WebDirect was introduced as component of FileMaker Server 13 and has evolved regularly since then.
It makes your FileMaker custom applications available in the browser and available through the Internet, Claris making sure that the user experience is as close as possible from FileMaker Pro’s.
This has proven very useful in corporate companies where installing a software like FileMaker Pro on desktop computers isn’t trivial.
Web Direct is a good option if you need to expose your app to external users or to build a customer portal for instance.
WebDirect requires FileMaker Server
An often heard complaint though is that users are disconnected when they click the Back button of their browser. This button is confusing because it’s very similar and at the same top left corner than FileMaker Pro record navigation widget.
Here is our solution, freely downloadable and usable. It’s a single HTML file.
This HTML file disables the back button if a user connects to a custom app using the file URL.
Using the back button will result in a message telling the user he can’t use that button.
To install, simply download the file and place it in this directory of your FileMaker Server machine
Next edit the HTML with a simple text editor and modify the “solution” variable to indicate your FileMaker file name.
Usually, a user uses this kind of URL to connect to his custom app:
With this solution he should rather use:
In our example this would be: https://1mt_server/1mt_Tasks.html
NB : If you’re using this solution with a http connection instead of https, don’t forget to edit the uri, variable in the HTML file (change https into http).
Download the file here: WebDirect_Wrapper.zip
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It’s Wonderful!!!
Gorgeous!!!
Thank You Fabrice…
It’s also simple customize the alert dialog with the proper localization…
The question is: Why Filemaker didn’t to it before?
Ciao Davide,
I take all compliments but this is a Romain Dunand and Ceydrick Valentini finding 🙂
Can you think of any potential problems caused by wrapping WebDirect in an iframe. E.g. perhaps if your app has a webviewer that uses iframes etc.?
Hello,
thank your for your question,
You’re correct, when the web viewer is set as interactive, the browser back button interacts directly with the web viewer! Under this condition, if your web viewer has a navigation history and you change layout, the wrapper will no longer have any effect on the back button. But in all other cases the wrapper works perfectly.
So to sum up, here are the steps to reproduce the issue:
– load a layout with an interactive web viewer
– load another page in the web viewer by following a hyperlink
– change layout
– click the back button
–> disconnection
GREAT!
Thank you so much for sharing!