Monthly Archives: February 2010

Messing around with Dojo and reading a new book!

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After attending Dojo.connect() conference I decided to review a couple of more books for Packt Publishing.  The first one I am reviewing is Learning Dojo by Peter Svensson.   I am only 6 chapters in and I am finding the book to be extremely helpful.  It goes at what I consider a slow and in-depth pace – which is exactly what I look for when I am learning something new.   I figured I would start to put some of the stuff to practice so I created a videos section on my balfes.net site.  I started by using JSP technology mixed with basic JavaScript, Dojo and some CSS.  For the most part the Fisheye dijit is pretty much the example, found here but with a few modifications.

One thing I don’t like so far with the site is the embedded video players.  I uploaded some MP4′s from the video camera my kids got for Christmas and they are very large files.  I really need to convert them to lower resolution MPG’s so they are not so large.  It seems IE is also having problems with some of the videos – still need to check that out.

Once I finish with this book I will be posting my review – so far it is going very well.  I am then going to check out Learning jQuery 1.3.

Why SWT/Qt when you have the Lotus platform?

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I just read this interesting post about a project for an SWT version based on Qt.  The project argues it is for styling purposes.  What is interesting is the Lotus platform (Lotus Expeditor) which is what Lotus Notes 8.x is based on has had SWidgets since day one.  We even tried to get SWidgets put back into the Eclipse platform but with no success.   You can play with the Lotus Expeditor platform and the toolkit for free.

If you are not familiar with Lotus Notes or Lotus Expeditor you can check out the UI – which is all based on Eclipse/SWT over at the Lotus Notes site.

Here is a screen shot of the Notes email system with styled SWT widgets:

Lotusphere Comes To You (LCTY) – Germany

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Looks like I will be traveling to Germany for the Lotusphere Comes To You event in March which is being run by SIT GmbH.   I will be running a full day workshop with a series of presentations and labs and then giving the What’s new in Composite Applications in Lotus Notes 8.5.1 presentation Mike Cooper and I gave at Lotusphere on day two.

The full day workshop will be a series of labs around the creation of the application I presented at that session.  Some key things you will learn:

  • Web Browser component
    • Using landmarks and xpath expressions
    • Custom Actions written in Java
  • XPage component
    • XPage component in the side bar
    • Sending and receiving events in an XPage component (component definition, xpage, JavaScript)
  • Automatically installing Eclipse features with a composite application
    • Showing how to use Update Site.NTF
    • Linking a component to a feature on the site
  • Un-installing an application from the Composite Application Catalog

From what I have learned the actual workshop is sold out so that is good news.  The lab materials will also be made available for other Lotusphere Comes To You events around the world.

So far I have four labs, with a possible two more in the works.

Lab 1 – Creating our custom action (probably 30 minutes, we will have the code/projects almost done for them).

  • Using Eclipse 3.4.1 code up the custom action project
  • Create the project
  • Create the new extension
  • Bundle the application into a feature and update site

Lab 2 – Creating the composite application and hooking in the features to install with CA – 40-50 minutes

  • Create a new NSF Based on the Composite Application Template
  • Have the student drop a web container on the screen
  • Set the initial URL to https://www-950.ibm.com/events/wwe/lotus/lsph2010.nsf/lsph2010sessions?OpenView
  • Create the landmarks and tie in the new custom action

Lab 3 – Creating the XPage component – 40-50 minutes

  • Using Domino Designer create the Page, Component definition and the different JavaScript events
  • We will have most of the code in a notepad to copy and paste.  We can walk through the code at a high level
  • Go back into the CAE and and add the new XPage component to the user palette.

Lab 4 – Assembling the application (about 10-15 minutes)

  • Add the XPage component to the right side bar.
  • Wire the Lotusphere component to the Xpage component
  • Save and close the application
  • Run the application

TODAY! Learn How to Add BIRT Reporting to JSF Apps using Rich Faces web seminar

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Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Time: 11:00am Pacific | 2:00pm Eastern | 7:00pm GMT
Duration: 40 minutes, including Q & A

Participant Conference Details
Conference Title: Learn How to Add BIRT Reporting to JSF Apps using Rich Faces
Moderator: Virgil Dodson and Max Katz
Company: BIRT Exchange by Actuate and Exadel

Conference Login and Dial In Information:

Toll free: 1-800-214-0694
Toll: 1-719-955-1425
Participant Passcode: 949872

To Join the live Web conference, click here:
1. https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/vcc/join?id=22HSQD&role=attend&pw=949872

Or, use the following link: http://www.livemeeting.com/cc/visioncastconferencing

2. On the “Enter Meeting” page that appears, supply this information:
Your Name: Enter Your Name
Meeting ID: 22HSQD
Meeting Key: 949872
3. Access audio by dialing into the teleconference described above.

