Lotus Notus (English)

Completely unacceptable ’Theft’ by LotusLearns company...

Serdar Basegmez — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:29:07 +0300

I am blogging for more than two years. It's like a part-time job. I am doing this sacrificing my 'life' and 'time'. Many people attribute me and this is a great pleasure...

But sharing my ideas or knowledge on the WEB doesn't mean that people can steal them 'COMPLETELY' without my approval even with an attribution!

Yes, I have used the word "stealing" on purpose. Because this is what LotusLearns.com is doing! Kelley Smith, CEO of this company claims that she is doing this for Africans! Really!

For instance;

This has been stolen from my article and there is no attribution for that. Only a link above. Again no attribution on the bottom!

Even there was an attribution, RSS feeds don't provide a right to 'COPY' all contents. Many authors that have stolen articles in this site are not providing full articles on their RSS feeds. And Looking the structure of contents, we can easily see that these are not 'automatically' constructed. They have been edited one by one.

This is clear theft.

...and I am not alone;

Nathan T. Freeman: LotusLearns that stealing web content is shameful
Kathy Brown: How To Piss People Off – LotusLearns
Bill Malchisky: LotusLearns -- The Good, The Bad, and Yes, It’s Ugly (Underneath)
Chris Miller: LotusLearns.com might be using your content without permission - beware
Thomas Duff: If your blog content appears on PlanetLotus, LotusLearns.com is likely infringing on your copyright...
Jesse Gallagher: LotusLearns did a poor job copying my post
Tim Tripcony: LotusLearns wants you to think my content is theirs

OpenSearch functionality for XPages.info...

Serdar Basegmez — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:20:00 +0300

Today we have added a very simple feature to XPages.info site. It provides an integrated search functionality to be used with browsers.

Here how to use it:

For Chrome:

1. Open xpages.info site once.
2. Close your browser, reopen and at the address bar, start writing "xpages". Depending on how frequent you are using xpages.info, it will suggest the address in the bar. For me, "x" character is enough :)

3. Now you see a new instruction in the address bar: "Press Tab to search XPages". Do what it says :)

4. Press enter to see the search results related with your keyword:

For Firefox:

1. Open xpages.info site.
2. Open Search Engine alternatives on the right and click "Add XPages.info" option.

3. Now XPages.info has been added to Firefox registered search engines. To use it more practically, Click "Manage Search Engines" here.

4. Select our search engine, click "Edit Keywords" and enter a new keyword like "xp" here. Click OK to close this dialog.

5. Now go to a new window and enter "xp dynamic content" into the address bar... Voila!

I couldn't find a similar way to do this in Internet Explorer 9. If you know, please comment :)

How we did it?

It's pretty easy! You need to add two things to your database. First an XML file definition for opensearch:

 
XPages 
XPages.info Search 
UTF-8

You can also add some more properties here such as an icon to show in the search engine listing.

We put this xml files into File Resources section of our database. Then we added a resource definition into the HEAD section of our home page:

That's all!

Now I have two To-Do's for myself. I'll try to extend search functionality of XPages.info to provide single point of search for XPages-specific information.

The second To-Do is adding this to XSnippets. I noticed that searching snippets is not practical in the current situation.

OpenSearch provides much more possibilities than this. You can visit OpenSearch.org for more information...

"Dotless i", toLowerCase and toUpperCase functions: Use responsibly!

Serdar Basegmez — Thu, 5 Apr 2012 18:40:03 +0300

"Dotless i" problem is the most profitable area in my revenue stream :)

Since the beginning of my career, I found and isolated dozens of bugs simply related to 'dotless-i'.

I have already blogged about it couple of times, but let me sum up the problem.

There are Turkish characters in our language, as in many others. But two exceptional cases are "ğ" (curved g) and "ı/İ" (dotless-i/dotted-I) characters. The first one is a whole different story that some linguistic experts discuss its necessity. The second one is a serious headache for us.

Dotless-i, is a lowercase 'i' without dot. The uppercase of this character is the usual "I". There is another character, "I with dot". The lowercase of this character is the usual lowercase "i".

Have you noticed the problem? This unsymetrical conversion causes a serious problem in programming. We face this problem mostly in Java applications because of (IMHO) poor implementation of toLowerCase and toUpperCase functions.

In Java, String.toLowerCase() method converts characters to lowercase according to the default locale. This causes problems if your application works in Turkish locale and especially if you are using this function for a file name or a url that must obey a certain character set.

I have blogged about two serious examples before: The compile errors with Script libraries with "i" in their names and XSP Manager's fault if an XPage is in a database with "I" in its name.

