Steve Castledine

Lotusphere 2010 warm up videos

Steve Castledine — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:57:15 +0100

Found these warm up videos for Lotusphere 2010, getting excited yet?:

and of course:

XPages Discussion Template - new build available on OpenNTF

Steve Castledine — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:31:41 +0100

I have uploaded a new build of the XPages Discussion forum to OpenNTF. You can download from here.

This update enhances the existing XPage interface allowing more topics to be visible within the views and enhanced discussion thread viewing.

Enjoy :)

Millies first snowman

Steve Castledine — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 13:34:55 +0100

We finally have a winter this year. The rest of the country has had a fair bit of snow, but we have had about 2cm max.

But we still have a snowman:

For those building Lotusphere Schedule applications

Steve Castledine — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 13:27:50 +0100

Can I ask you to add this session to your databases (thank you):

Meeting Name: OpenNTF Annual General Meeting
Date of Meeting/Function: Tuesday, 1/19 – 6pm – 7pm
Hotel: Yacht and Beach Conference Center
Room/Function Area Name: Cape Cod C

OpenNTF Open Source Lotus Awards nominations close Wednesday

Steve Castledine — Mon, 4 Jan 2010 14:25:17 +0100

Just a quick reminder that the OpenNTF Open Source Lotus Awards nominations close Wednesday, see here.

A reminder also that there are entries where the submitter has been asked to add a licence file etc and so far have not. These queries by the IP manager will need resolving to qualify for entry.

XPages Wiki build 0.06 available

Steve Castledine — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:13:54 +0100

Went through the reported bugs and fixed as many as possible and so a new build is available here.

Template is Domino XPages 8.5.1 only at this point.

Will upload another update soon.

Simple XPages Theme Tip

Steve Castledine — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:56:34 +0100

There was a question "how do I allocate a particular theme to a particular XPage?", this is because in general the theme set is for the entire nsf and changing it for one XPage means changing it for all (via the application properties).

However if you think about this differently, and almost as an extension to the XPage itself when it builds its header information, you will see that one theme does not mean fixed settings for all as the power of the theme is about computation via the rendered attribute.

So instead of trying to use multiple theme's and coding the actual theme change via back-end code and reloading the page, just compute everything in the theme itself. For example if we had a red.xsp and a blue.xsp and they needed different style sheets because of their different colour requirements we can compute the delivery of these style sheets from one theme as:

"#{javascript:facesContext.getViewRoot().getViewId().equals('/blue')}">

text/css

blue.css

"#{javascript:facesContext.getViewRoot().getViewId().equals('/red')}">

text/css

red.css

Further discussion template view tweaks

Steve Castledine — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 14:45:07 +0100

Couple of tweaks just designed to provide even more "visible" topics in one view. Feedback required - demo here.

New:

Old:

Don’t forget the Open Source Lotus Awards

Steve Castledine — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 11:43:34 +0100

For Lotusphere in January 2010 there will be two new Open Source Lotus Awards:

1. Best Open Source Contribution by an Individual(s) (up to 2)
2. Best Open Source Contribution by a Business Partner

Nominations are coming in, however we would like many more (and the deadline is January 6th). Read this blog entry for more detail.

Last minute entries increase the chance of not being accepted due to any resolvable legal issues. So its imperative to get your entries in as soon as possible.

XPages - common "upgrade my existing application" questions

Steve Castledine — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 10:45:53 +0100

A bit of a call for help, but at the same time an offer of help.

One of my Lotusphere sessions, with Stephan Wissel, will be about upgrading "existing" applications to using XPages, and also showing how some out of the box stuff can get you quick wins for doing this.

A question I have is what common patterns, use cases or general questions do "you" have for this scenario. What do you need to know the equivalent of doing from standard Domino to XPages, what questions do you currently have which are unanswered? Anything goes here - I'm just looking at creating the best session possible on this theme.

Examples here are what about my Lotusscript code, $$ view templates, Linked Combo boxes etc etc

The payback will be 1) The session will be worth attending and 2) I will try my best to cover as many of these questions on my blog as possible before and after Lotusphere so please pass this request around and hopefully everyone can benefit.

