TidBITS#797/19-Sep-05
=====================
FileMaker, Inc. recently shipped FileMaker Pro 8, and FileMaker
developer William Porter offers a full review of what's new and
why it's an exciting release. Also in this issue, Adam looks at
the new features of StuffIt Deluxe 10, while Glenn proposes a
sensible time-based authorization scheme for iTunes playback on
multiple machines. We also note the release of "Take Control of
Your Wi-Fi Security" by Glenn and Adam, cancellation of Macworld
Expo in Boston, XPostFacto 4.0, and a special Coldplay EP to
benefit Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Topics:
MailBITS/19-Sep-05
StuffIt Deluxe 10 Plays with Tiger
Authorized for a Day
FileMaker Pro 8 Gets Serious
Take Control News/19-Sep-05
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/19-Sep-05
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MailBITS/19-Sep-05
------------------
**Macworld Boston Cancelled** -- Our friends at MacCentral
reported news that comes as no surprise: IDG World Expo has
cancelled Macworld Expo Boston and will be concentrating efforts
on Macworld Expo San Francisco in January. As we've noted in our
coverage of recent Macworld Expo events in both Boston and New
York, the attendance simply wasn't there to qualify the show as
a Macworld Expo. The demise of the Boston show was the result of
a domino effect starting with IDG World Expo's decision several
years back to move Macworld Expo from New York City back to
Boston. That decision caused a highly publicized spat with Apple,
which then refused to attend Macworld Boston and also pulled out
of the quickly cancelled Macworld Expo Tokyo. To this day, it's
unknown if Apple would have continued to exhibit had Macworld Expo
remained in New York, since the company prefers to schedule and
control its own product announcements, rather than have them set
in stone a year in advance. Without Apple and expected product
announcements, both individuals and members of the media chose
not to attend, which in turn caused many exhibitors to rethink
the value of a booth, given the still-high costs of exhibiting.
Despite IDG World Expo's efforts to keep the show relevant with
plenty of conference sessions and special booths, the feedback
loop of an ever-shrinking show put the final nail in Macworld
Boston's coffin. At least we still have San Francisco.
<http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/09/16/boston/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08178>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07952>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07746>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07747>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07279>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07127>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06966>
That's not to say that small trade shows don't still have a
place. On 01-Oct-05, the North Coast Macintosh Users Group will
be hosting the one-day Macintosh Computer Expo 2005, complete
with 24 exhibitors, a slate of talks by the same experts who speak
at other industry events, and an anticipated attendance of more
than 1,000. It runs from 9:30 AM through 3:30 PM at the Santa
Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, CA, and although it's free,
you'll have to pay $3 to park. Not bad for a day of Macintosh
fun and education. And then there's the Central Valley MacFair
on 22-Oct-05 in Fresno, CA, put on by the Fresno Macintosh Users
Group. It's likely to be smaller, but with many of the same
kinds of events and classes. Small shows like these are of course
primarily of interest to local Mac users (which is why we don't
usually publicize them in TidBITS, given that almost none of our
readers would be unable to attend), but they serve a useful role
for those people who can make it so I hope we see additional
regional shows appearing around the world. We're always happy
to help support such user group-oriented shows with copies of
the full Take Control Library to raffle off, as we're doing
for these two events. [ACE]
<http://www.ncmug.org/mce.html>
<http://www.fresnomug.com/macfair.html>
**Exclusive Coldplay EP at iTMS to Benefit Hurricane Katrina
Victims** -- In "Net Responds to Hurricane Katrina Aftermath"
in TidBITS-796_, Jeff Carlson reported on how the Internet
community has come together in countless ways to help the
victims displaced or otherwise affected by Hurricane Katrina,
which struck the Gulf Coast of the southern United States a
little over two weeks ago. To raise funds for the relief effort,
Apple announced last week the release of a new EP by alternative
rock band Coldplay, available exclusively at the iTunes Music
Store. Apple, Coldplay, BMG Publishing, and Capitol Records/EMI
will donate 100 percent of their shares of the proceeds from
U.S. sales.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08235>
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/sep/14coldplay.html>
The "Fix You" EP (longer than a single, but shorter than an album)
includes two songs previously unreleased in the U.S. ("Pour Me"
and "The World Turned Upside Down") and two versions of "Fix You,"
the band's new single from their double platinum album X&Y. The
four-song EP costs $3 and is available immediately. [MHA]
<http://www.apple.com/itunes/>
**XPostFacto 4.0 Adds Tiger to More Legacy Macs** -- Other World
Computing has released its latest version of XPostFacto, a tool
designed to help owners of Macintosh models not supported by Apple
for specific Mac OS X releases to install and use those operating
system versions. The latest version adds support for Mac OS X
10.4 Tiger. XPostFacto 4.0 enables the installation of the
stripped-down Darwin Unix base of Mac OS X, as well as Mac OS X
(client version) and Mac OS X Server. It can install Mac OS X
10.2 through 10.4. The operating system must be purchased
separately.
