Matt Navarre hosts his latest FileMaker Duel show. Topics, both mundane and epic get discussed and voted on. Sometimes topics go down with a whimper and sometimes topics start holy wars. But no matter what, you can't help but learn something you didn't know before. Watch the fun!

Building upon our look at the various hosting options available to FileMaker users last month, we have another take on hosting that you will want to hear. Former FileMaker, Inc. employee Bill Heizer, now with Soliant Consulting, introduces Mike Duncan, also of Soliant who shows how you can leverage Amazon Web Service's S3 storage for holding unlimited container data. Always good for a real info-packed presentation, Bill and Mike will cover a variety of use cases and the services offered by AWS S3 that can take them to the next level.

Also, this month, keeping in touch with our FileMaker Friends across the Atlantic, we will have HOnza Kudelka of 24U software, headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, show off a free module his team put together that builds totally native bar codes on the fly in FileMaker. It will change your opinion of what can be done with custom functions forever.

Last month we heard Fabrice Nordmann drop some hints about a new service that his hosting company is pioneering, so we're bringing him back to headline this month's meeting and go into more detail about it. Spoilers: it involves better performance, more users and lower cost than has previously been possible.

From the left coast of the American continent we have Mike Ross, from some place called "Washington State," taking his presentation on the FileMaker-based document management techniques he has discovered over the years on the virtual road. We'll hear about the different ways that binary document formats can be stored and some practical tips how to leverage the tools in FileMaker to manage a large document repository.

From the left coast of the European continent, however, we have the ever-popular Fabrice Nordmann whose company, 1 More Thing, has offices in France and Belgium. Fabrice will be sharing his highly-recommended presentation "Things we do wrong in FileMaker." We are ready to be humbled by his admonitions, but it should still be very enlightening.

Jonn Howell discusses a recent solution he put together to meet some particularly unique demands for a large-ish FileMaker-using population he serves. Jonn has created a way for multiple windows to work smoothly with each showing a different record on the same layout. This needs to work efficiently for close to 300 users at the same time with no delays and no interference between users.

Jonn will walk us through how the need came about and how he solved it with some creative thinking. His solution involves several "tricks" that you will definitely find interesting and perhaps useful in your own solutions.

Michael Sloper and Jonathan Fletcher share their success with integrating the Quill javascript text editing library in a FileMaker web viewer and extending its usefulness within the Quill API and with additional tools.


Michael's blog post and demo file here:
https://www.sloperdata.com/demos

QuillJS downloads, guides and documentation:
https://quilljs.com

FileMaker Magazine's video and demo of converting HTML to PDF:
https://www.filemakermagazine.com/videos/converting-html-pdf

wkhtmltopdf tool mentioned in FileMaker Magazine post:
https://wkhtmltopdf.org

Daniel Shanahan of New Leaf Data out of Toledo, OH, will talk about working with Inventory systems in FileMaker. After sharing insights from his considerable experience using FileMaker to solve companies' inventory problems, Daniel will demonstrate a tool anyone can use to help streamline the creation of their own inventory solutions.

Long-time Canadian developer, Robert Naud, (his company is called Accolade Plus Accolade) will share his favorite tips for writing scripts and calculations. He is a firm believer in the crucial role of proper nomenclature and commenting in support of effective solution maintenance, and when he is done, you will be too.

Our very own group coordinator Alan Bird will share his discovery of a marvelous educational resource that Claris has put together on the heels of last summer's "virtual developers' conference," and how you can effectively take advantage of it.

https://www.newleafdata.com
https://www.trayseinventory.com

https://accoladeplusaccolade.com

Duncan Baker of Sounds Essential speaks to us from his mountain lair somewhere in western North Carolina about FileMaker 19's new Execute FileMaker Data API script step. Yet another way to build a data objet via a single script step, and the absolute best way to create a complex JSON object from your data.

Regular attendee Martin Ramsay has been exploring JSON data structures for his solutions lately and will share with us how handy they are for working with data arrays. Martin will walk us through FileMaker's essential new JSON functions and how they make working with data arrays a breeze.

A lot of people have had a tough time wrapping their heads around FileMaker's 19's WHILE function. It allows some great recursive actions in a way more familiar to traditional programmers, but it's new to the FileMaker world, so the depths of power are still being plumbed by the community. We were able to get frequent DevCon presenter Jonn Howell, whom we've seen in these parts before, live and direct from his hermetically sealed and HEPA-filtered smoke-bound bunker in Northern California to show off his new presentation on the when's, why's and how's of using the WHILE function.

Jeremy Brown of Geist Interactive shares the latest methods and uses of JavaScript in FileMaker Pro 19 for the July '20 meeting of the Kentuckiana FileMaker Developers Group.