Monthly Archives: March 2010

How to get a bug fixed in Notes, Sametime, Expeditor, Eclipse, etc..

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After reviewing some articles on Eclipse.org I saw this short article by Remy.  Yes, it is short, but it shows the basics of how you can search the Eclipse bug system and ultimately submit a patch for a bug.  The Eclipse team is very good in responding to bugs and if you can post a suggested fix or code change it gets even easier.  This article actually shows how you can submit a bug with a patch and how to use Plug-in Spy.

“The plug-in spy aims to provide a simple tool to introspect Eclipse in terms of what a plug-in developer would find useful. Simply hit ALT+SHIFT+F1 on what you’re looking at, and Plug-in Spy will be presented to you with relevant information. This tool is part of the Eclipse Incubator project. For a complete description of Eclipse incubation please read this.”

So if you have an idea for how to fix some annoying bug in any of your favorite Lotus products that happens to be in the Eclipse layer submit or fix a bug directly to Eclipse!

Referenced article is here.

Using Widgets to manage and deploy plug-ins to Lotus Notes

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Many customers are in the process of upgrading to Notes 8.x and specifically 8.5.1 and are very excited about Eclipse development.  A common question is how can we manage these plug-ins and deploy them to the client?  Here is a great link to get started in the Domino Administrator help.

“While Widgets and Live Text can be used to deploy a variety of Live Text and gadget-like capabilities to client users, they play a unique role in installing and updating (deploying and provisioning) feature plug-ins and policies to all managed clients in the IBM® Lotus® Domino®-administered enterprise, including IBM® Lotus® Notes® as well as IBM® Lotus® Expeditor® clients.”

Eclipse Workbench Selection and Adapters and why they are so important

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As more and more people are diving into Eclipse in the Notes community one very important area of the Eclipse workbench that needs to be understood is the Eclipse Workbench Selection and then more importantly Adapters.  Understanding these two basic concepts will let your Eclipse view (or component) interact with other Eclipse parts with no “wiring”.  The workbench selection is a fixed pub/sub where your component will be notified any time another part changes its selection – a workbench window only has one selection at a time.  This allows your view part to show relative information to the new selection.  The Adapter pattern explained in the linked article explains how you can provide selection objects that can be adapted to other well known object types.  It also shows you how you can adapt an existing selectable object type to something else.

Many of the side bar components that work off of a currently selected email or document use this pattern.  This allows your side bar component to be able to respond to what is currently selected.

Adapters article on Eclipse.org.

Labs for "Eclipse, extensions, composites and XPages!" are now available!

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ad202-screenshotAs promised a couple of weeks ago, the labs I orchestrated in Germany last week are now available for broader consumption.  The lab is available on Developer Works in a new activity named Developer Kit-in-a-box in Lotus Application Development Group.  The labs are in the section under Composite Applications, the link directly to the material is here.

You will have to login to developer works in order to get at this content.  I am looking forward to seeing the feedback and contributions from partners and customers in this activity.
Direct Link – click here.

Creating your own preference panels in Lotus Notes

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I was going to write up a nice article/tutorial on this but I knew it has been written about many times over.  Not too mention it is in almost every Eclipse book on the planet.  Many Notes developers still do not realize that most of the extensibility in Notes 8.x is really just plain old Eclipse extensions – preference panels being one of them.  Eclipse.org is always the place to find the best small articles, this article is specifically about preferences – the store and the user interface.

The following tutorial post by Raja is also a great start in learning this stuff.  So if you want to create Eclipse plug-ins for Lotus Notes make sure you check out what is available in the online community.  I found this article by searching “creating an Eclipse preference panel extension” in Google, unfortunately it was found on the second page, near the bottom.  So in short, I think this stuff is very hard to find and this kind of information is most likely not included in the Notes 8.x documentation.  Your best bet is to search Eclipse.org!