There is a long history, as I said. For instance in some R7 version, router was unable to send a message to a recipient if his/her name starts with "I". Message reporting agents was not running in Turkish locale until R8. Anyone with Turkish locale could not install Lotus Notes 8.5.1 (it's real!). The list goes on...

There is almost no beta tester from Turkey and customers don't open PMR for these problems. So these problems are not going up to the first priority for development teams.

Even Java team has added a special warning to the latest documentation:

Note: This method is locale sensitive, and may produce unexpected results if used for strings that are intended to be interpreted locale independently. Examples are programming language identifiers, protocol keys, and HTML tags. For instance, "TITLE".toLowerCase() in a Turkish locale returns "t?tle", where '?' is the LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I character. To obtain correct results for locale insensitive strings, use toLowerCase(Locale.ENGLISH).

My point is to give a simple suggestion for all Java programmers.

If you are using toLowerCase and toUpperCase function for non-textual context, use them as suggested above!

Use responsibly :)

Going to XPages? Discover ’Disabilities-based’ development...

Serdar Basegmez — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:19:00 +0300

Yesterday, I presented at LUGTR XPages Workshop. We have heavily concentrated on transition to XPages development from traditional Domino programming.

I am hearing a very common sentence more and more:

"Damn! I can't even design a very very simple thing on XPages! Because of that, I'm not going to XPages..."

There are many reasons that people with traditional Domino application development background fail in XPages. However this "XPages sucks" literature is not even close to those reasons...

I like Notes client development very much. It's easy, fast and robust in many cases. As we always say, some types of applications can be developed under Notes client 90% faster than any other technologies. But let's face the fact that we never speak: Notes client paradigm also prevents us doing so many simple things. Let's give a couple of examples.

We are designing a form for a document. Document has 1-to-N relation to a second document, which is edited by different form. Suppose we are designing a purchase request. This purchase request has a number of items related and we are connecting these items with a unique number which is belongs to the main document. A classical example, right?

Now, we know the fact that A form can be associated with only one document. Sure, you can do some tricks to break this 'disability' but it complicates our development process. Normally, what we do is creating an embedded view and using a 'Dialog' with a subform to create additional items for our purchase request.

While moving this application to XPages, many developers seek ways to do this in the same way they do in Notes. It is more difficult to apply this pattern in XPages (or any web application!). So our developer will complain how much XPages is difficult to make simple things happen!

At this point, the root of the problem should be analyzed. Actually what we are trying to do in XPages is wrong! This worst practice emerged from a disability in Notes client: "You cannot access multiple documents in a single form element...". We have been doing this pattern for so long time that we have accepted this as a right practice.

In contrast, an XPage provides the ability to use as many data sources as you need on the same page. So there are more effective ways to implement such behaviour in XPages.

Let's consider another example. A couple of days ago, a question has been posted on StackOverflow. The question is more complicated than this but the basic problem is easy. You have a view, you are selecting a document, click a button and it makes a copy or new version for the document. Easy for Notes. Your lotusscript code will create a new document, copy necessary fields to your new document and open the new document with UIWorkspace. The new copy has been opened without being saved so the user has chance to cancel.

In XPages, however, this is not possible. You cannot open an unsaved document on-the-fly. XPages can create an on-the-fly document in its context, that's all. XPages cannot do such a simple thing so it must be incapable :)

In fact, what you did in Notes client is the only way to do it because Notes forms, normally, cannot take parameters. If a 'Form' gets a parameter like "copyFrom=UNID" and initialize its fields before opening according to that parameter would be the best way. Because therefore, you may keep all 'creating new stuff' business logic inside your form. Cleaner and more elegant.

Hey! You can do it on XPages! Any XPage can get parameter and better than that 'Data Sources' can have events (which is also bad for Notes. In Notes, forms have events, not documents!).

A last example... It's more related to MVC pattern which means we have to think model, view and controller as different layers in our application. You cannot easily implement MVC pattern on your Notes client paradigm. More precisely, it's always easier not to implement MVC pattern :)

Suppose you have a workflow application in Notes and an 'Approve' button within the form. When the user clicks the approve button, it get's an explanation, ask the approver what to do next (next approver or return the form to the initiator), send an e-mail and change the status of the form. Simple, right? You may put some formula into the button and voila!

In XPages, it's a bit different. Because in your formula, you are not leaving your context in a series of commands. You can lookup what are your options, interact with the user and perform some business logic. It means that you have to go back and forth different contexts (Server and Client) in SSJS code for your XPage. If it's more difficult in XPages, XPages would be incapable, right?

It's totally wrong!

How you handle your data, how you control and how you interact would be seperated in XPages. Your button should do a single thing: Interact. It gets the information about what to interact from the business logic. Modifying your form and sending e-mail is a different story. Did we mention about you are able to define events at the data source level?

