Subtitles of the Movie

Now while we're going through these three tutorials we're going to be using FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced. That doesn't mean you have to have that version. You can have the regular FileMaker Pro. I would recommend you have FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced because it's got a lot of great features, but you don't have to have it. FileMaker Pro 9 can be substituted for most of the tasks. What will end up happening is that you may have to actually type in a field, like we'll cover housekeeping fields very early on, and if we put them in several tables, well, you're going to have to retype them every single table, whereas with FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced you can copy and paste them once you've done them once, so that cuts down on, on the the time needed to do that. You'll just have to go ahead and retype some of the stuff you've already done. That's essentially how we'll be using FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced and when FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced is needed and there are some scenarios like custom functions, you can't do them unless you have FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced or custom menus, well, that will be noted and you'll have to skip that section. It won't be crucial for finishing the invoicing solution. I would say probably about 98 percent of everything you do won't require FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced. It might be even 99 percent. So, don't worry about it if you don't have that version, but look into it as you go through these tutorials maybe you'll find out, Wow, there's some great features I didn't know that it had and I'd really love to have that version. Now let's talk about FileMaker Pro 7 versus 8 versus 9 versus 8.5; all these versions, most of the techniques, let's say 95 percent of them are applicable to FileMaker Pro 7, 8 and 8.5 as well as 9 so even though we're going to be using FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced really, everything we cover, 95 percent of it, will be applicable all the way down through the versions because good programming techniques don't really require all these new features. Good programming techniques have been there all along with FileMaker Pro. In addition, the file format for FileMaker 7, 8, 8.5, and 9 is exactly the same: the dot fp7. That means that all the files that are on the tutorial in the work files, those can all be exchanged with whatever version you have. Only specific features in FileMaker Pro 9 will not work in version 8.5, 8 or 7, and various things happen when you try to take a file that's been created in FileMaker 9 and take it down to 7, but that's not really important. Essentially, if you're trying to use a Web viewer, well, that's just not going to work in FileMaker 7, but it will never be a crucial aspect of these tutorials to have to use a Web viewer. We'll show it, certainly, and we'll show how it can benefit you, but again, 95 percent of the stuff we're going to cover will go all the way back through FileMaker 7, and if we do cover FileMaker 9 specific feature, well, we'll try to show you how to do the same thing with every version of FileMaker: 7, 8 and 8.5. Sometimes you can't, but most of the time you can substitute something that may not be as efficient, but a lot of times you can do the same thing in FileMaker 7. For instance, an example would be where you've got script variables in FileMaker 8. Well you don't have them in FileMaker 7. Well, sometimes you can use a global field; sometimes you can use ah, a script parameter. There's lots of different ways to approach it and so we'll make sure we mention those techniques so that you can make sure whenever we do that, that you won't get stuck inside these tutorials.