Lotushints

A while back, I decided to install Lotus Connections at work to ease communication, enable all important project awareness and to share our common links etc. First thing that caught my eye were system specs. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but it looks like one would need NASA supercomputer just to run this thing.  I knew there was no way I would get these specs by my boss (specially, since we are not that big company) and thus I decided to ditch all that and go for a Virtual Machine with single CPU, 4GB of RAM and 100GB of disk space.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

This week, I present to you not much used, but quite useful Mediator pattern.

Mediator pattern provides a unified interface to set of interfaces in a subsystem.

Or, to simplify… Mediator pattern is mediator for communication between several classes.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

So now, I am titled Lotus Notes 8 Advanced application developer.

For those of you who are still not sure weather to go or not… Go. It is not that difficult. But first learn a thing or two about Composite applications, DXL import/export and new document collection methods.

…yeah, you noticed… There won’t be a post this week. Enjoy your holidays.

In parts 1 and 2, we looked at exporting forms to DXL and then importing them back. In this short article,we will look at a simple form that will allow users to assemble their own web form.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Ok. So this post is totally out of line. Be sure that it wouldn’t found it’s space up here if it wasn’t for it’s all around usability. Microsoft Expressions SuperView help you see how your website would behave in different browsers. You can read Expressions SuperView blog for further details or download and try it out. Beware, it is still in beta mode.

In order to display multiple banners in single spot (and to keep web site from becoming tacky), you will need some sort of client side script that will display first one banner, then the second one etc. This is called banner animator (or even ad animator). In this case, the functionality is written in JavaScript, with some help of HTML (for element positioning) and CSS (for element appearance).
[Read the rest of this entry…]

In the second part of Custom web forms series I will try to cover import of simple form to Notes database from DXL file. If you wonder how to export a form to DXL, please check Part 1: Exporting Form into DXL.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

The one thing that in my opinion always lacked in Lotus Notes was the ability for users without designer access (and much knowledge of HTML) to build their own custom forms. One might argue that it is not that big of a deal and that it would take an experienced developer approximately one hour to create and test such a form. However, developers usually have more important work to do and this is an hour unnecessary spent.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

State pattern is probably most used in review cycles. The definition says:

State pattern allows an object to appear as it can change its class by altering its behaviour and state.

What are you talking about?

Well, imagine you are in need to build a bug tracking database.  Bug reports in basics have four states. First they are unassigned until someone is solving them. When they are taken over, they become assigned, specifying that someone is already working on them. After bug fix has been produced, it is a good practice to send it to testing. Then it is up to QA to confirm that bug fix is complete or whether it is not.

[Read the rest of this entry…]