Bento 4 comes to Mac App Store

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 17 March 2011 00:01

Your IT - Home IT

Bento 4, the personal database system for Mac OS X, delivers several new features requested by users, and for the first time is available via the Mac App Store as well as traditional channels.

Bento 4 brings a number of new and revised features to the personal database software from Apple subsidiary FileMaker.

Top of the list for David Head, Asia Pacific systems engineer at FileMaker, is the new label printing facility. "It was our most commonly requested feature [by Bento users]," he said.



More than 250 layouts are provided, including those for Avery A4 label sheets as sold in Australia, and it is easy to build custom formats such as name badges. Labels can include graphic fields from the database.

Form printing has been improved, with new themes and additional options including printing with or without field borders.

Data can be included or excluded when exporting Bento libraries as a template. Talking of templates, the Bento Template Exchange, which allows users to share templates with their peers, has been "a very successful venture," according to Mt Head, with over 800 templates contributed so far, one of which has been downloaded 650,000 times. Bento 4 allows users to post templates to the Exchange directly from the application.

There's plenty more that's new in Bento 4, so please read on.