FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Other Script Steps

You’ve now seen most of the often-used script steps (and a few of the not-so-often used ones). You’ll see even more as they come up in the next few chapters. The rest of this chapter covers a few oddball steps that don’t seem to fit in anywhere:

Open URL

You first saw the Open URL script step as a button command when learning about text calculations. When FileMaker runs this step, it asks your computer’s operating system to open the URL you specify. Most often the URL is a Web address (HTTP), but it can be any URL type your computer supports, including FTP, MAILTO, SSH, and even FMP7 (to open a file on a network server). As usual, you can specify the URL or let the user do it, and you can use a calculation if needed.

Dial Phone

The Dial Phone script step tells your modem to dial the telephone using a phone number you provide. You can use a calculation to specify the phone number or enter it directly.

Note

This script step doesn’t work on Mac OS X.

Set Web Viewer

Web viewers are pretty cool on their own, but the Set Web Viewer script step (Figure 14-17) can make your FileMaker layouts look even more like a Web browser. With this flexible script step, you can make a series of buttons:

• Reset sets the Web viewer back to the Web address that’s specified in its Web Viewer Setup dialog box.

• Reload gets you a fresh copy of the Web page you’re currently viewing.

• Go Forward lets you move forward through your Web page history.

• Go Back lets you move backwards through the Web pages you’ve ...