Differences between FM8 and FM7 Calendars
Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:54 amHi. Our new SeedCode Calendar expands on our FM7 Scheduling Edition and takes advantage of some of the new things in FM8. It can be thought of at the Scheduling Edition plus a rich Contacts and Projects management section (including a Gantt Chart on the project's side).
Here are some more specific differences between the two offerings.
1. The new SeedCodeCalendar is written for FileMaker 8 and takes advantage of $variables and a number of other things to make some sections of the code much simpler and more centralized. This isn't really a feature difference, but it means that the new one is easier to work on and modify. $Variables make things like adding a new client right from within the calendar much easier...
Adding a New Contact in FM8
...here is a screen shot of the same area in the Scheduling Edition:
Adding a contact in FM7
In the FM8 version, the "select contact" routine is portable and can be called from anywhere: we call it from appointments and projects, but you could even call it from other files.
2. The new version links appointments to Clients and Projects. Where the Scheduling Edition, included a light contacts table...
Contact admin in the Scheduling Edition
...that was more of a placeholder for one you may already have. The new version includes a real contacts table along with a new projects table:
Contact Management in SeedCode Calendar
Project Management in SeedCode Calendar
3. The FM8 version integrates our Gantt chart into the calendar:
Gantt Chart screen shot
4. Finally, in the FM8 version we've removed some of the things that were slowing down the Scheduling Edition. Most notably we've removed the hours display from the left side of the daily view and removed the blue dots in the daily view's mini calendars. Here is the Scheduling Edition's daily view with these items in place:
Daily View: FM7 Scheduling Edition
And here is the daily view in the new calendar:
Daily View: FM8 SeedCode Calendar
A similar change happened on the week view where we removed the hours display from the Scheduling Edition and created two week views in the FM8 calendar, one displaying hour-positions (the "fancy" week view) and another more basic view:
Scheduling Edition's week view
And here are the two week views from the new FM8 calendar:
"Fancy" week View
Basic week view
The latter of these is a good deal faster.
Hope that helps.
Here are some more specific differences between the two offerings.
1. The new SeedCodeCalendar is written for FileMaker 8 and takes advantage of $variables and a number of other things to make some sections of the code much simpler and more centralized. This isn't really a feature difference, but it means that the new one is easier to work on and modify. $Variables make things like adding a new client right from within the calendar much easier...
Adding a New Contact in FM8
...here is a screen shot of the same area in the Scheduling Edition:
Adding a contact in FM7
In the FM8 version, the "select contact" routine is portable and can be called from anywhere: we call it from appointments and projects, but you could even call it from other files.
2. The new version links appointments to Clients and Projects. Where the Scheduling Edition, included a light contacts table...
Contact admin in the Scheduling Edition
...that was more of a placeholder for one you may already have. The new version includes a real contacts table along with a new projects table:
Contact Management in SeedCode Calendar
Project Management in SeedCode Calendar
3. The FM8 version integrates our Gantt chart into the calendar:
Gantt Chart screen shot
4. Finally, in the FM8 version we've removed some of the things that were slowing down the Scheduling Edition. Most notably we've removed the hours display from the left side of the daily view and removed the blue dots in the daily view's mini calendars. Here is the Scheduling Edition's daily view with these items in place:
Daily View: FM7 Scheduling Edition
And here is the daily view in the new calendar:
Daily View: FM8 SeedCode Calendar
A similar change happened on the week view where we removed the hours display from the Scheduling Edition and created two week views in the FM8 calendar, one displaying hour-positions (the "fancy" week view) and another more basic view:
Scheduling Edition's week view
And here are the two week views from the new FM8 calendar:
"Fancy" week View
Basic week view
The latter of these is a good deal faster.
Hope that helps.