Beta 3 is Ready for YOU

by Kevin Miller on March 11, 2019 2 comments

We will not lie to you. This took a bit longer than we had hoped, and required some really deep and intricate coding from our highly talented team. But we have good – no, GREAT – news for you today.

It’s Ready for You!

LCFM Native Beta 3 brings you the majority of FileMaker feature set, transported to Android, Mac and iOS with faithful detail. Your layouts will look exactly like your layouts… but running on platforms they’ve never visited before.

3 Minute Demo – Building an Android app with BETA 3

If you’re already part of our Beta program, download Beta 3 from your account today and enjoy the magic of seeing your solutions running beautifully on Android. If you aren’t – now is a good time to join! You could be deploying to Android within a couple of hours. You can run the same app natively on Android, iOS and Mac right now, and we’ll be adding more deployment platforms soon. We’re targeting Window and Linux next, then we’ll be looking at Raspberry Pi. Keep reading to find out why now is the perfect time to get on board.

Just to give you a flavour of what is going on under the hood… Our team specced out and completed 1612 separate tasks that needed to be done to make LCFM Native compile almost every feature FileMaker offers with a faithful representation of each one. All this complexity is packaged up in one small but mighty download that you drag-and-drop your solution onto. Sit back and watch it compile.

It’s Groundbreaking

To recap on why this is so groundbreaking for you… You can use FileMaker, the platform you know and love, to create your solutions. Then you can simply deploy them with LCFM Native, taking advantage of FileMaker’s Data API licensing, and run them on multiple platforms in sync, online and offline, as standalone (Runtime) applications or as connected solutions. Whatever you like, wherever you like, with a licensing model you’ll like. Broaden your horizons, serve more clients, reach the Android platform where the other 86% of the mobile market live. All without abandoning FileMaker.

When Harry Met LCFM Native

One of our customers, Majic Software, is already using LCFM Native to deploy solutions to customers. Harry Catherall, the CEO of Majic told us:

“LCFM Native means we now know we are able to say yes to all our clients.”

Matt Haughton, their senior developer, said:

“We have had lots of clients come to us, asking for the option to deploy to Android, and we’re really excited to turn around to our current clients, as well as our future clients and say yes, we can offer that and we won’t need to add 50% of your project cost on just to develop the Android side of the app, that’s just part of the package”.

Get on Board Now, Here’s why…

We need your help. This has been a huge engineering effort, and now we need your feedback. While the development for Beta 3 was somewhat monolithic, in that it required us to develop some fairly large release-quality components from scratch, future iteration will be anything but. Now is the time to test to see how well your solution works, and give us feedback so we can be sure its 100% perfect for version 1. We don’t think the process needs to take up too much of your time. Only with real world usage and feedback can we be sure we get this right.

If you are looking to purchase a large user pack, we have a special program where you can work directly with our engineering team throughout this process. If you’re interested in this, please get in touch. Eligibility criteria apply.

In addition to the main benefit – being sure your solution is going to work right – here are some more reasons why now is the time to get on board.

  1. The majority of the features are now complete, meaning there is a good chance that straightforward solutions will just work.
  2. Get a jump on the competition – your solution could be the first out there on Android
  3. Save on average 50% on your licensing costs with the FileMaker Data API & LCFM Native
  4. Test your solutions today and tell us if you find any issues – we can fix them ahead of v1
  5. Save 38% on User Packs with Beta Pricing
  6. Take advantage of our extended money back guarantee

What Works in Beta 3

We’ve covered the majority of the FileMaker feature set, including script steps and functions. This includes all the basic objects such as buttons, all field types, vector graphics and images; as well as more advanced features such as the web viewer object. The full range of theming options are supported. Layouts can display in either Form or List view.

  • Deploy to Android;
  • Deploy to iOS;
  • Deploy to Mac;
  • FileMaker Mobile Layouts are faithfully represented in your native app;
  • You can use local data storage;
  • Basic syncing to a FileMaker Server is available;
  • Insert from device, including taking photos and scanning barcodes.
  • signature support
  • Multi file solution support

We’re about half way there on performance. Your apps should run passably well, but we expect to be finding ways to speed them up and improve performance in rapid iterations over the Beta 3 technology.

Over to You

We’re really excited about Beta 3. We know you will be too. Get it today and start giving us your feedback!

Kevin MillerBeta 3 is Ready for YOU

2 comments

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  • Nick Lightbody - March 11, 2019 reply

    Good news Kevin.
    I will test dCMS Deskspace and see whether it runs. We make extensive use of FileMaker cURL so can you let me know whether that has been implemented in beta 3?
    Cheers, Nick

    Steven Crighton - March 12, 2019 reply

    Hi Nick, it should be mostly supported at this stage, let us know if you find issues

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