So, ask the user what you want to learn, transfer answers to necessary context (scope variable, event parameters, data source, etc.) and trigger the next step for the business logic (e.g. save the data source). The rest would be handled inside your data source. This paradigm will be much more elegant than your implementation in Notes.

Conclusion

Moving to XPages is a paradigm shift. We get used to Notes client programming model and its inabilities so much that we are looking ways to implement the same garbage in XPages. But the paradigm shift requires us to redesign the application experience again to be more compatible with the web application model.

We can reuse the data model or business logic. Our lotusscript code would be embedded inside Notes agents or formulas can be converted to SSJS format. But we cannot reuse the application logic.

My First Article on The View is online...

Serdar Basegmez — Fri, 9 Mar 2012 09:51:33 +0300

My first article "Custom Controls — Basic Concepts and Techniques for Getting Started" has been published on The View magazine.

This is the beginning of a series of articles about custom controls. In the first part, I have focused on differences between custom controls and subforms, basic usage of custom control properties and some features around reusability. You may follow the link above to read the article if you are subscribed to The View magazine.

I have been blogging for more than two years now. For 90% of my posts, I am writing bilingual, which is not so easy for me. Although I studied undergraduate and graduate in English, blogging in another language is much harder than course project for sure.

But writing technical articles for real publication is much more difficult than blogging. My respect to book-writers has been tripled these days.

As a rookie writer, I'd like to thank my editor, Celeste Frey especially because of her great patience...

Does XPages have a Logo or Brand?

Serdar Basegmez — Thu, 1 Mar 2012 18:45:00 +0300

I just wonder if we have a logo...

Programming languages are marketable? I think yes...

More XPages error-fun...

Serdar Basegmez — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:36:42 +0300

I really enjoy debugging mysterious error messages from XPages...

Today, it's "field in note has wrong datatype":

I have experienced this problem upon a question from my client. Save button (which only submits the form) results in this error. After analyzing the page (analyze=delete all elements except the button) I decided that XPages elements have nothing to do with the problem. It was computing the document before saving, so that must be the problem. Indeed, I analyzed the form (analyze=delete fields part by part). Finally I found it. Here I will show you...

Let's create a simple form:

You will notice that: Field has a type for date/time but we are putting an integer... Simple mistake for a Notes developer, but it will work on client without any error...

Now add it to a data source and try to save it (put an error messages control to see the problem).

You have thousand fields on your form?

Have fun!!!

Googled my own blog... Again!

Serdar Basegmez — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:56:18 +0300

It happened again...

I was dealing with a Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 upgrade today at the client site. I had this annoying error while upgrading Media Manager: "Not enough storage is available to process this command"

I googled and browsed to my blog entry.

This is a very common story for many bloggers. Some of us keeping blog as a personal memory. The only difference from others, we can use Google for our own notebooks :)

BTW, I couldn't solve my issue this time. Because, in fact, I didn't explain the solution in my blog entry. The problem is related to Java and the heap size. You can solve it by increasing heap size. Explained in the following technote:

Sametime server installation fails with "not enough storage is available to process this command" error

We need an Ultimate Connector for Everything...

Serdar Basegmez — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:13:12 +0300

Did you see that old advertisement video from IBM?

OK, Universal Adapter does not exist. But it was a funny video :)

Anyway, it wasn't my topic.

We have several content repositories within different IBM products. Connections (and LotusLive of course) has Files, Quickr (for Portal or for Domino) has Document Libraries, Domino has Teamroom, FileNet has Files again... The list goes like this.

So far, we have different connectors for most of these repositories. I think it's the time to design a universal content connector for every repositories we have. It's not a big problem for the server-side platforms because most of these systems has document APIs based on REST.

I have a small wish list for this connector:

- It should be implemented with Eclipse. It would be heavy, but it will be platform-independent and can be easily integrated to existing applications (Sametime, Notes and Symphony).
- A seperate Mobile version is a must.
- User should be able to create multiple proffiles for multiple repositories.
- Should support offline capability. User would make some libraries available offline to sync them later.
- Administrative deployment for large systems.

What do you think about it?

XSnippets Upgrade: Commenting

Serdar Basegmez — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0300

As Niklas blogged, we added a new improvement on XSnippets. At the recent version, registered users can add comments to snippets.

A couple of months ago, I blogged about rating update on XSnippets. In a similar way, I also developed commenting within xInvolve Custom Control. The recent version (released on OpenNTF) contains single control for commenting and rating. I have decided to seperate these two functions to improve usability.