<http://eshop.macsales.com/NewsRoom/Framework.cfm?page=PR/
owc_xpost_facto4.html>
<http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?
page=XPostFacto.html>
The company noted in a press release that this version handles
computers as old as the Power Mac 7300, which shipped in 1997.
Many computers that lost Apple's support with the Tiger release
can accept a Tiger upgrade, although without Apple's testing,
it's entirely possible that additional quirks and problems
may appear. The software, developed by Ryan Rempel, is free
for use, but the company suggests a $25 donation to help
continue supporting the software's development. [GF]
StuffIt Deluxe 10 Plays with Tiger
----------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Allume Systems, now owned by Smith Micro, Inc., has released
the latest version of their venerable compression and archiving
utility, StuffIt Deluxe. Improvements in StuffIt Deluxe 10 fall
largely into two categories: low-level improvements in its
compression engine and support for new technologies in Mac OS X
10.4 Tiger.
<http://www.stuffit.com/mac/deluxe/>
StuffIt Deluxe 10 costs $80, with upgrades from previous versions
of either StuffIt Deluxe or StuffIt Standard Edition priced at
$30. It requires Mac OS 10.3 or later.
**Under the Hood** -- Most notable of the low-level improvements
is StuffIt Deluxe 10's new capability to compress JPEG photos by
an additional 30 percent. As you likely know, JPEG files are
compressed using a lossy compression approach that throws away
data that's not essential to the image. In contrast, compression
software like StuffIt Deluxe or Mac OS X's built-in Zip archiving
tool uses only lossless approaches from which an original file
can be expanded perfectly. Generally, compression software doesn't
even try to work on already-compressed files like JPEG images
because there's little, if any, size reduction to be achieved.
That's why the fact that StuffIt Deluxe can further reduce the
size of JPEG images by up to 30 percent is so astonishing (I saw
compression amounts ranging from 24 percent to 31 percent in my
tests). Keep in mind that this 30 percent extra compression is
lossless, which means that the images are not further degraded
in any way, but they also aren't available for use until you
expand them.
StuffIt Deluxe 10 also stores a preview thumbnail for such images
now, making it possible to browse the images in an archive without
expanding it first. The preview is available only in one of the
panes of the Get Info window, though, so it's clumsy to scan
through numerous compressed images in an archive. Ideally, a
future version of StuffIt Deluxe would offer an icon view with
the thumbnails as icons, or even a way of hooking into Tiger's
slideshow capabilities.
The final low-level improvement is faster performance when using
the StuffIt X archive format. Allume claims that the "Better"
compression method (as opposed to "Faster") can now perform
the same compression about 20 percent faster than in previous
incarnations.
**And into the Tiger Cage** -- The three marquee features of Tiger
are, of course, Spotlight, Automator, and Dashboard. StuffIt
Deluxe 10 adds support for the first two, and when I chatted with
Jon Kahn of Allume about the release, he said they really tried
to come up with some sort of a Dashboard widget that would be
helpful, but they just couldn't think of one that was more than
a gratuitous nod to the technology.
Most notably, StuffIt Deluxe 10 now features a Spotlight
Importer, which enables Spotlight to index the file names of
items inside StuffIt, Zip, and Tar archives. It worked perfectly
in my testing - immediately after creating an archive Spotlight
could find files inside it based on name. StuffIt's Spotlight
Importer does not enable Spotlight to search the full text or
other metadata of archived files; perhaps we'll see that in a
future version of StuffIt Deluxe.
