2empowerFM Keyboard and Mouse

Take control of your keyboard and mouse. Link hotkeys to scripts or variables, continue paused scripts, and simulate key presses. Pick the mouse pointer shape and determine where it was last clicked.

FileMaker 10 introduced hotkey support, but Keyboard and Mouse lets you or your customers use hotkeys all the way back to FileMaker 7. Keyboard and Mouse even lets you hotkey FileMaker shortcuts that FM10 won't let you override. Hotkey Command-Q (Ctrl-Q on Windows) so it can't be used to accidentally quit FileMaker, make Command-N launch a script to guide users through creating a new record, or have Command-F perform the find in Find mode instead of clearing the find requests a user just finished typing in.

Get hundreds of handwritten names entered more quickly than with mouse clicks by using Alt-N to launch your "New Person" script, Enter to commit the person, and Escape to cancel. It's amazing how much time this saves on a repetative task.

Unlike in FM10, there's no need to split your functionality into multiple scripts to use hotkeys. Within one script, set up one or more hotkeys, pause the script, and the hotkeys will resume the script you left paused. When the script resumes, you remove hotkeys and check the value of a variable to determine which hotkey was pressed.

Keyboard and Mouse can also press keys. Help confused users get out of Preview mode by having Keyboard and Mouse press Command-L (layout mode) when the user clicks anywhere or types anything. You can also press keys to activate menu items from your script that can't otherwise be activated in earlier FileMaker versions.

Keyboard and Mouse lets you pick the mouse pointer shape and determine where it was last clicked.

Use any image as a set of buttons simply by testing where the image was clicked. Even things in preview mode can be made clickable. There's no need to edit buttons on dozens of layouts whenever your database changes - Images can form a consistent menu bar across all your databases that is easy to update in a single place.

Keep users from trying to click things while your script is running by changing the mouse pointer into an hourglass (FileMaker sometimes fails to do that for you, especially when calling long-running plug-in functions).  Change to the “help” pointer (an arrow with a question mark), then show them help based on what they click.  Choose among pointers like the vertical bar, finger, and slashed circle.

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Latest version is 1.51, released 1/31/2010. Version History