Beta version of rating control has been deployed before. Now I have deployed the comment control. It supports server-side aggregation for comments and process RPC control for comment submission (Former version was using javascript tricks with hidden buttons). Currently we don't support anonymous commenting due to spam and security risks. We will adapt Captcha to support anonymous handling. In addition, I'm planning to implement ACF (Active Content Filtering), so we can support rich commenting with smileys, links and basic formatting in comments. I'd be glad if you comment about these plans or other nice-to-have features you may want.

The current comment control also allows seperating user names out of the custom control. For example, in XSnippets, we are using the profile control Niklas has designed. Another developer may want to use Connections Profiles control, etc. I designed a seperate custom control for user names, which takes the name parameter and render.

Next step is adding Designer plugin and Favorites function. Stay tuned and continue to add new snippets!

Feedback needed for a new OpenNTF project...

Serdar Basegmez — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:06:28 +0300

I have been trying to finish this for a couple of weeks in my free time (did I say free time?)... I have some code fragments for that and I need to combine them all.

Anyway, This is a very simple database, But it will be very useful for me and I hope for others... Before going forward, I need some feedback about it. The database is called TestCopier. The purpose of this application is to create test/development databases from production ones. The following screen shows a preview.

Some features in my mind:

- Percentage is important, but it's not the first X%. There is a randomizing algorithm to find different sets each run.
- The copied documents will have the exact same UNID with the source. However, the database will have different replica id.
- I'm planning to use Lotusscript, but it might be changed.
- User can save this profile for future uses.
- Delete attachments in copied docs would be possible (by David Leedy).

Now there are more complicated possibilities:

- Instead of forms, I can use only formulas. So it would be more flexible but we will lose "copy the rest" feature.
- Cross key lookups (by Nathan): Pickup some field values from, say, Customer docs and lookup them in some view (e.g. get selected customers' order documents).
- Run some kind of formula to profile documents to change profile document values in test databases. So you can preserve those changes each time you need it.
- Run some kind of formula to make changes every document, so you can alter some server/DB/Name references for copied documents.

These are all in my mind for now.

Any feedback will be appreciated.

Asking questions and getting answers about XPages?

Serdar Basegmez — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:00:00 +0300

Today, this issue came up by a simple question: Do we need a Skype Chat for beginner level XPages developers?

If you are using Skype persistent chats, you would know their problems:

1. They are distracting.
2. They don't have search and memory.
3. They are not public.

So the discussion has moved over twitter...

First of all, my personal thoughts:

There is a great wall around XPages preventing newcomers. I am not talking about documentation or learning stuff. There are tons of it. I'm talking about questions and answers here.

Think about a rookie developer trying to learn XPages. He has only one address to go: xpages.info. There are tons of videos, samples and similar resources there. But when our rookie guy starts programming, there would be a great issue. There isn't any effective platform where you ask your questions...

But there is an XPages forum... It lacks some important features. We'll come to that...

Let's define 'effective'...

Think about a streaming discussion, like a chat. People ask questions on this persistent chat and get answers from listeners. Let's put some gamification to that. Authors of right answers would get some scoring. People would 'like' the answer and promote the contributor. It should be searchable and followable.

This can be achieved with a number of additions to watrcoolr, developed by Tim Tripcony for the latest OpenNTF contest. It would be something between watrcoolr and IQJam.

Somehow, another alternative came up with Bruce Elgort's tweet: "I wish more XPages developers would start using StackOverflow"

That sparked a discussion and instantly, many XPagers attacked to StackOverflow, asking and replying questions...

A customized watrcoolr would be extremely useful but comparing to StackOverflow, there are some negative points:

- It needs lots of development.
- It needs to be hosted (OpenNTF? IBM?)
- It needs to be managed and maintained (any volunteers?)
- It's inside the bubble... Only WE, people following xpages.info or planetlotus.org will be able to see it.

Whereas;

- Stackoverflow is ready. No need to manage or maintain. Go and use it.
- It has a great API. We may utilize it to embed our community sites to promote unresolved questions and contributors.
- It's outside the bubble. It's open to thousands of JS, Java and JSF experts. XPages technology needs some visibility around the globe.

What is wrong with the XPages forum?

- Around thousand issues not resolved yet.
- It's still inside bubble, hidden somewhere in developerWorks.
- Contribution is not directly promoted.
- It's not responsive and followable (no e-mail notification, limited RSS support, no site integration)

I am not suggesting abondoning XPages Forum. Either use an enhanced watrcooler or StackOverflow; it has to remain connected to XPages Forum. This forum will still be an entry point for many intermediate and advanced level questions. More importantly, XPages forum will be hosting XPages discussions. Because both ways will not provide a discussion platform and we still need that.

I want to hear more opinions about this. Which method will be more effective according to you?

