Hello World

3 CSS Files, 2 Javascript libraries and a missing linebreak after world.
It gets worse if you use build in elements as XPages generate a very nice id tag soup. I doesn't have to be like that. The principle is simple.

Use what is needed, leave away what not.

So what's the deal with the auto-generated code?
It breaks
It brakes with browsers, it breaks with mobile devices. IBM' s answer is simple. Browser X or Device Y is not supported (yet). You sacrifice the power to fix it yourself and rely on IBM to do it.
Don't expect me to trust IBM for anything about web compatibility or standards.
If I would have trusted IBM before my websites until recently would be full of frames and nice java applets.
Thank you, I can live without that. And don't get me started to talk about Dojo.
Outside of the old Domino world (the one that has been put on hold with Notes 6) XPages provide little that cannot be achieved with other technologies. If I would like to have tag soups and auto generated code I would probably prefer Google Web Toolkit.
Now am I going to use XPages?
Yes I will because it is what you have to use if you want to use Domino on the web now. If I get a choice I will avoid it, if not I will use it.
And the things I don't like about XPages would be relatively easy to fix so there is at least hope that it get's better.

Alternatives like CouchDb are getting stronger with every release. There now even is a Windows installer. If the real power of Domino is the Notes Storage Facility (an opinion that I do not share) then I would be worried.
But at the end I could be wrong. IBM again is winning every day. They just "won" the Cities of Los Angeles and Orlando , Philips, Glaxo Smith Kline, Exxon Mobile, Allianz, J.P. Morgan Chase and many many more. They idea to count Exchange and/or Google migrations (from Domino) as a win is a great one.

Well, what should I say. The version I used before crashed often. The release I use now crashes 2 to 3 times a day. I think this is called progress. Unfortunately Lotus Notes / Domino Designer is the only program I have that crashes. Well okay this is not completely true as I run some games that crash from time to time.
I know that IBM has done a lot to make Designer usable again and I am not sure if I should be happy that it works quite well or be angry if it just decides to freeze after I created a new Lotusscript library and copied some functions. At the end I have to do my work twice.
While the Notes client itself is again working better it still is full of little bugs (but it does not crash). I like that my new mail now is plain red text again instead of bold black. Unfortunately after a few days IBM often decides that bold red would be a better fit for me (to which I absolutely do not agree). The preference window often disappears because the Eclipse client still has focus issues and does some magic things in the background. Things like the bullet icon sometimes don't work and I still cannot paste html in a text field (which drives me nuts because even Microsoft Notepad can handle this).
I think I have entered my Sametime account a thousand times and still it does not always log me in but asks for my account data from time to time. Not consistently though.
If you have been using Lotus Notes for some time, 8.5.1 is the version that you want to deploy. The client is stable, everything that you already have is still there and they really fixed a lot of bugs and added some nice features.
The server runs smooth too although every R8 release ran nice if you did not put in under heavy load.
So 8.5.1 does so many things better and still I am not always comfortable with it?
Indeed I still think that IBM has a long way to go. If you really want to sell this to new customers and maybe even win some lost accounts back, this platform needs more polish and some of the old stuff needs to get cleaned.

IBM has a new Lotus Notes campaign. It is called Lotus knows.Much content of tthe flash version is so hard to read for me on my 22 " TFT that I think about visiting a doctor soon. I can't say much about the rest as I am not a marketing expert.
I am little afraid that IBM will continue to "Google translate" their ads to local languages. Some of the recent ads are extremely uncool because they mix english acronyms with German. And if the result then is something like "Lösungen für einen smarten Planeten" a German would probably think more about Smarties than of anything else.
To be honest. The Mc Donald's "I'm loving it" compaign sounds quite stupid too ("Ich liebe es") so this seems to be some kind of a trend that I am too old to follow.

Disclaimer: I still believe that besides advertising the product itself is in need of more development resources to make it more usable outside of the existing customer base. I still think it is too hard to "get Notes". It will be interesting to follow how this will work.

