VISUAL QUICKPRO GUIDE FileMaker Pro 7 Advanced FOR WINDOWS AND MACINTOSH [Electronic resources]

Using a Script to Open URLs

Many of the companies and people in your contact list probably have a Web page. If it lists pricing, products, or other useful data, you might want to have easy access to it when you examine the customer accounts. If you have a URL field for the entry, you can create a script to open the Web page in your default browser.

To use a script to open a Web page

1 .Choose Scripts > ScriptMaker (Control+Shift+S/ Command+Shift+S).

2 .When the Define Script dialog box appears, click New. In the Edit Script dialog box, name the new script (we use Open Web Page).

3 .In the step list on the left, scroll down to Miscellaneous and double-click Open URL (Figure 11.26).

4 .In the Script Step Options section, click the "Perform without dialog" check box, then click the Specify button.

5 .When the "Open URL" Options dialog box appears (Figure 11.27), click the Specify button.

6 .In the Specify Calculation dialog box, double-click the field that contains Web addresses (Figure 11.28). Click OK.

If necessary, you can click the Define Fields button to create a URL field.

7 .Click OK three times to save the script and finish.

Tips

To add a convenient button that will run the script, follow the instructions in "To create a button for a script" in Chapter 9. Although you can name this button anything you'd like, "Go" is short, sweet, and familiar to anyone using the Internet (Figure 11.29).

Although we used a Web URL in this example, you can use this script to open an FTP site or any other type of address that an Internet utility (like Fetch or Gopher) understands. As long as the field data is properly formatted, the script will open the appropriate application.

If the URL field will usually contain Web page addresses, you can set the Auto-Enter option to insert "http://www."automatically in each new record. This will save lots of typing and reduce errors.