For Automator, Allume created four actions that enable Automator
workflows to create StuffIt, Zip, and Tar archives, and to expand
archives of any sort. I'm already contemplating how I might be
able to use these actions to help automate the process of creating
and uploading new Take Control ebooks, since there are a fair
number of steps in the process. I may also look into StuffIt
Express PE, which ships with StuffIt Deluxe and enables users
to create drop box applications that can also automate a whole
slew of file compression and transfer tasks. The version of
StuffIt Express PE that ships with StuffIt Deluxe 10 adds support
for direct uploading to and downloading from .Mac iDisks.
While we're on the subject of automating tasks, StuffIt Deluxe 10
also includes a new utility called StuffIt SEA Maker for creating
self-extracting archives (applications that, when double-clicked,
expand the archive inside them) that border on mini-installers.
StuffIt SEA Maker actually creates Mac OS X packages that contain
the expansion code, the archive to be expanded, and any splash-
screen graphics or text files you want to display during the
expansion process. You can allow the recipient to choose a
location for the expanded files or you can specify a particular
location while creating the archive. And, if you plan to be
posting the self-extracting archive on the Internet, StuffIt
SEA Maker can optionally put it on a disk image so code that
protects users from downloading applications doesn't trip over
the self-extracting archive application.
**StuffIt Standard and StuffIt Expander**-- As always, for people
who don't need all of StuffIt Deluxe's power, Allume makes two
other packages available. StuffIt Standard Edition 10 costs $50
($15 for upgrades from previous versions, and the demo download
is 9.3 MB) and includes DropStuff for creating a wide variety
of archives (complete with the low-level improvements in StuffIt
Deluxe 10) and StuffIt Expander for expanding them. StuffIt
Expander 10 remains free, and it's worth noting that Apple
no longer bundles StuffIt Expander with new Macs or copies of
Mac OS X, so downloading a new version manually may become more
important than it was in the past.
<http://www.stuffit.com/mac/standard/>
<http://www.stuffit.com/mac/expander/>
Authorized for a Day
--------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Many folks are irritated by the authorization limit in the
digital-rights management system that Apple uses to handle songs
purchased from the iTunes Music Store. You can authorize up to
five machines to play songs purchased with your account at any
given time, and you can de-authorize and re-authorize at will.
However, if a machine dies, is stolen, or you're visiting someone
and authorize their system, de-authorizing becomes difficult or
impossible. Apple will let you de-authorize all machines at once,
but allows you to do so only once per year, making it only a
partial solution.
<http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/musicstore/authorization/>
I had a thought today I haven't seen written about anywhere - how
about time-bounded authorizations? Let me authorize a machine for
a day, a week, a month, or a year, and to re-authorize, I would
have to enter the account password again at the end of that
period.
My approach would still keep Apple's five machine limit,
but entirely eliminate the problem needing only temporary
authorization. If I visit someone and want to play my music
through another Mac, I would be able to authorize it for a
day, until a certain end date, or another period of time.
Similarly, Apple should offer free de-authorization for any Apple-
authorized service repair. If your drive dies or they swap the
machine out for some reason, one of the checklist items should
be to de-authorize that machine automatically.
FileMaker Pro 8 Gets Serious
----------------------------
by William Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On August 29, 2005, in the keynote address at FileMaker's
annual developers conference in Phoenix, FileMaker, Inc.
President Dominique Goupil announced the immediate release of
FileMaker Pro 8 and its more powerful alternative, FileMaker
Pro 8 Advanced. FileMaker had never released an upgrade at its
developers conference before, but the timing was significant.
FileMaker 8 is a release for developers in the broadest sense,
from what I call "active end users" to experts doing full-blown
application development in FileMaker. And that raises an
interesting question: Who is FileMaker Inc. trying to reach
with this release? Is FileMaker still an easy-to-use database
for the little guy, the list-maker, and the do-it-yourselfer?
Or is it turning into a powerful development platform that blurs
the line between programming and scripting? I think the answer
to both questions is yes, but the yes answering the latter
question is louder.
<http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmp/>
<http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmpa/>
**Pro 8 for Non-Pros** -- FileMaker users fall broadly into four
categories: passive end users, who launch FileMaker Pro simply
to use databases designed by others; active end users, who may
create their own simple databases or design their own reports;
more ambitious do-it-yourself developers, who, while not full-time
FileMaker jocks, are brave enough to venture beyond simple lists
and work with relationships and perhaps even scripts; and full-
time developers who push FileMaker to the limits on a regular
basis. FileMaker Pro's target audience has always been the active
end users and do-it-yourselfers, for whom FileMaker's ease of use
has been more important that its power. FileMaker 8 has a lot for
these users.