Millie’s Band

Steve Castledine — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 10:37:42 +0100

Millie really did think this was "her" band. Shame I didn't take this with a real camera, or got any when she was facing frontwards and dancing.

Did you complain about the OpenNTF forums?

Steve Castledine — Fri, 4 Dec 2009 11:08:16 +0100

That's not meant to be a rude blog title, but merely to get your attention if you were originally displeased with the discussion template used on OpenNTF. I know there were many frustrations, including my own, with the original template and we have patched it a couple of times to try and improve things.

However we have now done some work to fix some of the underlying issues and so the best way to avoid future frustrations, is to help us to work out whether the changes go some way towards fixing these frustrations or we are so wrong we need a good kick up the you know what. Like they say many "eyes" make light work.

There's a blog post here detailing changes, and a demo here to play with. One of my biggest questions is with the all documents view. Is the data order correct for the rows, or should the author be under the topic and the date go the right - what is easier for you to read?

We grew our own pumpkins this year

Steve Castledine — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:51:06 +0100

I say "we" my wife just thought I was mad, together with most of our friends (who incidentally now seem a lot keener to do same next year).

Mr Happy

Scarface

Dr Evil

All shapes and sizes

Almost perfect

On the vine

Growing up

In the beginning

Download the Blog Template for IBM Lotus Notes Domino

Steve Castledine — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:19:04 +0100

I've been asked many times this month about getting hold of the blog template file. Well it is hosted on OpenNTF so you can download it directly from here (OpenNTF also hosts other build Notes Domino templates).

My sessions for Lotusphere 2010

Steve Castledine — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:53:49 +0100

I have two accepted sessions for Lotusphere 2010 (with two rejected - one year "ask me one on Tropical Fish" and "Looking after Spider Plants" will be popular session's) with two of my esteemed colleagues - Niklas Heidloff and Stephan Wissel.

Lotus Notes Discussion Template Next Generation and Other OpenNTF Assets

Come to this session to learn about how developers can benefit from OpenNTF. We will start with an overview and show how you can leverage various assets within your projects. We will then focus on the next generation of the Lotus Notes Discussion template and demonstrate the improved user experience for both web and rich client. In the main part of this session we'll then describe how the application has been built technically, and we'll explain how we've used the JavaViews in the client and walk you through the XPages design and how you can take home the techniques and custom controls to reuse in your applications.

Enhance your existing applications with XPages

XPages allows you to build great looking, web2.0 style, applications in browsers and Notes Clients alike. This session will show you the tricks and tips on upgrading your existing applications with quick win performance, feature and UI enhancements. From simple design patterns for typical Domino developers to easy OneUI styling and simple upgrade steps, this session will benefit all existing Notes/Domino developers looking for that step up.

XPages - multiple data sources different read/edit modes

Steve Castledine — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:08:45 +0100

Slow rate of posting right now, hopefully will pick it up over the coming months as I do have a list of topics waiting to be blogged about.

So a quick one which personally I had been stuck on for a while but for me is a very common use case: Having a document or data source open in read mode and having a second data source open but in edit mode so you can submit new data. The usual scenario here is content related pages with the ability to add comments.

Now I had achieved this before however in ways that I was not happy with. For example you can just bind your fields to scope variables and manually add code to look for those variables and create the document in SSJS. Alternatively you could embed an iframe to another XPage which does the document creation.

However the correct way is of course the simplest and probably embarrassingly overlooked (after speaking with Zen master Phil). So the basics are data sources can only be driven one at a time (automatically) on each XPage in terms of assigning the id of the document to open and then the mode of opening that document (open/edit).

So by default if you have two data source on a page, with different sources, and you go to that XPage then both data sources will pick up the same data and in the same mode even if you specify differently (and one is supposed to be in edit mode).

So the answer is a data property "ignoreRequestParams" which can be found within the data source properties (via All Properties). You would leave this as default (false) for your main data source but set this to true for the data source you wish to create data with.