Should spell check in Lotus Notes remember your choices when you save as a draft?

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Unfortunately I have family that uses Lotus Notes and because they know I work for Lotus they think I am their personal technical support.  Specifically my cousin has been complaining about this feature for years so I wanted to see who else thinks this would be a good idea.  The behavior is, once you do a spell check, save the email as draft and go back to that email later you should not have to re-check the words you already have signed off on.

[poll id="9"]

Book Review: IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1

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Book: IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1, The Upgraders Guide.

I will start by saying this book is a good resource for anyone wanting to know what features are in Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1.  The book pretty much covers most areas you would expect in Lotus Notes and is a great overall summary with many examples.  I really love the format of the book, it was very easy to follow, very well written, and easy to read.  I loved the appendix!  The different chapters about add-on products was a great benefit. There were at times I felt like I read some things in one chapter and almost the same thing in another chapter with little value added.  I really wish there was more around development techniques and best practices and in general I would have preferred a little more depth in some areas.  For instance, there was a lot of material about Composite Applications but most of the information was based on 8.0.x stuff.

There is also a free chapter you can preview: Chapter 8 – which is an extracted Chapter that anyone can check out here, it covers a lot of information and should be quite useful for developers.

Ok, here is my constructive feedback.  I will first say that the product documentation is something that needs to be addressed and I can see why many of these areas were not covered, but if you follow the yellowverse you will see the many blogs from IBMer’s, partners, and customers talking about these topics.  Since this is an “upgraders guide” it was difficult for me to figure out how hard I should judge on some of the areas.  The book clearly hits end user, admins, and developers so I took the liberty to just throw it all out there!

End user and Administrative areas:

Managed Settings – using Domino policies you can push down Eclipse plug-in preferences.  They definitely should have mentioned this or walked through the policy screen like they did the Widget policies.

LiveText, Toolbox, and Widgets – arguably one of the most popular areas of the 8.x release and I see a small mention of it in this book.  This probably deserves its own chapter considering the new options that were added in 8.5.1.  Creating your own recognizers is also a popular topic in the forums.

Serviceability - it would have been nice if the book included a chapter on serviceability.  For instance, what the directory structures are, where to find logs, how to look at and evaluate the output from the IBM support assistant.  In my experience this stuff is very valuable to companies and admins supporting a rich client.

Developer areas: being a developer myself I would have wanted to get some detailed information about the following areas.  It looks like the title of the book was changed from 8.5 to 8.5.1 because the developer chapter only talks about 8.5 and really the content is based on 8.0.  So I would update this chapter in a revision to include some of the 8.5.1 enhancements.

XPages - even though this could be an entire book on its own, I think it warranted at least its own chapter.  With the introduction to XPages on the client in 8.5.1 this should have been clearly highlighted! You will have to settle for the yellowverse, product documentation and the Designer Wiki.

Eclipse plug-in development – It would have been nice to have a chapter to primer the Eclipse/Java developers – or the want-to-be’s.  plugins, Java UI, extensions.  On Page 151, the screen shot not the CAE Palette in 8.5.1.  It looks like a palette from 8.0 with all of the views in the system loaded into it.

Composite applications – None of the following was mentioned in the book: Container framework, Containers (Document and View, HOD, Symphony, Web), NSF Update Site.NTF, Side bar control.  I recommend hitting the Composite Application Wiki, Lotus Expeditor Wiki, and Designer Wiki for these areas.

Lotus Symphony – even though Symphony could be its own book.  It would have been nice to see integration with Composite Applications or how to extend Symphony with Eclipse and the JUNO API’s.

Lotus Expeditor – it would have been nice if they mentioned how Portal can manage composite applications for role based application support and also explain the value-add over base Eclipse.

Lastly, for many of the areas I mention about Composite Applications you can get it from the CA Wiki: What’s new in Lotus Notes 8.5.1 & Expeditor 6.2.1.  The Domino Designer wiki is filled with XPage material – not too mention many of the business partner bloggers constantly write about XPages.

Also, this review and opinion is my own personal opinion and does not reflect the opinion of my employer or anyone else.