For active end users, entering and finding data in version 8 is
easier than ever. Finally, typing a few letters of text in a field
prompts FileMaker to suggest the completion; for example, you
type "ro" and FileMaker suggests "Ron", and if you continue typing
"rob", the suggestion changes to "Robert," and so on. It's easy
now to configure a date field so that a calendar drops when the
user enters the field; the user can select a date from the
calendar rather than having to type the date. Finding dates is
easier now thanks to several new shortcuts; for example, it's
possible now to search for September 2005 by typing "9/2005"
instead of a proper range ("9/1/2005..9/30/2005"). And finding
records that match the current record in a given field is
now a snap: just click on the field and use the Find Matching
Records command. FileMaker 8 also finally adds support for
mouse scroll wheels.
Once you find the records you're interested in, FileMaker 8 can
save reports directly to PDF or Excel files. (The save-as-PDF
feature is available to FileMaker users under Windows as well as
Mac OS X, because the feature uses technology licensed from Adobe
and built right into FileMaker and does not depend on Mac OS X's
support for printing to PDF.) Even better, since FileMaker 8 lets
you use calculations to specify the options for your mailing,
it's now easy to use FileMaker 8 to send out email announcements
to many different recipients, with each recipient getting a
completely personalized message.
Another, somewhat less successful, feature for active end users
is the Field List Filter. In previous versions of FileMaker Pro,
users with access to the export or sort dialogs might have to face
long and bewildering lists of fields, some of them perhaps oddly
named. To find fields in related tables, you had to know how to
select another tab occurrence from the list of table occurrences
at the top of the field list. In short, it was quite confusing.
In FileMaker 8, when the user accesses these dialogs, the default
field list shows only the fields displayed on the current layout.
This works great, provided the developer who designed the layout
placed only fields that the user might want to sort on or export
data from. The problem is that this often will not be the case.
I use many global fields on nearly all layouts as buttons.
Users who access the Export Records command from one of my layouts
will see not only the data fields they're interested in, but
also a list of all those global button fields, something that
in previous versions of FileMaker would have remained unavailable.
I'm lukewarm about this change. It gives me, as developer, some
options I didn't have before. If I script the access that users
have to these dialogs, I can also go to a layout displaying only
the desired fields before showing the dialog. So it's not a step
backwards, but it's not a big step forward, either. What I'd
like instead is the capability, in the Define Fields dialog,
to control whether fields are visible in these dialogs or not.
Do-it-yourselfers will appreciate FileMaker 8's capability
to create a new table on the fly when you import data from
an external file; in the past, you had to define a table and
fields first, then match fields carefully. Converting an Excel
spreadsheet - or an export file from another database tool -
into a FileMaker database has never been easier.
The award for the niftiest new feature for users who design
layouts has to go to the new Tab Control feature. A Tab Control
object lets you put a bunch of different groups of fields on the
same layout in the same space, but show or hide them selectively,
depending on which tab a user clicks. For example, if you didn't
have enough space to show both home and work addresses on a layout
at the same time, you could create a simple two-tab Tab Control
object, put the home address fields into the rectangular space
owned by one tab (which you would label "Home") and put the work
address fields into the other tab's space (and name that tab
"Work"). Back in Browse mode - the state of a file when the user
is viewing and editing records - clicking one tab shows its fields
and hides the fields on the other tab or tabs; and vice versa.
We used to be able to fake this in FileMaker by creating multiple
layouts. The common parts of the several pseudo-tabbed layouts
would be identical and identically placed, so when users clicked
on a button that looked like a tab, they thought that only the
tabbed area of the screen changed, when in fact, the entire layout
was changed. The old way was tedious and inefficient and caused
problems with navigation. The new tab control is easy enough for
beginners to master in minutes, but will save both beginners and
experts a lot of time.
**Variables** -- All the features I've mentioned so far are found
both in the standard edition of FileMaker Pro 8 and in FileMaker
Pro 8 Advanced. Their presence in the standard edition makes
perfect sense, as they involve things that active users and
beginning or intermediate developers will want to do. But the
standard edition of FileMaker Pro also contains one exciting new
feature - support for scripting variables - that I would have
expected to see only in FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced, because it
is the kind of thing non-expert users are unlikely to use.
