Got a question about LiveCode for FM?
Take a look through our most frequently asked questions
You will need FileMaker pro 18 or 19. To work online you will need a FileMaker 17 or greater server connection. Offline solutions do not require a FileMaker Server connection.
At present, we support deployment to Android, iOS and Mac. We expect to add Windows, Web and Linux at a later date, also potentially Raspberry Pi if there is sufficient demand.
While you will be able to deploy to Windows, you need a Mac to run the LiveCode for FM compiler. Depending on demand, we may add a Windows edition at a later date, but this is not in version 1.
Yes, you need to have a license from FileMaker as well as from us.
To run a LiveCode for FM app on an Android device, you will need at least Android 7 (nougat). For Ben Lui releases, we are recommending a mid range device, scoring 300 or more on the Geekbench rating system. Further releases will target lower end devices. The better your device scores, the more smoothly your app is likely to run.
Yes, LiveCode for FM connects seamlessly to the FileMaker servers using the Data API.
A user is anyone who either develops or uses your app. So you might have a team of 3 developers, each of whom is a user, plus 20 named users of the app. You would need a total of 23 user licenses for this app.
Your app could be used by specific people, that you can name. For example, you might sell your app to a Financial Services company, which has 20 people in their accounts department using the app. These are named users. They can change over time, and seats can be unassigned and assigned to a new named user.
Alternatively, your app could be used by anonymous, concurrent users. It might be an app in the iOS App store, for eg a conference schedule, used by large numbers of unknown people, at the same time. These numbers could fluctuate greatly from month to month. Note that we count the number of people using your app at the same time NOT the number of concurrent connections to your FileMaker Server.
If your app is used by fluctuating numbers of concurrent users – don’t worry! Just make your best guess at the peak number you expect at any given time. LiveCode for FM will work it out for you. The connections will be tracked, and if you have more users than you thought, we’ll let you know and you can purchase more users.
Yes. Your user packs are specific to a particular app. For example, if you have two apps, one for managing the accounts of a large firm, used by 10 people in the client company, and one for managing the schedule for a conference available in the Google Play store, you will need separate user packs and different user types for each app. Your accounting app needs 10 named users, but your conference app might need 100 concurrent users (depending on how large the conference is). You need to buy 2 separate user packs.
Please get in touch with us for a demo of LiveCode for FM.
Yes, you do not need to have a connection to use your apps. If you choose a syncing license type for your users, when a connection does become available again, any new data can be synced with the server.
Your solution will look the same on all platforms, except where a native object has been used to give the appropriate native look and feel. For example the date picker on Android looks a bit different to that on iOS or on a Mac.
We will only track the number of users your solution has. We will not have access to, or store any of your data.
You can choose between online and offline mode, and how often your data is synced. You can also choose which tables to sync, and set up users with different permissions to access different areas of your solution.
No programming expertise, other than your existing FileMaker knowledge is required. All you need to do is drag and drop your existing FileMaker solution into the compiler, choose your layouts and which OS you’d like to deploy to, and LiveCode for FM does the rest.
Yes! LiveCode for FM allows you to bypass the need to use the complex FM SDK to create a fully native app, saving you significant amounts of development time.
LiveCode for FM also lets you access the device’s operating system directly while connecting back to FileMaker Server/Cloud using the Data API without the need to create a complex back end.
You will be able to add functionality not supported by FileMaker to your LiveCode for FM iOS app. LiveCode for FM provides you with powerful online/offline syncing. All good reasons for using it for your iOS deployment needs.
Not at the moment. Instead we provide “Extended Scriptsteps” that add functionality to your app. This provides a way to extend the functionality of your app to features not currently supported in FileMaker.
Yes. Our compiler has been tested with many large and complex solutions. Your compilation may take longer than smaller, simpler solutions – however the result will be the same.
We define offline as never connecting to a FileMaker database. Your app can still connect to other web services or databases.
Yes, while LiveCode for FM offers its own robust online/offline syncing, if you have an existing solution set up to work with Mirrorsync, this has been tested and will work in LiveCode for FM.
Sorry you’ve not been able to find the answer to your question in our FAQ. Contact our support team with your question and we will get back to you ASAP.