Changes to FileMaker Go 12

FileMaker Go has been "brought into feature parity with FileMaker Pro". In this article we'll look at what that means more specifically.

Firstly, "features" don't extend to things like Layout mode, Manage Database or Edit Script: you still need to do development on a Desktop machine. And we'll include a list of some specific things that are not supported at the end of this article.

But there's plenty of new stuff to get excited about:

Speed - it's faster overall.

Preview Mode is now supported where it was not previously. And air printing has been available since version 1.2 (no expansion of printing capabilities in the new version).

Thumbnails of images can now be generated and displayed.

Importing is hugely enhanced to take advantage of the things that iPhones and iPads do:

• import a photo or video capture from inbuilt camera
• import audio from inbuilt audio recorder

Exporting is expanded from just exporting a single record to exporting multiple records in a variety of formats, including pdf, csv, jpeg, mp3 and lots more, and offering email, save and view options.

Snapshot Link is enabled, in both opening and creation modes.

New Chart Types have been added, as in FM12.

Conditional Formatting - As in standard FM12, you can specify different styles/colours for a button (or other object) when it is in focus, touched, or just sitting there. Colour gradients and transparency are available for the first time. And conditional formatting in tab panels has been implemented too.

Email/Save Photo lets you choose a File Size option.

Location - a new function, Location(), allows you to retrieve your location from GPS, Cell or Wifi.

Behaviour when in the Background has been tweaked. The extended privilege fmrestorelogin has been replaced by fmreauthenticate, which has optional entry of a number of minutes of grace before re-authentication is required. The re-authentication dialog is used not only when restoring from hibernate, but also when switching from background to foreground and from sleep to wake. The setting "Try to restore Login?" is no longer used because it will always try to restore, subject to security settings.

Not Supported:
Tooltips
Plug-ins
Script debugger