More than one way to skin a cat

[AndyHibbs]

I hope this is of interest. Having confused myself totally a day or two back as to what copy of FileMaker Pro 19 I was working on, I setup the attached screenshot of connections to one of our SaleFaith products running on our development server (taken from my 34" widescreen). Some anonymisation has been carried out within the image.

Fundamentally none of these copies are running natively on my M1 MacBook Pro, as it isn't yet possible, but the emulation I believe is interesting. To put a bit more detail to the notes added to the attached:

Top left corner - FileMaker is being streamed from one of our RemoteApp servers within Microsoft Remote Desktop Beta, which we've been working with the Microsoft development team for about 2 years to remove some of the nuances that their original version displayed when running FileMaker.

Bottom left corner - FileMaker is being streamed from another of our RemoteApp servers within the shipping App Store version of Microsoft Remote Desktop (a few versions behind the above) .

Right side - both copies of FileMaker on the right are running within Parallels in Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview for ARM64. Hence Parallels is running natively on the M1 but as for the copies of FileMaker:

Top right corner - this copy is being streamed from another of our RemoteApp servers, which is setup directly within Windows -> Settings -> RemoteApp and Desktop Connections control panel, so I guess this is running natively within Windows for Arm(?). There are occasionally a few redraw issues with this, but it is very fast and usable.

Bottom right corner - this copy is running within the X64 emulation within Windows, so all sorts of emulation combinations going on there.

Middle - finally this copy is running in Rosetta 2 on the M1 MacBook. Ironically, it could be argued that this is the only copy not running natively on the M1 chip, as both the copies of Microsoft Remote Desktop run natively on Apple Silicon. Parallels equally is also running natively, albeit the lower right copy is running in Windows x64 emulation and the centre copy is the only one running in Rosetta 2.

All of these options run really well on the M1 Mac and Parallels has become such an important tool for us now for running FileMaker copies back to v15. It is so quick to launch and operate that I now treat it just like any other copy of FileMaker. My biggest headache is trying to tell one copy of FileMaker from the others.

Regards
Andy

[Torsten]

I gather information like server name and show it in the window name.

34" screen rules!

[AndyHibbs]

Yes @Torsten, FileMaker kindly displays the FQDN and file name, which isn’t always what we want to have made public.

I have suggested to Claris that we have an option to suppress this as it makes an awful lot of work when creating user guides or putting examples on the web. The vast majority of our servers ate Internet based.

[AndyHibbs]

One other thing that is interesting. Having the 34” wide screen is the first time I’ve been glad that Windows running on the Mac has menus pinned to the window, rather than having to always take the cursor to the top left for the Mac apps.

[Cecile]

I can send you an icon package for your versions

@AndyHibbs

rather than having to always take the cursor to the top left for the Mac apps.

This!!

You could always Give them different colour icons:

Here you have Ember, Minty, Cherry and Limonade!

Here in my Apps folder:

The how to is in the package; ask me if you need more info.

Another technique I used to differentiate my dev from the prod version when I was a citizen developer while doing my job was to put a really horrible fluo background on the dev because I once did some nasty thing to the prod version. (Was so happy with hour backup schedule!)

FMFlavours.zip (1.5 MB)

[AndyHibbs]

Unfortunately @Cecile I only have 1 copy of FMP19 on my Mac, although you could argue that the Parallels/Windows copy is also on it.

The issue is after they have been launched it is difficult to distinguish between them. 3 of the 5 in the screenshot are streamed from our Internet Windows RemoteApp servers.

A lovely thought though and very in keeping with Apple’s current designs.

[rivet]

BetterTouchTool — along with window snapping and other great features, allows you to show the menu bar in Context Menu, which is handy when using a wide monitor.