Pacing. Like a book, a CD can be used whenever it is convenient. You can do 2 CDs if you really want to learn something one day. You can decide to do one a day for 8 days for an intensive learning experience. You can watch something twice – either repeat the whole CD or just rewind a bit for something you need to hear twice to really get it.
• You don’t have to wait until the class is offered in your area.
• It comes to you. They ship you the CDs. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to be able to afford the airfare and lodging and time off. This feature gets really important when you live in a remote area and don’t have the time and money to travel somewhere to learn from the best.
• It’s Cheap. You get over 16 hours of training from a world-class FileMaker trainer for the price of 1 day of training at your local computer training outfit.
• It’s Portable. You can take the CD’s anywhere. If you are going home for the holidays and you aren’t going to be busy with really fun stuff every minute, you could bring a couple CDs for a break from the festivities/family.

That’s probably enough of a prelude. Soon, I’ll be able to tell you firsthand what these CD’s are like. They are on the way and should be at my house by Saturday. I’ll report back to tell you how it goes. I’ll probably go right to relational design and security because I can use all the help and different angles on these topics I can get.

I just renewed my subscription to FileMaker Advisor magazine. The reason I did with pleasure is that they’ve got all their articles for the last three years online. I didn’t have to wait after I subscribed. The subscriptions person I reached by phone (800-336-6060) was able to walk me through the process and even change my username and password for me to what I preferred.

Now, instead of waiting 4-6 weeks for a paper copy of the latest magazine to arrive, I have access today to all the articles in the Dec/Jan 2005 issue!

Plus, I get a retroactive 3 year subscription for the price of one future year. The subscription for 6 issues in 12 months is $49. Given the massive amount of new and valuable information that is being generated by top FileMaker developers in this magazine, the money is very well spent.

If you want a quicker and easier way to climb the FileMaker 7 learning curve, FileMaker Advisor is one of the best information sources there is. If you aren’t a subscriber or have let your subscription lapse like me, head on over and check it out.