Hi. I realise that I need help in getting to grips with everything
that FM (8) has to offer. I'm thinking of subscribing to the ISO
Filemaker Magazine. I particularly like the look of the Quicktime
tutorials. Can anyone (without a vested interest!) give an opinion
about it? Worth the money? Anything similar but better?

Thanks,

Carla Sloan.

Carla wrote:
I suggest viewing some of these to see if it's the type of material your
interested in.

Michael Myett

Yes, I like ISO FileMaker Magazine, and I'm a subscriber. Even if he
produces one tip a year it would be worth the price, but usually each
edition provides many good ideas.

I find it a little cumbersome to keep track of the articles. He should
release each one as a FileMaker database with the video embedded right
inside it. The way things work now, I have to keep my "ISO FileMaker
Magazine" folder quite tidy manually. The process of getting into the videos
is a little cheesy. You basically have to log in "twice" to get to them. He
should spend some time on the site so this is not necessary.

One problem with the video format is that it can take a long time for him to
get to the point. He often shows you the "wrong" way before you get to the
"right way." This is educational but I usually already know the wrong way
won't work. Since I have QuickTime Pro I can speed him up a little -- 4x
playback! . Again, if the video were baked into the FileMaker database,
they could be be more useful. They might be segmented so that a user could
flip through the sections until they got to the part that they really cared
about. On the left could be the video and on the right could be the
FileMaker layout.

Finally, some of his tips are incredibly complex/advanced. Sometimes
needlessly so. Although I can follow along with what he is doing, over the
last 17 years of working with FileMaker I've learned to avoid these ornate
kinds of workarounds because I know they are difficult to maintain. They
also tend to "break" as FileMaker releases new versions, or you try to use
your file on a different platform than it was created, or you try to deploy
the solution using IWP. Best to stick as closely as possible with what the
program was designed to do. I don't use rounded buttons, for example, when I
design layouts because I know they will look like crap on the Web.

The recent series on building a scheduling application was a masterpiece.
Besides the core principles discussed, one would learn many small but
important tidbits in watching the whole thing. ISO FileMaker Magazine is
also very reliable at covering what is new in each FileMaker release. The
free videos he released for FileMaker 7 and 8 were a great service to FM
Inc. and to the user community.

Finally, I wish that ISO FileMaker Magazine would enhance its focus on the
intermediate range of core, bread-and-butter database design. Sometimes it
strays off into things I consider merely cosmetic or rather esoteric.... and
in the videos themselves he often spends a lot of time at the beginning with
the basic concepts, then zooms to quickly ahead to the cool answer. More
time should be spent with the intermediate steps.

Overall, thumbs-up (Buy)

Bill


"Carla" <carla_sloan (AT) yahoo (DOT) co.uk> wrote

Thanks Bill, for this considered review. Very useful.

Carla.