I'm mostly a developer in Realbasic and Access.

The idea of Filemaker is great, but the tool is disappointing.

In Realbasic I can do the interface I want to 99%, but it's a lot of work. Access get's me about 75%, but doing nice interfaces in Access just sucks. The programming environment hasn't changed much in 10 years, but it's solid. Filemaker is good when you want simple things. What about a simple 3 pane UI like many applications now have? For Filemaker I need

- ability to do sophisticated interfaces
- ability to do programming

Instead of doing important changes Filemaker rather concentrates on beginner apps like Bento. I have given up mostly on Filemaker. The versions below are since 2004! It's a joke what Filemaker thinks is an upgrade. The features below should have belonged to one upgrade.

On 26.01.2011, at 05:04, [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Seriously? I'm of the exact opposite opinion, Jonathan. There have been some amazing features for developers since v6! Think of how much faster you can develop now than you could back then.
> 
> 7 offered the ability to have multiple tables -- and external tables -- in one file which (along with the addition of script parameters) made scripting easier.
> 
> 8 gave us tabs, which totally reduced the number of layouts needed -- and the time to create them -- as well as the data viewer (which is HUGE for debugging and for writing new calculations). We also got custom menus, which helped to clean up our layouts even more.
> 
> 9 gave us conditional formatting and auto-resizing, to make our layouts cooler and faster to create, as well as non-modal scripting windows (which is just the coolest!).
> 
> 10 had the ability to insert objects into the tab order (huge time-saver), and script triggers, which gives us more control over the interface, and just about every other little thing.
> 
> 11 has the Inspector (I like it!). It also has charts, portal filters and quickfinds: things that we've been creating for years, but are now native.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Regards

Trixi Willius

http://www.mothsoftware.com
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