We've finally completed work on BaseElements 2.6.0 and it's now available for download. This one has been a while in coming and many people have asked where it's at, so we'd like to thank everyone for being patient. More on the delays below, but firstly the good news : New Features.

BaseElements 2.6.0 contains the super-duper whiz-bang fmSearchResults so you can search anywhere within your solution analysis for generic text. It's fast and contains a great user interface for searching. If you like what you see in BaseElements, make sure you download their demo materials and consider putting it in your own solutions too. We'll have more on the implementation of fmSearchResults later.

Also this version is now completely multilingual. BaseElements now speaks Swedish and Japanese, and we'll have a bunch more languages available soon too.

There is more detail in the release notes as there are some more tweaks, fixes and features as well.

And for anyone interested in the delays, one of the issues we've had to overcome with the localisation is how do you translate the buttons in custom dialogs. We'd looked at not translating them (not a great option), or providing dialogs via a plugin. We decided to develop our own plugin so that we could have a single plugin to do the general file functions and the dialogs. After a lot of development and testing time, in the end the single plugin option didn't work out, and we've instead reverted to using Troi File and adding Troi Dialog, but making it optional for those wanting translated dialogs. The extra time and work involved in developing and testing the plugin is the reason for the delay. We may come back to the plugin later, but for now it's on hold.

We will also write something up about our experiences with translating BaseElements for those interested in the process.

For now, grab your copy of BaseElements and if you've got any questions or issues, jump over to the support website http://baseelements.tenderapp.com/ and let us know.

BaseElements now has it's own twitter account :

http://twitter.com/baseelements

And we'll be posting more regularly there as we work through new features and additional content on the website and in the software itself.

All of the FAQ pages, Tips and Tricks and support options are available on our new TenderApp support site :

http://baseelements.tenderapp.com/

There you can submit a support request and browse the public discussions and Knowledge Base / FAQ pages.

You can also send us email directly that goes straight into our support system :

support@baseelements.com

If you're having any other issues, feel free to use the contact form as well.

Our list of FileMaker Features, sorted by which version they were introduced has been updated for FileMaker Pro 10. There isn't a lot of direct items in this, as some of the big changes in FileMaker 10 were to do with dynamic subsummary reports, the new status toolbar, saved finds and Script Triggers.

It's good to see this list kept up to date though, as it is a valuable reference for those who inherit older solutions or need to tailor their development for a client with an old version of FileMaker Pro.

BaseElements has been featured in the latest SeedCode newsletter. We were excited to work with John and Matt to bring their latest product, fmSearchResults to BaseElements. It was very easy to setup and get working and is a great addition to our tool as well.

The final results of this will be in BaseElements 2.6.0 which will be release soon with a few other new features as well, but in the mean time if you'd like to see fmSearchResults in action you can try the BaseElements 2.6 beta. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for the download links.)

There is a bit more detail about BaseElements and fmSearchResults in the SeedCode site, and we'll have even more to say about it soon with the release of BE 2.6.0.

Goya is looking for translators for their forthcoming update to BaseElements to support multiple languages. We've nearly completed testing and development of multiple language support for BaseElements 2.6.0 ( a free update for 2.x owners ), and we're looking for helpers to translate the UI of BaseElements into languages other than english.

At this point, we're not fussed about what languages you're able to provide, although the major FileMaker ones (French, Spanish, German, Italian etc ) would be great, we'd like as many language options as possible ( klingon anyone? ).

Please use the contact form to let us know if you'd like to help and can offer your services. There will be benefits for ongoing translation helpers.

I'll update this post with details of languages that have been taken as it happens.

Update 4 : I've now added a new FAQ page with the complete status. We're still looking for helpers, so contact us if you're interested. Below is the list of completed languages.

Spanish : Done - Thanks to Cesar Morales from ADNPlus Inc.
Dutch : Done - Thanks to Nicky Decorte from ConnectingData.
Swedish : Done - Thanks to David Wikström from CamelCase data.
Italian : Done - Thanks to Giuseppe Pupita. Buliga Software.
Pirate : Done - Thanks to Cesar Morales from ADNPlus Inc.
Japanese : Done - Thanks to Shin Ninagawa from Splash Inc.
French : Done - Thanks to Raymond Studer from RSCP.
German : Done - Thanks to Daniel Wilhelm from Datasol.

It seems that there are lots of people who like BaseElements enough to write to us and let us know. We recently got this in an email from Vernon Downing :

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After using BaseElements 2 for a short time, I want to express how pleased I am. It is extraordinary software. The superb layouts had me immediately focused on the warnings and the associated detail of my application. I was able to easily isolate and document true problems because it was all so clearly presented. BaseElements 2 is an excellent analysis tool (and I have tried others), but I was equally pleased at how easy it was able to extend its usefulness with custom summaries.

After only a few minutes of getting oriented, I was able to turn out specialized data structure reports perfectly suited for my particular application development activities. Using the supplied layouts as templates, my learning curve for building those summaries was short, indeed. In minutes, BaseElements 2.0 provided me results that had previously taken me hours of work.

Thank you, BaseElements Team.

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Thank you Vernon. If you are still undecided about whether BaseElements can save you time and money in your FileMaker development, then maybe grab yourself a demo code and give BaseElements a try.

Tony White Designs has released a very nifty addition to BaseElements that allows you to link to your FileMaker solution from within BaseElements and vice versa. You can be looking at a script or layout in BaseElements and click a button to take you to the exact script or layout in your solution. It's a great way to work within BaseElements and make changes on the fly in your live solution, without navigating through all of the dialogs to find your place.

If you're using BaseElements and you're on a mac (it requires applescript to work), you can download his FileMaker <-> BaseElements Toolkit which is just one of the useful pieces of code on his freebies page.

There are some useful videos there to explain how it all works, it makes for a great demo. Thanks to Tony for creating this and making it free for the FileMaker Developer community.

If you have any questions or feedback about it, feel free to leave a comment below.

Just yesterday, FileMaker announced the release of FileMaker Pro 10. This is a significant release with some neat new features. Script Triggers, new field Indirection options, and layout reporting tools are welcome additions to the product.

And for all of those early adopters, today we've released version 2.5.0 of our flagship product, BaseElements. This update adds support for all of the Script Triggering options, as well as updating the run-time to the latest v10 version. BaseElements 2.5.0 is now compatible with a DDR produced in any version of FileMaker from 7 to 10.

So even if you've haven't yet taken advantage of v10, the new release of the BE 2.5 runtime allows you to use it's handy built in features ( Table Layout Modification, Stored Finds etc ) in BaseElements today.

And this is a free update to all registered 2.x users. If you've still got BaseElements 1, now is a great time to upgrade.

We get a lot of feedback from BaseElements users, and occasionally publish snippets, but this one was worth putting on our front page :

Since we started using BaseElements we have wondered how we ever got by without such a powerful tool. It saves us an enormous amount of time when we need to work out what references what in our JobPro Central FileMaker solution: http://www.jobprocentral.com

We would highly recommend BaseElements to any commercial or in-house FileMaker developer as it will almost immediately pay for itself in what it saves you in time and it is extremely well designed and easy to use.

David O'Donnell, Softouch Technologies, Ireland
Platinum Member - FileMaker Business Alliance

It's always good to hear from satisfied BE users. If you have anything to say about our products, please let us know.