When I'm writing a script, I frequently want to grab some values
and hang on to them for just a few steps. For example, say I'm
writing a script that my users will run to create a note for the
current contact record. In this script, I'll probably start by
grabbing the contact record's primary key or record ID; the script
will then jump to the layout for notes, create a new record, and
then return to the original contact layout and enter the note
field so the user can edit it. In the past, that contact record's
ID had to be stored for two or three steps in a special global
field - a field belonging to no particular record and available
anywhere. Developers who did a lot of scripting tended to have
a lot of global fields defined as temporary value holders.
Things improved somewhat in FileMaker 7, which introduced script
parameters. If I had been willing to use two scripts to create
a note instead of one, the first script could have passed the
contact record's ID to the second script as a script parameter
rather than using a global field. Script parameters were a
wonderful addition to the developer's toolbox, but two scripts
are not always better than one, and script parameters did not
entirely eliminate the need for globals.
Enter script variables. In FileMaker 8, you can define a local
script variable right in the script - say, "$contactID" - using
the new Set Variable script step, then access that variable later
in the script in a calculation formula, the same way you would
have accessed a global field. One advantage of variables is that
they can be defined on the fly; to define a global field, it was
necessary to exit the script editor, enter the Define Fields
dialog, and define a new field. Another advantage of script
variables is that they can be either local or global. Global
fields were always global, meaning that they could be accessed
from any table in the same file, and values stayed set until
replaced. Global variables work in much the same way, but local
variables are cleared at the end of the script in which they
are defined.
Even more interesting is the fact that variables now make possible
a variety of file-manipulation features that hitherto required
plug-ins, which is worth getting excited about in its own right.
I can now write a script that saves a report as a PDF file
to disk with a file name that is generated dynamically, like
"Acme Q3 Purchases", or I can save a backup copy of my database
every time I close it with a name that includes the current date
and time.
In many obvious technical senses, scripting in FileMaker is not
to be confused with programming. And yet, with the addition of
script variables, the distinction between FileMaker's scripting
capability and a simple procedural programming language is
becoming a bit fuzzier. And that means a serious boost in power
for serious FileMaker developers. Using variables as a replacement
for global fields isn't too challenging, but as a practical fact,
active end-users and less ambitious do-it-yourselfers don't tend
to write complicated scripts, and I doubt they'll make heavy
use of variables.
**Getting Serious** -- The product formerly known as FileMaker
Developer has, with this release, been renamed FileMaker Pro 8
Advanced. It includes all the features in FileMaker Pro, plus
a few features aimed at more advanced developers.
Well, it used to be just a few, and those features weren't
too impressive. The old FileMaker Developer made certain things
(like stepping through scripts) easier, and it provided a couple
of meta-development utilities, but as far as building databases
was concerned, there was very little that you could do in
FileMaker Developer 7 that could not also have been accomplished
in an ordinary copy of FileMaker Pro 7 if you were willing to
work just a little harder. (One notable exception was that
Developer 7 let you create custom functions.) FileMaker Pro 8
Advanced, on the other hand, gives developers real power to
do things that simply can't be done in the standard edition,
and it improves so significantly on other developer-oriented
features that what before was a convenience is now too good
to live without.
I suspect the feature in FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced that most
developers will be most immediately excited about is the
capability to copy and paste just about any database definition
element - tables, fields, relationships, scripts, and even
individual script steps - within a file or across files.
Suppose you want to add a couple of fields to keep track of the
modification date and time for records in every table in a
20 table solution. In the past, you were forced to define these
fields in each and every table - very tedious. Now, you define
the fields, including the auto-entry options (date modified or
time modified), copy them in one table, then paste them into the
field list for each of the other fields. This feature is even more
useful with scripts. The capability since FileMaker 7 to put all
your tables in one file has encouraged FileMaker developers to
start writing more and more generic, reusable scripts. With the
introduction of variables in FileMaker 8, generic and modular
scripting becomes not only practical, but genuinely worth the
trouble. And when you write a well-focused script in one file,
you can copy and paste it (or a few of its steps) into another
file. Copied script steps can only be pasted into another
FileMaker script; you can't paste script steps into a text
editor. Nevertheless, code reusability is now a reality in
FileMaker.