1. XPages Forum
2. Enhanced version of watrcoolr
3. StackOverflow

If you also think StackOverflow is a meaningful platform to go; many XPagers (including me) started working on some basic widgets for SO.

A "Storm is over" post with an early birthday of my blog...

Serdar Basegmez — Sun, 8 Jan 2012 15:24:55 +0300

A very long period without any blog post...

I have lots of excuses. I will catch up just after the Lotusphere. Moreover, this post will be an early birthday of my LotusNotus blog.

Many of my friends sent bunches of good thoughts about 3 weeks ago, when Damla was born. A second daughter means a lot to us. It also means busy days and nights. Beyond this fantastic events, I have closed the first IBM Connections deal, which is a great step for my company. I had decided to change my way several months ago towards a different core business. Details are coming, but for now, I can only tell you I'm not leaving Lotus business :)

For a couple of months, my other daughter Defne had some problems with her adenoid. We had to wait for Damla before taking action. Last week, we decided to end this problem and yesterday, after a very successful operation, doctor removed the inflated adenoid. Being son of two doctors makes me knowing too much, which means a great stress about this surgery. Fortunately, Defne is well and we returned back to normal life at home.

Over the course of this storm, I could not find enough time and energy to prepare for Lotusphere. You wouldn't believe, but I still don't know which sessions are there and what's going on with the agenda. Anyway, today I'm starting to pack things up and schedule my trip details.

On January, 18th; this blog will be two years old. I will not be able to blog that day but I'll buy beer to people who remember the birthday of my social journey :)

To sum up the past year;

2011 was fantastic for me. It all started with the first LUGTR conference in March, thanks to our keynote speakers Ed Brill and Uffe Sorensen. I attended several events; DNUG and UKLUG on May and BP Summit in Poland on October. I did lots of XPages, participated the first OpenNTF contest, took my place on XSnippets project with a fantastic team and presented a couple of sessions in local conferences. The most important event was that I have been recognized as an IBM Champion on Lotus brand.

In client-base; I'm even. I got a couple of new clients on Domino but lost a couple to Exchange. I'm still in Lotus business as I have been in last 8 years and have no intention to drop it soon.

There were achievements, but with a number of failures this year. I could not fulfill lots of promises to some customers and partners due to the workload. I have never seen a zero-inbox this year. Turkish LUG is not working and we couldn't ignite the passion in our local community. It goes on like this :(

I'd like to thank all of my readers, motivating me to blog... See you all at Lotusphere!!!

Welcome to our world... You made me speechless!

Serdar Basegmez — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:30:00 +0300

I am relieved and enjoying the moment. No phone calls, no skype chats, no e-mails and no upgrades for me today... Because, my second daughter Damla has been born after a successful operation.

Both baby and mom are healthy. Defne welcomed her baby sister with a great excitement. Whole family in the clouds now.

Since there is no any complication, now I can arrange my Lotusphere trip... I'll take compliments at the bar... But let me warn you, I need beer, lots of beer :)

Mini-Patterns for XPages: Using Dynamic Content Control (2)

Serdar Basegmez — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:30:00 +0300

Dynamic Content is a great control coming with the extension library. I noticed this too late (thanks to Bruce Elgort and Thomas Adrian)...

Before we start, I'd like to remind one of the biggest discussions about Web 2.0 pattern (I'm excluding people saying it doesn't exist)...

As you know, web 2.0 pattern heavily uses AJAX which gives us many different options to render a page. Content may be asynchronous and coming from different sources, view state might be controlled at the client side (browser), we may prevent complete refresh to build a better user experience, etc.

Pages are becoming dynamic in web 2.0. However, some technologies are not ready for this... Bookmarking and search engine optimization are biggest problems. Let's give a simple example...

We are at the timeline view in the Twitter.

When I click to Activity, it doesn't refresh the whole page, instead only streaming content will be changed.

The user refreshes the page at this point to see if s/he has a new activity on the stream. In a standard web 2.0 application, that would be a problem. Because the initial page opened (what URL points) is the 'Timeline' view. So 'refresh' would load it and lead the user back to the 'timeline' page.

However, Twitter solved this with a simple trick. See how it changes the url. The first page is "http://twitter.com/". When you switch to the 'Activity' stream, the URL will be rewritten as 'http://twitter.com/#!/activity'. So when you refresh the second page, back-end engine will see the intended page reference and end up with the 'Activity' stream. This works the same as the bookmarking.

You may see this approach in many web 2.0 applications. The magic is the hash sign (#) in the URL. You cannot change a page url at the client side without creating a new request to the server, unless you are going navigating 'inside the page' using a hash sign. When you change the hash sign inside the url, the page will not be loaded, instead, browser will search the page to find the anchor element related to the hash.

