April 2014 – Design for FileMaker Pro Developers

DevCon 2014 FileMaker Design Panel

April 25, 2014
Alexis Allen
News

Do you want to design visually appealing and usable solutions? Do you have questions about interaction and visual design that you’d like answered by a team of FileMaker experts? (Since you’re reading this blog, I know you do.) Now’s your chance!

FileMaker will be hosting a Design Panel session at the FileMaker Developer’s Conference taking place in San Antonio, Texas from July 28th–31st, 2014. The panelists are Matthew O’Dell (Moderator, Technical Marketing Manager at FileMaker, Inc.), Heather Winkle (Manager of User Experience at FileMaker, Inc.), Andrew Paulsen (Software Architect at FileMaker, Inc.), Don Levan (President of Vanguard Custom Software, LLC.), and Bob Shockey (CEO of Alchemy Consulting Group).

9 Creative Improv Lessons for Designers

I’ve always been curious about how to develop creativity. Since creative skills overlap disciplines, it’s worth examining how people in other creative pursuits go about learning their craft. What important things can we learn that also apply to FileMaker design and development? This article explores how lessons in spontaneity from improv theatre can help us generate new ideas and be more confident designers.

Acorn 4 on Sale for $14.99

April 12, 2014
Alexis Allen
News

If you are looking for a good, inexpensive image editor, Acorn 4 for Mac is on sale for a limited time for $14.99. I bought it through the App Store and was able to install it on both my computers (bonus!). If you prefer, you can buy it directly from the Flying Meat website.

Acorn is a good-quality, Photoshop-like program, without the Photoshop price. I use it all the time to create graphics for FileMaker elements. I think I first heard about it at DevCon a couple of years ago from Matt Petrowsky of FileMaker Magazine. The regular price is $49.99, which even then is still pretty reasonable.

I don’t know how long it will be on sale, so check it out!

Send SMS Easily from FileMaker 13

I’m happy to welcome our first guest post! It’s from Jeff England, a FileMaker developer and owner of Neb’s Fun World, an indoor amusement park located in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. This article is about how redesigning an existing process can both enhance the user’s experience and save money at the same time. Using the new httpspost function in FileMaker 13, combined with Twilio, he’s now sending information-rich text messages directly from FileMaker, and will show you how, too. It’s a good lesson that creatively examining your existing functions in light of new features can yield great results.