Development is not just technical

Apple showed the way: Good products not only convince with their functionality, but also with their excellent design. The design often determines whether a product is classified as good, simple or interesting. An elegant design always brings the essentials to the point. It’s an art.

FileMaker developers are always faced with design, because FileMaker Pro combines functionality with layouts and objects. That’s why FileMaker developers always play the role of designer. As a developer, however, you do not always have the knowledge or the time to develop a good design. How do you solve the dilemma?

10 FileMaker Designs

FileMaker Pro isn’t layout software, but it does offer a lot of design aids. For example, there is a grid and auxiliary lines that can be displayed on the page and used for positioning objects. In addition, objects can be defined with style templates. A set of style templates that are coordinated with one another can be saved as a “design” (“theme”). These designs simplify and standardize the layout. These designs can best be compared with CSS templates – the design descriptions, which are also used for websites. FileMaker has given this description of object properties a nice interface so that anyone can work with it.

FM Designer comprises 10 carefully put together designs, in which numerous variants are available for each object. The designs are compatible with each other. For example, if a layout was created with a certain design from this series, the design can be switched to another design with just a few clicks.

FM Designer and FM Developer Bundle

A new product bundle, the FM Developer Bundle, was also presented together with FM Designer. This package is a complete solution for new FileMaker projects and includes:

1. FM Starter, the comprehensive starter file for new FileMaker projects
2. FM Registrations, with which license codes for your own FileMaker solutions can be created
3. FM Designer, a collection of FileMaker designs and tools for creating your own themes.

FM Designer was created on the basis of the FM Starter Design. Anyone who already works with FM Starter can now simply import designs from FM Designer and immediately switch to a new look.

Documents, videos and manuals

FM Designer comes with a detailed manual (German and English) and videos (German and English). The complete documentation can be found on fmstarter.com. The sale runs via kursiv-software.com.

FM Designer is a FileMaker file. In order to use the solution, a full version of FileMaker Pro is required (recommended: FileMaker Pro 18 or newer). The file itself is monolingual English, but the documents are multilingual.