Of course it doesn't solve search engine optimization; because in many cases, 'Activity' link may not be binded to a real url which prevents search bots to follow those links. But since this pattern will help us to map alternative urls to different states of dynamic pages, we may prepare 'Site Map' configuration to tell bots about 'What we have'...

So back to the XPages.

Dynamic Content Control automates this pattern easily in our XPages applications. As far as I understood (by Google translate), Thomas blogged about this (in Swedish). He has also implemented this feature in intrapages.com. Matt also created a video lesson under XPages101.net, if you are subscribed.

Let's take a simple example:

Now, when we click Next, it will do a partial refresh on the container panel and switch to another one.

The mother page is still there (look at the time). Only container has been refreshed, but the URL changed to "#content=test1". Now, I will copy this URL and paste to another window to see what happens. (Simulating refreshing or bookmarking the page)

The page has been reloaded. The mother page and the container has been reloaded at the same time. We did this using Dynamic Content control. This is how:

The first container inside the dynamic content tag (the control outside facets) will be shown default with empty url extension. The others will be placed inside facets. In the above example, you may call the panel with 'hash2' key by '...#content=hash2' url...

If you look at the Extension Library demo application, you would see there are four methods to open different panes inside the dynamic content control.

1. Client-side link using a #hash:
This is what Twitter does. It uses dojo to register 'hash' link navigation in the page. When it detects a call, it partially refreshes the content pane created with the dynamic content control and load the necessary facet region. This method is great because it's very easy and compatible with search bots. It also supports "Open In New Window"

2. Client side event - JavaScript call
You may also call specific facet with XSP.showContent("#{id:dynamicContent1}","hash1") js function. Be careful about the first parameter should be the client side id of the dynamic content control.

3. Server side event - Component API
When you prefer doing some server-side task before changing the pane, you have the chance to switch it on the server-side with getComponent("dynamicContent1").show("hash1").

4. Server side event - Simple Action
OK, if you are a drag and drop developer, there is also a simple action to switch panels.

Remember there are two events to make things more complicated as well. Just look at the sample, it's so clear :)

So what are the possible use cases for this?

One may be like that:

A classical example of navigation. Normally we put those view links on the navigation. But if we want to keep the user inside the content box, using partial refreshes out there would be a very handful. But what about if the user wants to bookmark "By Status" view specifically? That's the part of Dynamic Content control...

I'd like to work on categorized views next to see if dynamic content control can be used with a really dynamic context. Think about the following:

The design with categories will provide links referring to different categories in views. If we know categories at the design time, it's not a problem, we would create a custom control that takes the category as a parameter and put that CC into 4 different panels for each hash. It's brute force, but possible.

Now it's the homework for me and the reader. Can you do it dynamically (I mean, you don't know how many categories we have)?

I think we can :)

OpenNTF: Now it is more than a community...

Serdar Basegmez — Fri, 9 Dec 2011 10:06:00 +0300

Many of you have seen minutes of the recent OpenNTF Board meeting... Probably, you have noticed the IP Manager issue:

Peter Announced that he has been "laid off" as a contractor at IBM effective immediately. OpenNTF Group scrambling to find funding for Peter Tanner's invaluable work for the OpenNTF Entity. Looking for options for hiring Peter as a consultant. We have a quorum. Peter Tanner excused himself from the conversation. Outstanding $4,250.00 in accounts receivable. Discussion of a contingency plan to get Peter back. Working on approving 30 hours for Peter.

Tweets have started just after a couple of hours and Bruce Elgort, the Chairman has notified an incoming blog entry...

I don't want to bring a discussion about IBM's involvement about this. Because; very little of us know what is going on in the background and I'm pretty sure the board and many IBMers did what they have to do... Besides, I never thought that IBM will pull back OpenNTF's progress and I am personally faced lots of situations that IBM spending incredible amount of money and energy on its community.

On the other hand, I also witnessed so many interesting "we want it but we cannot do it" cases inside IBM. So let's put this issue to the OpenNTF and IBM people and trust them about they could do what needs to be done.

So why I'm blogging about this?

I have seen some good comments and positive approaches about funding OpenNTF. For example, a fund-raising activity is being suggested. It would be a very good contribution to OpenNTF but it's a temporary solution. We need a more solid and permanent solution.

We should first accept that OpenNTF is more than a community right now. With the extension library and development contests; OpenNTF became a center of gravity in Domino development (mainly XPages). Although there are 'side' communities, OpenNTF circle is still making the largest contribution to the development.

Secondly, we have to understand why OpenNTF have been incorporated and why we need to hire an IP manager. This has been undervalued or ignored in the community as far as I see.