A rather less dramatic enhancement in FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced is
the capability to create tooltips, the little information balloons
that appear automatically when the user hovers the mouse pointer
over an object such as a button or a field for a short time.
Tooltips can also be calculated rather than hard coded, so they
can be used for many purposes: for instance, you could use
Tooltips to convert dollars into pesos or Euros, to convert
English measures to metric, to translate field labels into another
language, or to explain data-entry problems.
The new Data Viewer is a complement to the rather basic debugger
that has been FileMaker Developer's most used feature for years.
The Data Viewer makes it possible to monitor the values stored
in "expressions" (that is, fields and/or variables) as you step
through a script. This is a major plus for developers who do a
lot of scripting! I do have a couple of complaints about the data
viewer, however. First, it doesn't always realize immediately
that the value in an expression has changed. FileMaker, Inc. is
obviously aware of this problem, because the engineers added a
"Refresh Values" button right there on the Data Viewer utility
window. My other complaint is that you can't save expression sets.
It would be especially nice to define a set of expressions to be
monitored in a particular script and save them in the script,
or at least to save them in the current file.
The most powerful and, I think, the most surprising new feature
in FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced is support for custom menus. It's now
possible to create fully customized and context-sensitive menus
in a FileMaker solution. Yes, you can finally disable that
pesky Window menu without using a plug-in, but that's just
for starters. You can create your own lists of commands for
different menus, and if you wish, you can attach your own scripts
to those commands. So, for example, instead of disabling the
native FileMaker menus that many users are familiar with, you can
simply disable or delete particular scripts that you don't want
users to have access to (Delete All Records was my first choice),
or you can substitute your own script for the default action
assigned to a command (so users issuing the New Record command
trigger your more intelligent new-record script instead of
creating a record directly).
**Share and Share Alike** -- FileMaker Pro 8 uses the .fp7 file
format introduced last year with FileMaker Pro 7. This means a
copy of FileMaker Pro 7 can open a file created in FileMaker Pro 8
and vice versa, although, of course, features specific to version
8 will either be ignored (tooltips, for example) or break, perhaps
badly (such as tab controls). On a more positive note, because the
majority of FileMaker's features are still processed by the client
rather than the server, it's possible to use FileMaker Server 7
to share a FileMaker 8 database that employs most of the features
mentioned above, and users on the network who open that database
in FileMaker Pro 8 or FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced are able to use the
database just fine. This is good to know, as FileMaker Server 8
has not yet been released (it's expected sometime within the next
few months).
Speaking of clients, what about that first category of users
I mentioned, the passive end users? These are the folks who
never define a field or even tweak a layout, who have no use for
the relationship graph or ScriptMaker. They use FileMaker only
because it's required to open the databases that they are required
to use. FileMaker Pro 8 has a lot for them, too - a lot that they
have no use for at all, namely, all the development features.
In short, FileMaker still has no thin client. The problem is,
the competition does - in the Mac world, I'm thinking of Servoy
and 4D. I suspect that FileMaker, Inc. thinks of FileMaker's
Instant Web Publishing (IWP) feature as a kind of very thin
client, since a user needs only a Web browser to access an
IWP-enabled database. Instant Web Publishing improved a lot
in FileMaker 7 just over a year ago, but it was not a focus
of FileMaker 8, and it still has a ways to go before it's fully
usable. I doubt FileMaker, Inc. has any interest in an inexpensive
version of its software that does nothing but run databases built
by other users with FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced. But it seems to me
that something halfway between the current standard edition of
FileMaker Pro and a thin client might serve both FileMaker, Inc.
and its customers well. The "lightweight client" I have in mind
would cater to list-makers and very basic do-it-yourselfers,
permitting, say, creation of no more than three tables, and
providing access only to certain basic script steps. Something
for FileMaker 9? I doubt it, but I would love to be surprised.
**Conclusion** -- Anyone familiar with FileMaker's history will
acknowledge that this is not only the best FileMaker ever, it's
also a significant improvement to version 7, which shook up the
FileMaker world just last year. I recommend anybody who does
more than very basic development work upgrade to FileMaker Pro 8
Advanced; you may never use custom menus, but the capability to
define tables on import and to copy and paste tables, fields,
scripts and script steps will make converting and consolidating
your multi-file FileMaker 6 solutions much easier than it was
in FileMaker 7.