If you want to do any further processing, as per standard Notes Domino development, you can add a "computeWithForm" in the same property section, you can also add code within Events > Data > say "querySaveDocument".

Some titbits for when developing XPages for the client

Steve Castledine — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:33:34 +0100

I need to create a wiki page for this really to note down everything as I find it when developing XPages for web and client.

To start, one of the things I often need to handle is I do not always use a link control but maybe have some links computed/generated. However when you navigate around an XPage application in the client you need to supply a session id for each request. This is handled automatically for your fixed links but not when you are a hack like me.

So the first tip is to add this session id. Typically I load up the id into my session scope using:

if(@ClientType()=="Notes"){
sessionScope.sessionID="?SessionID="+facesContext.getExternalContext().getRequest().getSession().getId();
}else{
sessionScope.sessionID="";
}

Then when I compute my links I just simply add a "+sessionScope.sessionID+" within my link calculation.

The second thing I have to work around sometimes is referring to resources such as images which are on the server and not in the containing nsf. I would call it a bug, but I have to live with it for now, however if you are computing say an image url you would need to refer to the image differently between client and web like this (note the extra dot).

if(@ClientType()=="Notes"){
return ".../oneuiv2/images/iconSearch16.png"
}else{
return "../oneuiv2/images/iconSearch16.png"
}

More to come...

Providing illustration for your XPage custom controls (Design Definition)

Steve Castledine — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:09:34 +0100

Something added to Lotus Domino Designer (DD) in 8.5.1 was the ability to better illustrate our custom controls when laid out within an XPage (within Designer itself).

For example in 8.5 a tag cloud may look like this:

whereas in 8.5.1 we can now make it look like:

This is a simple example so big deal you may think, however with more complex custom controls (and XPages) and the fact that they are reusable so you want them to be as polished as possible its a great improvement. You can even include on screen instructions on how to reuse your custom control like I have in the following example:

So how do we do this? Well in a custom control we have a new setting "Design Definition" and this accepts XSP markup so we can make our custom control look/feel exactly how we wish:

For the simple example of the tag cloud, we just include an image (which is stored in the resources/images) and a panel which reuses composite data defined in the custom control and set within the current XPage (this.viewName for this example). You can even use an XPage/custom control to design your "design definition" and copy/paste into the markup box.

XPages Repeat Control enhancement for 8.5.1

Steve Castledine — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:50:00 +0100

Repeat controls are probably one of the top tools in an XPage developers box. By their very nature we, the developer, decide how they are used and the html that is sent to the browser.

So typically we would want a list, a table or maybe a list of divs (preferably the first two) to display our data. At 8.5 this was possible with repeat controls, however at a cost. This cost was either you lost the ability to link to a "pager" or the repeat control sent out "incorrect" html.

Let me explain, if say you wanted to output using a list you would surround the repeat control with the list html and add the list item html around each row of data to be returned like:

However this would generate html like this:

John

Paul

Rachel

Spot the problem? Assuming you did, there is a work around to stop the div from appearing inside the list and that is to disable the id for the repeat control by making the name of the repeat "empty":

Not great, but it works, however if you want to work with large lists and use the pagers then it will not work as the pagers need an id to attach to.

So from Lotus Domino 8.5.1 the repeat control has two new facets "header" and "footer", and you need to add them manually in the source as below. Obviously you adjust if its for a table, or you wish to use something else, but the important part is its between the facets block and the keys header and footer are added.

]]>

]]>

This now gives you the correct html, as the following shows, and can be used with a pager.

John

Paul

Rachel

Roger

Steve

OneUi Documentation available

Steve Castledine — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:27:42 +0100

The "look and feel" that makes up the styling for XPages development and other Lotus Products (also known as OneUI) now has some officially published documentation. You can read about it in this Domino Designer wiki article.

This documentation is actually for v2.01 of the css etc that Domino ships as "evaluation only" (from 8.5.1) and XPages, out of the box, uses the older version. However it should still be very useful, and going forwards will be the version used by XPages. I also plan on adding some Oneui related projects to OpenNTF soon, so watch this space.

Read the wiki document for full details.