As you may have noticed, IBM contributed lots of source code in the last years. They have also assigned a team of developers for extension library, mobility and social enabler projects. Lots of companies are also contributing these projects with different motives. So if you are a 'code provider', it's an important factor to work in a regulated platform which provides legal protection for your code and intellectual property.

Get back to the consumer side; many large companies have restriction policies that regulates the use of open source codes. Suppose you are developing your own application (to use or to sell). You can't just google something and use the first code piece you have seen! That would end up a legal case, tagged with a number of figures. But you are pretty sure about that OpenNTF projects are cleared by an IP authority. That differs a lot...

So I hope you have been convinced till this point, about how important OpenNTF is...

Somehow, OpenNTF should be funded. Expecting this from contributors will not be fair. IBM should certainly arrange some funds (because, obviously they have the most benefit from OpenNTF). In addition, it is the time for member companies to pay something for our membership.

My company has been the member of OpenNTF. This has nothing to do with my personal contribution. I would prefer to be a personal contributor, but didn't. Why?

Because being the member of OpenNTF is an important title for my company. Customer looks at my company resumé, and they see OpenNTF contributions of Developi, not me... OpenNTF are keeping my brand name on their web site, retweeting my XPages activities and leveraging my brand in the community. That's why I owe some membership fee to OpenNTF.

My suggestion is simple. It's not going to cover all expenses of OpenNTF; but I'm sure it will help. OpenNTF would create a formulation for a membership fee according to some criteria (employee count, international presence, financial figures, etc.)

There are additional potential approaches, like building the famous AppStore for XPages solutions, getting more advertisements, etc. All these would be discussed in the future...

We should be open-minded about those alternatives. OpenNTF is more than a community right now. We are all part of it and we are receiving some benefits from OpenNTF.

Congratulations to the community (and the winners)

Serdar Basegmez — Thu, 8 Dec 2011 19:59:32 +0300

After an impatient waiting, OpenNTF has announced winners of the second Development Contest...

Winner - Mark Hughes for his ITANA Tasks app
Finalist - Ferhat Bulut for his Mobile Admin app
Finalist - David Marko for his Mobile Contacts and Reminders app

The quality of entries were significantly higher this time. There are impressing projects and judgement was very tough this year...

Mark absolutely deserved the golden medal with his great mobile application...

The name in the first finalist is also funny (and shocking) for me. Ferhat Bulut is my friend, the other co-leader of LUGTR and my neighbour (yes! we are living 50 meters away to each other)... Honestly, in our long tweeting dialog before the results, I had told Ferhat that he may not have a chance for the first three. But I was wrong again :)

Tim Tripcony, the xmage has also contributed with his watrcoolr application. Download this app... It is a piece of art in XPage programming... The only reason it is not in the first three would be that it was a bit premature for the moment.

There are great projects in the list. Go download them and learn more about XPages. But please follow the licensing rules and credit the developer (and shout their names) if you are using any open source...

Latest updates deployed on XSnippets...

Serdar Basegmez — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0300

As you know, XSnippets project has been deployed as Beta a while ago. Today, we have deployed a new version with some enhancements.

First of all, I'd like to remind all that we are actively using the project page on OpenNTF... You may submit defects, feature requests and other comments. We also decided to follow all bugs from this page.

The recent version includes a couple of new enhancements. The most important one is the ability to rate snippets.

If you remember, I have submitted xInvolve custom control for the first OpenNTF contest. I have been designing xInvolve for a while. The planned enhancements for the version 2.0 are;

- Dividing rating and commenting functions into different controls,
- Anonymous rating,
- Rating persistence (saving rating results into the document of context to be able to use it in views),
- Server-side comment handling,
- Favorites tracking,
- Extension Library adaption

Last week I developed the first beta of my new Rating control and adapted into XSnippets project.

We also added Best Rated snippets view into the navigation. Just remember that we only consider snippets that are rated by at least three users in this view.

Another enhancements are small changes in syntax highlighting as I discussed my latest post. Changes are mostly related to make highlighting more compatible with designer style. Even modifying fonts alone creates a big change...

Finally, Thomas Ladehoff's great Feed Generator control has been implemented into XSnippets. Currently, you may add XSnippets url to your favorite reader, it will discover automatically. Currently, we support single feed (both RSS and ATOM) for all snippets. Next version, we are considering different feeds according to the language.

I'm monitoring the beta deployment and it seems people are adding a new snippet every day. This is exciting! We are delighted to have such a positive community reaction...

This week we will have a couple of cool additions to the beta version. So stay tuned and follow us :)

Highlight your syntax in Designer style...