FileMaker Pro 8 is priced at $300, and upgrades from FileMaker 6
and 7 are available for $180. FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced costs $500,
with upgrades from FileMaker Developer 6 or 7 priced at $300.
[William Porter is a former classics professor who, in 1998,
gave up academic tenure to pursue "other interests," including
developing database applications. An Associate Member of the
FileMaker Solutions Alliance, William is currently working on
a book about FileMaker Pro 8 for No Starch Press.]
PayBITS: Did Will's review of FileMaker Pro 8 give you the data
you were looking for? Consider sending him a few bucks via PayBITS!
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=wp%40polytrope.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
Take Control News/19-Sep-05
---------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
**"Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security" Released** -- Putting on
my author hat for a moment, I'm delighted to tell you that I,
with my co-author Glenn Fleishman, have written a new ebook about
wireless network security for you. Ever since Glenn and I wrote
the first edition of "The Wireless Networking Starter Kit" years
ago, we've been going back and forth about wireless network
security - who should worry about what, how much effort they
should put into increasing security, what tools and techniques
are actually effective, and so on. Honestly, I've always been on
the side of leaving my network open and taking basic precautions
to protect my systems, whereas Glenn prefers to lock his networks
down tightly. I'm still less paranoid than Glenn, but after
writing the section on how to perform a security audit, in which
I set up a wireless network using some common approaches and then
proceeded to use freely available tools to break into it and sniff
data, I have an increased respect for the need for security on
Wi-Fi networks.
The wireless network security audit is, in fact, the last
major section of the ebook, which begins by helping you
determine what your real security risks are based on your
location, the desirability of your data, your liability if your
network is compromised, and the amount of effort that would go
into increasing security. Then it gets practical, discussing
common ways of restricting wireless network access that are
akin to those bathroom door locks that can be picked with a paper
clip - they won't keep out anyone who wants to get in - along with
important new technologies that provide real security. Subsequent
sections help you protect your systems from attack and viruses,
and show you how to encrypt your data in transit to protect it
from prying eyes anywhere, which is particularly helpful when
you're using insecure hot spots while traveling. Glenn also
wrote a great section on securing small office wireless networks,
complete with details on choosing VPN hardware and software,
and on setting up 802.1X for secure Wi-Fi logins. You can read
more about the ebook, download a free 31-page sample, and place
an order at:
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/wifi-security.html?
14@@!pt=TRK-0023-TB797-TCNEWS>
**"Take Control of Your AirPort Network" Updated to v1.2** --
Readers who want friendly real-world advice about how to set
up and run a Wi-Fi network using Apple's AirPort technology,
or similar technology from third-party vendors, can now get the
latest info from the 1.2 update to Glenn Fleishman's "Take Control
of Your Airport Network." Although this update is free, in many
ways it's quite significant: it covers changes in the AirPort
world since February 2005, including new features associated
with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. It also has changed or expanded
coverage of setting a custom password for your base station,
using Keychain Access, managing network profiles, using WPA
Enterprise, and more. If you already own the ebook, click the
Check for Updates button on the cover to download your free
update. If you have the print version of this title, consult
the Free Updates section on page xi.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/airport.html?
14@@!pt=TRK-0008-TB797-TCNEWS>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/19-Sep-05
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The first link for each thread description points to the
traditional TidBITS Talk interface; the second link points to
the same discussion on our Web Crossing server, which provides
a different look and which may be faster.
**What's happening to our favorite GUI?** iTunes 5 introduced a
slightly different look to Apple's applications, leading to a
discussion of whether the Aqua human interface guidelines are
being tossed out the window or evolving. (8 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2704>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/557/>
**Voice recognition software in 2005** -- Despite a promising
start years ago, the state of speech-recognition software such
as iListen and ViaVoice on the Mac has fallen behind its Windows
competitors. (5 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2707>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/559/>
**iPod nano** -- The name "iPod nano" has a few different meanings
in Japanese, but really, we all know the name came from Mork &
Mindy: nano nanoo! (4 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2709>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/561/>
**iTunes 5 random shuffle** -- iTunes 5 introduced a new feature
to make the shuffle mode more random. What's going on? Apparently,
"random" to a computer isn't as random as you might think.
(4 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2711>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/562/>
$$
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