Technology always seems to be about the newest thing, the latest and greatest. But what fuels those new ventures and ideas are products that long ago proved their value and continue to be strong-a product like FileMaker. Long-time products aren’t glamorous, and a proclamation that “FileMaker gets even better!” isn’t a grabber, and that’s too bad, because the latest version, FileMaker 17, is the best version of a great product line.
New features in FileMaker 17 for advanced developers, server admins
FileMaker 17 ties up loose ends, fills in small gaps, and fixes little problems left over from previous versions. Layout object grouping was introduced a couple of versions ago, but now developers can select and move or reformat individual layout objects in a group without having to ungroup them first. Two ostensibly tiny changes greatly enrich the power of FileMaker’s scripting language: developers can now capture dialog input directly into variables (another reason we hardly need global fields any more) and scripts can be called by name in a variable (which makes generic coding easier). The Send Mail process now supports sending multiple attachments. FileMaker Server has been further optimized to be even more responsive, especially the database is accessed in a web browser or after a disconnect.