Serdar Basegmez — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:15:00 +0300

For a while, I am part of a fantastic team, including Niklas Heidloff, Frank van der Linden and Bruce Elgort. We are working with pleasure on an OpenNTF project named "XSnippets". As you may already know, Beta version of XSnippets has been online for a week. Meanwhile, we also welcomed René Winkelmeyer. He will take care of the most shiny part of XSnippets: Designer plugin.

So far, I am very happy about the community reaction... Tweets, blogs and personal feedbacks are making us very motivated and delighted...

One of the most important features of this project is that we are not only developing a database, we are also documenting how we are doing... So far, we had very important experiences like 4 different developers from 4 different countries (3 time zones) working and coordinating together. We are using SVN for code sharing, LotusLive Activities for documentation, communication and follow-up, mockups for visualization, etc.

There will be blogs and videos about what we are doing...

I got many questions about syntax highlighting. I'll cover this issue today and you will have some give-aways from this post :)

Syntax highlighting is one of the most important parts of the project. We have considered many different perspectives like server-side, as-you-type, etc. There are lots of resources, widgets and libraries out there. Our criterias were licensing, customization, xml-support and flexibility.

After digging, we found Alex Gorbatchev's Syntax Highlighter library. It was also used by Keith Strickland on his OpenNTF project XBlog.

The library is very easy to deploy, but a bit difficult to customize. Because you need to know regular expressions and javascript very well. After a long effort, I customized its brushes according to Designer coloring. It's not perfect but enough to use on snippets.

XPages source code and Lotusscript didn't exist on its repository. So we had to create them. Lotusscript was easy. It's based on VBScript. The only thing we needed was the list of all keywords which I found very easily :)

However, XPages was a bit complicated. It's based on XML but there were problems. Because in Domino Designer, coloring scheme is different from common XML. For instance, CDATA sections normally highlighted in XML. But since XPages has code inside those tags, Designer starts highlighting at the end of CDATA identifier. Normally, it's not that difficult to exclude an identifier in Regex. But client-side javascript (ECMA) does not support lookbehinds. So I had to use some javascript magic.

Previous paragraph may not mean anything to you. I can understand you; before XSnippets, I didn't know anything about those :)

Anyway. enough talking...

You may use this on your blog. Currently it supports many of blog engines. For Wordpress and Blogger, you may read detailed instructions on Syntax Highlighter project site. I will provide necessary CSS and Brush files for Designer-compatible coloring and syntax highlighting. I am working on embedding this on Domino Blog but Domino Blog template messes with HTML and I couldn't find a descent solution for XSP highlighting. There is a problem with "<![CDATA[ ... ]]>" processing. I'll blog when I solve this issue :)

Anyway, you'll need these files:

- shThemeXSnippets.css for fonts and colors specific to Domino Designer.
- shBrushXsp.js for XPages source code.
- shBrushJScript_custom.js for Javascript
- shBrushLscript.js for Lotusscript
- shBrushCss_custom.js for CSS (some corrections needed here)
- shBrushJava_custom.js for Java (not very good)

You will also need shCore.css, shCore.js, shAutoloader.js and other brush files you need from the Syntax Highlighter package.

I'm open to any questions about this. Use responsibly and don't forget to give some credit to Alex Gorbatchev...

Mystery Solved: "Error loading USE or USELSX module"

Serdar Basegmez — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:00:16 +0300

For a week, I was trying to solve a problem with an old database. The problem was a well-known error message: "Error loading USE or USELSX module" in my agents and script libraries.

This case, I couldn't update my agents, script libraries, etc. because my designer wasn't compiling due to this error.

So after hours of try and error, I noticed that I didn't test one thing I should have tested at the beginning. My friends guess what I'm talking about :)

If there is Java, you're living in Turkey, you should check "i" character first!

I did and found the problem. I can reproduce the problem and have opened PMR report. Now I won't share the exact steps but show the screen shots.

Before, I should tell you that this case is valid for new Lotusscript Editor and Turkish Language in Regional Settings. But there are similar accented character problems in other languages. Therefore use your creativity to find another bug in your language :)

We have two script libraries:

Now we are opening TestLib02 and connect it to TestLib01. But oops!

Very funny, right?

Suppose we have created this application before. We can't modify any code in the library, because it wouldn't compile.

There are two workarounds:

1. Use Uppercase.

2. Disable new Lotusscript editor... This is not happenning in old editor.

What is the implication of this problem?

It also solves the famous "Lotus Workflow is not working on 8.5.x" problem of Turkish customers. Many of my customers mentioned about this problem.

Moreover, this is just a simple case. The lesson of the day is; For any unresolved problems in DDE, if the subject of the problem contains "case insensitivity", the issue is "i" character for Turkish customers.

Expecting your comments about any findings in other languages.