Favorite FM12 Features?

#1

So does anybody here have any favorite new features?

I personally love that Server 12 is noticeably faster, particularly
across the WAN and in Custom Web Publishing via PHP. It's new
architecture should also provide much great stability.

The new ExecuteSQL() function is pretty cool for helping to clean up the
relation graph a little.

Anything else you particularly like?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Howard Schlossberg
FM Professional Solutions, Inc. Los Angeles

#2

In article <jlnn3k$lfi$1 (AT) news (DOT) motzarella.org>, Howard Schlossberg
<howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:

Quote:

So does anybody here have any favorite new features?

I personally love that Server 12 is noticeably faster, particularly
across the WAN and in Custom Web Publishing via PHP. It's new
architecture should also provide much great stability.

The new ExecuteSQL() function is pretty cool for helping to clean up the
relation graph a little.

Anything else you particularly like?

I think most people are on Easter holiday.

LEAST favourite features:
- Doesn't run on PowerPC Macs
- Doesn't run on Mac OS X 10.1
- Doesn't run on Mac OS 9

;o)

Wierdest feature:
- new iOS apps are now free, but previous versions still on
the App Store with a price.

Helpful Harry

)

#3

Howard Schlossberg <howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:

Quote:

Anything else you particularly like?

Any progress made in the import field matching scandal?

--
http://clk.ch

#4

Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry (AT) BusyWorking (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

LEAST favourite features:
- Doesn't run on PowerPC Macs
Can seem ridicoulus, but we have 3 PPC Mac's, and the most used software

on it is.... FileMaker! and it works flowless, too.
So now we should upgrade 3 clients of 9 computers... or try to use PPC
as CAD workstation to let MacPros for administrative use... but latest
Archicad won't work on PPC too!!!

Quote:

- Doesn't run on Mac OS X 10.1
and 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 too!!! It works on windows XP but not on Mac

OS X 10.5!!!

Quote:

- Doesn't run on Mac OS 9
this can be pardoned ;-P

--
Per rispondere, togliere -NOSPAM- dall'indirizzo.

#5

Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry (AT) BusyWorking (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

LEAST favourite features:
- Doesn't run on PowerPC Macs
Can seem ridicoulus, but we have 3 PPC Mac's, and the most used software

on it is.... FileMaker 10! and it connects to our FMS11 DB and works
flowless, too.
So now we should upgrade 3 clients of 9... or try to use PPC
as CAD workstation to let MacPros for administrative use... but
Archicad won't work on PPC too!!! (in this case it makes a little more
sense, IMHO)

Quote:

- Doesn't run on Mac OS X 10.1
and 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 too!!! It works on windows XP but not on Mac

OS X 10.5!!!

Quote:

- Doesn't run on Mac OS 9
this can be pardoned ;-P

--
Per rispondere, togliere -NOSPAM- dall'indirizzo.

#6

On 4/6/2012 11:18 PM, Helpful Harry wrote:

Quote:

Wierdest feature:
- new iOS apps are now free, but previous versions still on
the App Store with a price.

Not weird at all. It's marketing. If they made version 11 free, then
people would have much less incentive to upgrade. I think the fact that
FM Go 12 is free is (1) fantastic and (2) genius.

Howard

#7

On 4/7/2012 12:06 AM, Christoph Kaufmann wrote:

Quote:

Howard Schlossberg<howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:

Anything else you particularly like?

Any progress made in the import field matching scandal?

Ah, yes. Fixed! They'd always said that it would take a file format
change to be able to fix it. And sure enough, the format has changed
and it is one of the first things to be fixed.

I'd also like to point you to two very detailed documents that outline
some of the massive numbers of changes in FM12:

Overview of new and improved features in FileMaker 12
<http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10002> says, in part:

Quote:

The addition or deletion of fields after field mapping no longer affects the sort order in import target files.

Miscellaneous behavior changes in FileMaker Pro 12
<http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10084> says, in part:

Quote:

FileMaker Pro no longer imports data from fields that were added or changed after field mapping was defined in the Field Mapping dialog box. Data is imported only from fields specified during the original import mapping.

The previous import mapping ( at runtime and design time ) automatically added fields to import into if they have been added after the import was defined, and the source has enough fields to pull data from. Also, there had been some reports that adding/removing fields from the SOURCE file (fmp format) "messed up" a pre-defined import ( at runtime and design time ).

In FileMaker Pro 12, if a field is added to the destination, it is not set to import into, just because there is a source field available. This avoids developers from updating all the imports in all their scripts in all their solution files, just because they added a field to the destination FileMaker file. Also, when importing from a FileMaker format file, the keys are stored along with the order. When resolving the mapping, if the key of the nth destination field doesn't match what's in the file, that entry is treated as no-import.

A side effect of this new behavior is the first time an import is performed for that file, the user has to explicitly turn on each field to import into, as opposed to the legacy behavior of the user having to clear out fields they don't.

Conversion: FileMaker Pro 12 is unable to detect what the keys were for existing imports from a FileMaker file since that information is only available when the order was last made/modified, but the first time the order is modified it is updated with the current field keys in the file.

When switching to a different source table when altering the import order in the UI, the stored import order is thrown away for the table. So re-selecting the original source table acts as normal/legacy. Also, when manually importing from FileMaker files in the same session, you may see "" entries if subsequent source files have less fields.

