Subtitles of the Movie

Let's continue the overview of new FileMaker Pro 10 features with one of my favorites, live sub summary reports. Essentially sub summary reports can now be viewed in Browse Mode. In previous versions you could only see them in Preview Mode or Print. Now you have the extra option of Browse Mode. And this opens up a whole new world of interaction. You can interact with the data in Browse Mode and the interface. In Preview Mode you couldn't click a button and you couldn't change the data. So now in Browse Mode you can change all that, you can click on a button that might change the way the report looks and you can change some of the data and have it automatically change that report because there's another new feature called Maintain Sort Order which works along with live sub summaries. So if you change the data it will resort it on the fly. Live sub summaries are also supported in Table View. So a new feature has been added for inserting and removing fields without Layout Mode. So if you don't want somebody to get into Layout Mode but you do want them to modify the report they can do that in Table View, it's very cool. So let's take a look at a live sub summary report, come over here to a our new example and you can see the first tab as live sub summary. Now it's a very simple report, not very complicated. All we have is people and numbers, dates and times and then each person is categorized as West Coast or East Coast. So we are simply going to show the report and the first thing you're going to want to notice is we're in Browse Mode. If you go to the View Menu we're actually in Browse Mode. And you can see we can interact with this button. We'll go back to Show Report and we can interact with the data. I'll change it to East Coast and it hasn't moved yet because we haven't accepted that but as soon as we click outside it resorts Aida Agsalud to East Coast. Send it back there, goes back, it automatically resorts it on the fly. And there's nothing special you have to do, FileMaker does it all for you. It's a regular sub summary report with a sub summary part sorted by category, a body part trailing grand summary header, some text, you have summary fields, nothing special about this. So the great thing is FileMaker does all the work for you. So let's move on to the other features, the Maintain Sort Order, let's get more details about this. It only works when you actually sort the database. You have to either do it manually or through a script. But as soon as you do that the sort will remain. Any changes you make to the data, it will resort it on the fly. And there's no performance penalty. It does it a special way, I don't want to get into it, I don't even know how they do it but it's not the same as sorting all the records over again essentially. It will be very fast you won't notice it. Now the semi-sorted status that came up when you changed data before, if you changed one of the uh, record, one of the fields that was used in the sort, it will come up with semi-sorted. You're gonna rarely see that, the only time you're going to see that now is when you import and you might say I want to instead of adding records I want to go ahead and replace the records in the found set. And if it replaces those records it's not going to go ahead and keep doing that maintain sort order. It's simply because you want to have the records come in in the order in which you imported them. So, realize that if you replace data in the found set that was sorted it will say semi-sorted. The sort order will also not be maintained while script is running. And this is to prevent issues with looping scripts which rely on the current order of records if every time you change the record as you're looping through them and it resorted it, it could mess things up entirely. You need to have that order available so you can count on it. So once the script is done, then the Maintain Sort Order will kick in once that script is done. Now here's a small little feature that really just makes the interface easy use. It really takes the Manage Layouts Feature and puts along with all the features that are similar. Essentially if you go up to the File Menu, you're going to see Manage Layouts here. And you're going to see that it allows you to change the order of layouts, this is normally only available from Layout Mode and was available from a menu other than File Menu. So FileMaker has combined it with all the other options that are veered that are similar. Now also if we reveal the status area here and we pop this up you'll notice there's no option here for Managed Layouts but if we go into Layout Mode you'll notice just to make it easier, so you can get into this dialog much easier. So it's a small little change, not a big deal but it really solidifies the interface and puts things together so they're easy to find. Let's move on here, they also redesigned the Quick Start screen. You saw a little bit of this when we imported a Bento source. We'll go and take a look at it again. This is what we're talking about, you can create a new database, which was available from menu's already but they've made it easier for new users by putting it right on the Quick Start screen. And they've also redesigned the learn more area. Not only have they made it easier to use from this screen, they've also changed a lot of the areas so that they have more information and you can just learn much better from this screen. Now they've also removed a lot of old import and export formats. I have never used any of these in my entire 18-year FileMaker Career. So don't think they're a big loss but I want to list them here so you could see them. So hopefully this doesn't cause you any problems but all these formats will not be in FileMaker 10 any longer. And then last but not least, save target printer, this is one of my favorites. The print script now saves a selected target printer. You may have thought it worked in previous versions, it really didn't, it wasn't supported. It would kind of work under windows if the printer name was less than 30 characters. But it was not a supported feature and it wouldn't work on the Macintosh at all. Now you can save the target printer long inside that print script on Macintosh and Windows. If the target printer can't be found at the time you run that script, it'll switch the default printer, it's important to know that. Whatever the user has set up, as their default will be used if that saved printer can't be found. So let's take a look at that, it's a real simple example. We'll go back over here, click the Second Tab and we'll simply click on these buttons. It just runs the print script step, you can see it's restored the HP, we'll cancel that. And then we'll try this one and you can see it's restored a different printer. Nothing special, you really don't have to do much else. If we take a look at these scripts, take a look at this HP one, just the print script with the restore option and all you have to do now is select your printer now, it's as simple as that. So no extra work for you, very easy to do and so we'll continue on with this overview in the next section.