Introduction to Eclipse Plugin Architecture

Book Review: Learning jQuery 1.3

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This book (Learning jQuery 1.3) took me a little longer to get through, it wasn’t for the lack of interest or anything like that, it was because I was compelled to go through the samples because they were so great!  I really loved this book and I recommend it to anyone looking at jQuery.  I really love JQuery, it is simple, elegant and extremely powerful.  It is clear the creators of jQuery knew exactly what they were creating with this amazing library and community.  Since I have read the book I have been playing with plug-ins and reading the community forums.  The samples are excellent and extremely easy to follow.  Even if you are new to JavaScript this book walks you through all of it and even gives you tips for JavaScript best practices throughout the book.  While the samples are really good, what is even better is the Appendix – it has an excellent series of appendix.  There is an appendix for Tools for each of the browsers, JavaScript Closures, and a quick reference for the library.

Lastly, anyone interested in learning or getting started with jQuery I would highly recommend this great book.  I know I will use this as a reference for quite some time.

You can also preview Chapter 4 prior to buying this book.

Online webinars from Lotus Education

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Read Ed’s post about the up and coming Lotus Education webinars and the agenda’s look great.  I saw the XPages and Composite Applications sessions at Lotusphere and I am sure the webinar’s will be more than worth the cost of these sessions.   Interestingly, Hunters course outline looks very similar to the labs I am giving at Germany later this week.  I think showing how to integrate Java, SWT, XPages and container components into a single application will be some good education for many.

STM01 — Demystifying Sametime 8.5 Webinar
When : Thursday March 25th, 11am — 2:30pm EST
Speakers : Wes Morgan, Michael Herring, Frank Altenburg
Price: $249.USD

D8M02 — Creating Xpages Application in IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.x Webinar
When : Wednesday April 28th, 11am — 1:00pm EST
Speakers : Martin Donnelley & Tony McGuckin
Price: $149.USD

D8M01 — Building Composite Applications in IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Webinar
When : Thursday April 15th, 11am — 2pm EST
Speakers : Hunter Medney
Price: $149.USD

D8M03 — Upgrading to IBM Lotus Notes Domino 8.5.1 Webinar
When : Thursday April 29th, 11am — 3pm EST
Speakers — Tim Speed, Joseph Andersen, Barry Rosen
Price: $249.USD

Do you want XPage components in the side bar?

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Looks like I lost two posts when they moved my blog between servers!  I am going to post these back here.  For this specific one,  if you answered prior that you would like this can you please do it again.  There was a request for what customers would want such a thing.

One of the biggest wins for Lotus Notes at Lotusphere was the fact that XPages can run in the 8.5.1 client.  You can, in that release, also have XPages as components in composite applications.  This also means you can have XPage components in the side bar and somewhat standardize XPage technology as your component UI technology but it needs to be in a composite currently.  This is all great but one piece of feedback was “How do I just put an XPage widget in the side bar without being in a composite?”.  The question was intriguing because it also exposed another gotcha.

There are two primary use cases for having something always live in the side bar:

  1. Just live there and be available for a specific function.
  2. Interact with the currently selected context – ie. respond or show information based on a view selection or tie an event into a Live Text action.

The first one would work fine, the second one would not work today.  The problem is, there is no “Workbench Selection” or “Selection” event in an XPage today.  We would also have to standardize on serialized workbench selections – objects that can be sent over a pipe or use JSON.  As for Live Text integration – this would also be a feature request to get this integration into Widgets (or Toolbox).

I would like to hear the thoughts of my readers on this.  I do understand many are just getting into XPages and components but it would be interesting to hear from the community their take on this.

Lotus Traveler is the killer app for the iPhone

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And its not even an app!

So I have had the iPhone for about 6 months now and I have to say it is an amazing device.  Everyone I show the iPhone to is amazed with the different things it can do and the applications it can run.  The biggest surprises I get are when I explain, and sometimes show them, how my calendar, email, and contacts all sync with the iPhone and that its not really even software its just another account.  I have also updated my Notes contacts many times and it reaches the device within minutes.  People who don’t have this capability – which I would assume are most general consumers, are amazed when I show them I just edit my Notes contacts and it synchronizes to the device.  I have also explained that a few times I had to reset the device and it was nothing more than a re-sync to get everything back.  Now that I can accept and reject calendar invites it is almost a complete workstation when it comes to contacts, email, and my schedule.  My girlfriend calls me Jack Bauer because I can do so many things with it and she laughs every time I call it a device and not a phone.

Once again, great job Traveler team!