This is the first time we have ever reviewed a product, and may be the last. The fact is we just love Developer Assistant so much that we had to write about it.  We'll cover some of the major features of Developer Assistant and why we think this should be in every developers toolkit.

Four years ago we wrote an article about how you can refresh portals and relationships without the need to flush the entire cache. The technique involved using a Cartesian Join. Now, over four years later FileMaker 14 has given us a supported way to do this with the Refresh Portal script step.  In this article we demonstrate how the step can be used by comparing it to the example given in our first article on the subject. We also cover some situations where cartesian join may still be the preferred method of refresh.

Buttons have had a major overhaul in FileMaker 14. In addition to a brand new user interface for button setup, you now have far more control over a buttons appearance, including adding an icon (that is not an overlaid image!) In this article we cover some of the new features of button setup including adding your own icon sets for button usage.

It's been quite a while since FileMaker introduced a new layout part, but with FileMaker 14 we have one. Known as the Navigation part, on the surface it may appear similar to it's cousin the header. However the more you delve into its properties the cooler it gets. In this article we explain the properties of the Navigation part and why it rocks!

In FileMaker 14 you have more control over object styles than ever before. In this article we document some of the main new formatting and styling options for layout objects

In this article we show how you can build a button bar to become the main navigation bar for your solution, and how it can be abstracted as much as possible so it can be pasted across multiple layouts.  We also cover some of the limitations that using a button bar will present.

The new Script Workspace allows you to add script steps simply by typing them directly into a script. It will attempt to auto-complete your entry and find matching script steps.  With a little practice and habit you can easily learn the best shortcuts to use to save you the most time when it comes to finding the specific step you want to add. In this article we provide a demo file that gives you a number of variations of shortcuts you can use for every script step, as well as going into detail as to how the auto-complete works.

The biggest feature overhaul in FileMaker 14 is that to the scripting area, now known as the script workspace. This is the biggest scripting change in years and with it comes a number of areas where you can gain in efficiency when writing scripts. In this article we document all of the areas of the script workspace and list as many features as we can find.

Placeholder text is a great new feature in FileMaker 14. With it you can specify by calculation what label text is to appear in a field that is empty. You can also have complete control over the styling of that text.  In this article we demonstrate how to setup a placeholder and some of its benefits over standard labels.  We also show how placeholder text can be used as a powerful user interface tool for displaying virtually any calculated value direct on a layout without the need for fields or variables.