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.
It’s always easier for software companies to add new bells and whistles but kudos to FileMaker Inc. for these critically important fixes and improvements.
The goal of this new editor is to make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable. This whole post is composed of pieces of content—somewhat similar to LEGO bricks—that you can move around and interact with. Move your cursor around and you’ll notice the different blocks light up with outlines and arrows. Press the arrows to reposition blocks quickly, without fearing about losing things in the process of copying and pasting.
What you are reading now is a text block the most basic block of all. The text block has its own controls to be moved freely around the post…
… like this one, which is right aligned.
Headings are separate blocks as well, which helps with the outline and organization of your content.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Handling images and media with the utmost care is a primary focus of the new editor. Hopefully, you’ll find aspects of adding captions or going full-width with your pictures much easier and robust than before.
Try selecting and removing or editing the caption, now you don’t have to be careful about selecting the image or other text by mistake and ruining the presentation.
The Inserter Tool
Imagine everything that WordPress can do is available to you quickly and in the same place on the interface. No need to figure out HTML tags, classes, or remember complicated shortcode syntax. That’s the spirit behind the inserter—the (+) button you’ll see around the editor—which allows you to browse all available content blocks and add them into your post. Plugins and themes are able to register their own, opening up all sort of possibilities for rich editing and publishing.
Go give it a try, you may discover things WordPress can already add into your posts that you didn’t know about. Here’s a short list of what you can currently find there:
Text & Headings
Images & Videos
Galleries
Embeds, like YouTube, Tweets, or other WordPress posts.
Layout blocks, like Buttons, Hero Images, Separators, etc.
And Lists like this one of course 🙂
Visual Editing
A huge benefit of blocks is that you can edit them in place and manipulate your content directly. Instead of having fields for editing things like the source of a quote, or the text of a button, you can directly change the content. Try editing the following quote:
The editor will endeavour to create a new page and post building experience that makes writing rich posts effortless, and has “blocks” to make it easy what today might take shortcodes, custom HTML, or “mystery meat” embed discovery.
Matt Mullenweg, 2017
The information corresponding to the source of the quote is a separate text field, similar to captions under images, so the structure of the quote is protected even if you select, modify, or remove the source. It’s always easy to add it back.
Blocks can be anything you need. For instance, you may want to add a subdued quote as part of the composition of your text, or you may prefer to display a giant stylized one. All of these options are available in the inserter.
You can change the amount of columns in your galleries by dragging a slider in the block inspector in the sidebar.
Media Rich
If you combine the new wide and full-wide alignments with galleries, you can create a very media rich layout, very quickly:
Sure, the full-wide image can be pretty big. But sometimes the image is worth it.
The above is a gallery with just two images. It’s an easier way to create visually appealing layouts, without having to deal with floats. You can also easily convert the gallery back to individual images again, by using the block switcher.
Any block can opt into these alignments. The embed block has them also, and is responsive out of the box:
You can build any block you like, static or dynamic, decorative or plain. Here’s a pullquote block:
Code is Poetry
The WordPress community
If you want to learn more about how to build additional blocks, or if you are interested in helping with the project, head over to the GitHub repository.
The latest version of the application creation tool has enhancements for both non-experts and developers.
Stephen Withers
Can’t find business software that’s suitable for you? It is possible to create your own, as we explained in our case study on juice maker Summer Snow, which used FileMaker to create its own suite of custom applications.
Now there’s a new version of the database development platform, FileMaker Pro 17 Advanced, which comes with half a dozen starter apps designed to give users worthwhile functionality in a form that can be easily understood and extended by non-expert developers.
In particular, the starter apps make it easy to add more data tables without requiring an understanding of relational database schemas.
Furthermore, master-detail layouts simplify the creation of apps to display hierarchical data, such as the names and details of contacts at a business’s customers, or the options available for each of its services.
The next version of macOS will be called Mojave and will come with a bunch of new features including a dark mode, more organizational options, and desktop versions of several iOS apps. Apple CEO Tim Cook said Mojave’s new features are “inspired by pro users, but designed for everyone.”
The new version was announced today at WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference. A public beta will likely start this summer, with a final release coming in the fall.