Towel – A Helper App for FileMaker Developers | davidhamann media
THIS APP IS OFF TO A PROMISING START, but has one major drawback: It requires a pricey, yet highly useful, MBS plugin. Nevertheless, this first version lays the groundwork for a pretty useful tool for most developers:
A couple of weeks ago I started to think about a solution to automatize some of the “every day tasks” you have as a (FileMaker) developer: looking up error codes and function definitions, launching new FileMaker instances, installing plugins, launching VPN connections, generating test data, looking up meta data, etc.
Shortly after that I started to create Towel, a small FileMaker application that helps you handle those little tasks – generally without touching the mouse 🙂
When you launch Towel, you are presented with one input box that asks for a domain, a parameter and an option.
How to use the commands
As an example: if you want to look up a FileMaker “get function”, you’ll use the “fm” domain, the “func” parameter and optionally the string “get”. Pressing return takes you to a list of all FileMaker “get functions”. Using the arrow keys you can navigate and by pressing return again you can drill into a function definition. No matter where you are in the program, you can always return to start by using the ESC key.
If you have the MBS plugin, give this helper app a go and let us know what you think.