#8

Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry (AT) BusyWorking (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

In article <jlnn3k$lfi$1 (AT) news (DOT) motzarella.org>, Howard Schlossberg
howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:

So does anybody here have any favorite new features?

I personally love that Server 12 is noticeably faster, particularly
across the WAN and in Custom Web Publishing via PHP. It's new
architecture should also provide much great stability.

The new ExecuteSQL() function is pretty cool for helping to clean up the
relation graph a little.

Anything else you particularly like?

I think most people are on Easter holiday.

Judging by the pattern of web site updates in the US, Good Friday isn't
a public holiday there? It looked about like a normal Friday to me.

Quote:

LEAST favourite features:
- Doesn't run on PowerPC Macs

That's hardly surprising. The usual pattern is that each new version of
FileMaker requires at least the major version of Mac OS X prior to the
one that is current at the time that version of FileMaker was released.
OS X 10.7 is current now, so FileMaker 12 requires Mac OS X 10.6 as the
minimum system. 10.6 doesn't support PowerPC Macs, therefore FileMaker
12 doesn't need to support PowerPC Macs.

This is the same pattern Apple follows for supplying security updates
for old versions of Mac OS X, and in many cases how far back their
current development tools are easily able to support.

The pattern for minimum version of Mac OS X is consistent for every
version of FileMaker Pro back to version 6, except for two cases:

- FileMaker Pro 9 required Mac OS X 10.4.8 while 10.4.10 was the current
version. 10.4 had been released more than two years earlier, and was on
all Intel Macs, so less of an issue to not support 10.3.9.

- FileMaker Pro 6 still supported Mac OS 8.6 despite Mac OS X 10.2
having been released recently, but it required 10.1 if you were running
Mac OS X, which is consistent with the pattern for later versions.

Quote:

- Doesn't run on Mac OS X 10.1
- Doesn't run on Mac OS 9

;o)

Nor did FileMaker Pro 7, 8, 8.5, 9, 10 or 11, so it is a bit late to
start complaining about those now. :-)

As for Aladino's observation that FileMaker 12 still supports Windows
XP, that is a matter of installed base, probably influenced by
Microsoft's ongoing support of XP for security updates (currently
scheduled to continue until April 2014).

Based on web usage stats, XP is _still_ being used by about half of the
Windows installed base. I bet FileMaker (and Apple) would love to stop
supporting XP, and will probably drop it once Microsoft does.

The same stats show that a significant majority of Mac users are running
the current and previous versions of Mac OS X (about 82% as of March
2012).

Those still running Leopard or earlier (including all PowerPC Macs) are
in a rather small minority.

Quote:

Wierdest feature:
- new iOS apps are now free, but previous versions still on
the App Store with a price.

The previous versions still being available is reasonable, since the old
version is compatible with databases from FileMaker 7-11, while the new
one is compatible with databases from FileMaker 12.

The pricing is odd. They should have discounted the old versions if the
new versions were going to be free. I expect the pricing is an incentive
to upgrade to Pro/Server 12, to get the free iOS apps, and to discourage
further purchases of the old apps.

--
David Empson
dempson (AT) actrix (DOT) gen.nz

#9

Howard Schlossberg <howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:

Quote:

Miscellaneous behavior changes in FileMaker Pro 12
http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10084

Some of that document is rather confusing, and it has a few formatting
errors.

For the title "Selecting any option from the pop-up menu button
regarding the behavior of printing blank records automatically selects
the radio button for "Blank record, showing fields"", the body text
appears to be associated with the previous item, which describes print
presets.

The text here is also referring to binary blob printing presets saying
they "can still be used in older versions of FileMaker Pro." Since older
versions can't open a .fmp12 file, what on earth does this mean?

The Email Clients section has at least two errors.

First, it says that it no longer supports Qualcomm Eudora 6.x, then goes
on to list Eudora as a supported client on both Windows and Mac. For
Windows that might be accurate since it may only support Eudora 7.x, but
Eudora 6.x was the last version for the Mac. I'll have to test it (I'm
still using Eudora on the Mac, but not for much longer).

Second, it says that Microsoft Outlook 2011 is now supported, but in the
list of Windows e-mail clients. Outlook 2011 is a Mac product, not a
Windows product.

--
David Empson
dempson (AT) actrix (DOT) gen.nz

#10

David Empson <dempson (AT) actrix (DOT) gen.nz> wrote:

Quote:

Howard Schlossberg <howard (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:

Miscellaneous behavior changes in FileMaker Pro 12
http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10084

[...]

Quote:

The Email Clients section has at least two errors.

First, it says that it no longer supports Qualcomm Eudora 6.x, then goes
on to list Eudora as a supported client on both Windows and Mac. For
Windows that might be accurate since it may only support Eudora 7.x, but
Eudora 6.x was the last version for the Mac. I'll have to test it (I'm
still using Eudora on the Mac, but not for much longer).

Tested: Eudora doesn't work any more, and is not mentioned in the help
for the Send Mail script step, so the "removed support for Qualcomm
Eudora 6.x" bit is right, and the list of supported clients is wrong.

Quote:

Second, it says that Microsoft Outlook 2011 is now supported, but in the
list of Windows e-mail clients. Outlook 2011 is a Mac product, not a
Windows product.

The help doesn't list Microsoft Outlook as a suported client on the Mac,
so I suspect the "2011" reference is wrong and they meant "2010".

--
David Empson
dempson (AT) actrix (DOT) gen.nz