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Special Edition Using Filemaker Pro 5
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Author: Rich Coulombre, Jonathan Price
List Price: $39.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0789722011
Publisher: Que (07 January, 2000)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 93,487
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
Priceless treasure in FileMaker world
Although I have been using FMPro 6 for more than a year, and bought this book in the fall of 2000, I still refer to it often. I wish Coulombre and Price (or someone else for that matter) would write the same book for version 6. Nevertheless, this book is full of scripting and coding gems that I'm sure any developer can appreciate. Sometimes just to brush up on my skills if I haven't done any developing for a while, other times to learn a new trick.This book obviously is not meant to hold your hand while you do your own coding. It encourages you to take the examples and develop further on your own. Because it is set up with this self-learning concept in mind, it never fails to let me down, and I never feel talked down to. There are plenty of tips and tricks to boot as well. There are few books that continue to inspire long after a new version of the software has been released. This is definitely one of them.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Not very Special Edition
This book can't be for serious developers.You will read to Chapter 8, Crafting the User Interface,
page 214 (out of 532) before seeing anything that's
more than "do the right thing"-type of generic advice. It's too bad, since the applications I've downloaded
in a quest to get a handle on FileMaker are all very
attractive. This book, however is not helping me
with the simplest of tasks: how to use FileMaker Pro
to turn an Excel spreadsheet into a useful database.
Importing the data and cutting the flat Excel file is
easy to do with the help of the FileMaker Pro user
interface. Coulombre and Price point out the FileMaker
model isn't stricly relational. I"m still looking for
the "how to" join (or relate) my Christmas card history
to the address file. Having created the relationship,
this is where the FileMaker help falls off rapidly, and
you might expect this book to become useful. It doesn't. The chapter titled "Dumb Portal Tricks" should have included some
simple, or straight-forward "how to" map a portal into the
layout. The layout chapter could have included one example of how to
put tabs on the layouts. The authors give good reason to prefer
tabs over menus in organizing an application. I believe them.
It will have to remain on faith, lacking necessary evidence. I'm not breaking the seal on the accompanying CD since there
is no information in the book about what to expect. The rest
of the book offers little hope the CD will be more help with
specific tasks.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Great guide for overall development
I have a pretty nice library of FileMaker books and this is my favorite. The thoughtful review of how to consider a design on paper before developing, along with hints about how to interact with clients and use diagrams gave a structure to my communications with clients that is professional and powerful. In addition to this there are amazing hints and chapters of information that I (joyfully) continue to refer to in my development practice, though I've had the book for years now. More than any other, it put me in control, and I am grateful.
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