01. Reactor Home

Welcome to Reactor, opening a new world of possibilities in FileMaker!


Reactor helps you use the Web Viewer in FileMaker to implement rich, dynamic user interfaces using ready made widgets from the world of web and JavaScript.

If you’re brand new to Reactor, we suggest getting started by learning how it works and how to use some of the ready made controls that we’ve included. 



Next, you’ll need to know how to how to use the specific BlackBox controls you’re interested in — each one is different so we’ve written up a few notes for you…

BlackBox Guides


Once you understand the basics then use these guides to help you use, and modify, the included BlackBox controls. 


Croppie
Sigma
Scheduler (Calendar)
Kanban

Customising BlackBoxes 

Given that the Reactor Core contains the source code you can of course modify the controls as much as much as you like or dare. To modify the look and some behavioural aspects, the CSS styles can be changed, so we’ve created a tutorial to walk you through that with the Scheduler contol:


Beyond that, you’ll need to hone your JavaScript skills to modify the features and functionality of the controls, but these languages (HTML, JavaScript and CSS) are so powerful, almost anything is possible. 

And beyond that there is the black art of creating your own controls…

Creating New BlackBoxes


Can’t find exactly what you want? We’ve really only scratched the surface, so the next step is to learn how to create your own BlackBox controls and the easiest way to do that is to search the web. You’ll find there are literally thousands of controls out there, many are free and open source, while others require a paid license or a license for certain types of use. 

We’ve used https://dhtmlx.com controls for some our BlackBoxes — they’re free to use to a certain level then require a paid license, which means you can try before you buy. 

Here’s a tutorial on just how to do that:


And as an example here’s how we built the Kanban Board.

Fusion Reactor Toolbox


The FR Toolbox is a JavaScript library we created that makes it much easier to make your own JavaScript talk to FileMaker. It’s the magic which gives you functions in JavaScript to read, write, delete, update, calculate with FileMaker.

So you might also find this super-handy reference, handy: