Hi Tim, I was never saying Web Viewer was the be-all-end-all. I was trying -- off the top of my head* -- to think of uses for this new (to me) found tool -- specifically to deflect a "why would you ever use it" implication.
(* submission of a web form with contextually prepopulated FileMaker data was not off the top of my head, it is a technique I have used since 1999 and can presumably be done more elegantly with dynamically built Web Viewer content) With Web Viewer and content being dynamically built one layout can be a thousand layouts. I think that is pretty cool! [kinda like "index.php"] That's all. Thanks for your thoughtful response, Brad On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Tim Mansour <[email protected]> wrote: > Brad, I'm glad that your new-found web viewer experiences are > positive, but I have some misgivings about your opinion of their > benefits. Web viewers are great for some dynamic, presentation-level > coding but they are by no means the be-all and end-all. > > > Further, one of the things that security experts will tell you is to not > > even let the potential hacker know there is something to hack. When you > make > > a field totally obscured on a FileMaker layout then there is incentive > for > > someone to find that value out "What the bleep is Miki's Salary!?!?". > With > > HTML there is no way the end user knows they are being denied certain > data. > > And if you leave a field off a FileMaker layout, there's no way anyone > knows it's in the database apart from you. The idea is to present > appropriate information to each user, and this can be done via > numerous FM techniques (founded on access privileges). > > > Moreover, you could load the HTML via a Custom Function. Then deploy. > Then > > the client says they want this, that and the other changes made --- edit > the > > Custom HTML Function and overwrite that code and the layout is changed > > *programatically* -- if you have someone on the Client's Team that you > trust > > to execute the Custom Function overload, then you can handle it via > email. > > Which, to me, doesn't necessarily sound more attractive than editing > the FileMaker layout. But moreover there is an issue with getting > information back and forth between a web viewer and FileMaker fields: > web viewers are great for presentation but they are not designed for > data input. > > One of the most successful uses I've made of web viewers was for a > client solution that involved uploading files to a server, which used > the server's Apache and PHP to publish details about the uploaded file > so that the FM client could display the upload status. Extracting HTML > from 3rd party web sites is another obvious use. But I don't believe > that using it as a central method of data interaction *within* the > FileMaker ecosystem is going to be particularly successful for you. > > -- > Tim Mansour <[email protected]> > Neologica Print & Promotions (ABN 63 904 335 408) > Certified FileMaker 10 Developer > 159 Commonwealth Street : Surry Hills NSW 2010 : Australia > > What manner of man are you that can summon up fire without flint or > tinder? / I am an enchanter. / By what name are you known? / There are > those that call me ... Tim. -- From Monty Python and the Holy Grail > -- Sincerely, Brad