I am not a developer so whenever I dig into code things get ugly (especially with Notes). On my forms I tend to add action buttons to switch to the next and previous documents. I use the nice command
@Command([NavigateNext]) (and previous)
Unfortunately the onChange event does not get fired if I use this kind of navigation. Entering events work, exiting events do not.
And by the way. I love it if I find old topics on Notes.net that describe a similar problem in 2003 and years later it is still there. Yes I know the old legacy stuff hardly ever get fixed but I still have to use it from time to time.

I am still thinking what better fits for the current situation. Last Man Standing had a better ending but the end of Scarface is much more spectecular. I normally should get used to see Lotus Notes dying but it still makes me sad in some way.

If you want to use MySQL with Lotus Notes and ODBC on your development machine (Windows) it seems that the latest ODBC drivers (5.x) from MySQL often do not work. I have had more success with the older version (3.5.1).
You can install both versions.

From a recent press release from IBM.

[...] Recent Lotus wins include The Coca-Cola Company, HSBC, ABB, BASF, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Fidelity Investments, Hyundai, Liberty Mutual, Linde Group, Mass Mutual, Nationwide, State Bank of India, and The Hartford, among others. [...]

Now that isn't bad at all.
My problem with this list is that most of the names on this list have been at least long-term Notes and Domino customers (I have underlined them). Even the other names could be but I just don't know. So while others have "real" wins, a win for IBM means if someone decides to stay or further invest in the Lotus portfolio.
The advantage of this strategy is that as long as you have customers on Passport Advantage you win every year.
You can even have an erosion in your installed base and still win.
To the defense of IBM. Although it seems a bit like a cheap trick it is getting attention.

It is no big secret that I think that Lotus Notes is broken. Yes, it still works in many ways but it has a 20 years old burden that makes it an unfriendly product to many people that did not get used to Notes quirks over the years.
Maybe it is my bad attitude but I am a bit amused that the Yellow Bubble currently discusses the business value of the nice 16 color application icons or why and if a Notes hotspot should be called a Link (or not).
I know that both points are valid from a Notes perspective but they just sound a bit strange from the outside.

It is fast, the whole application opens faster than any Lotus Connections Login screen and the feature set is impressive. I have no use for it as I have both a Fireworks and a Photoshop license but it is a nice example what is possible with current web technologies.

You need Javascript enabled and Adobe FlashPlayer 9 or higher to see the content.

Not that I would count myself as a Notes hater but sometimes IBM makes it simple for people not liking Notes
This time it was Designer 8.5 that thought it was better to stop here. I still have not given up on Designer 85 although if I compare it to my 99$ / free Aptana Studio / Jaxer, Domino Designer still is a poor competitor.
The great thing is you can have a lot of those messages every day. They just aren't always that funny.


Again, Designer 8.5 is usable and it works quite well most of the day but a unmotivated freeze while you have just added a new function to a Lotusscript library can really piss you off.

It was about time.

Domino.Doc died at Lotusphere 2009. The idea probably is that customers now move to Sharepoint and come back to Lotus preying for Connections. That is a great strategy.
XPages will be in 8.5.1 on the client (very nice).
IBM now can do Google too. LotusLive.com is live and IBM now competes with Windows Live and / or Google Apps. Lotus Live, what a great name. At least Apple did it worse calling their stuff Windows Mobile Me.
I am sceptical that this will work but IBM always had some projects running to burn their money.
I am a bit shocked what comes out of the 1 billion dollar investment in IBM Lotus Sametime but at least they are pimping mobile devices (Blackberry) to enlighten decision makers. It is an expensive but promising strategy.
Unfortunately no iPhone announcement at Lotusphere 2009 but maybe it makes sense to wait what happens with Steve Jobs!? Really, I have absolutely no idea why IBM is able to completely ignore this area.*
IBM now has an App Store too called Smart Market. It offers IBM and Business Partner products. So far it is a great place for evaluating software you have never heard before but maybe this will work when more IBM business partners jump on the boat!? The products that I took for a test ride all were quite expansive and deeply hidden (no screenshots, demos only after sales contacting sales aso).
Parts of the site were slow. No surprise as IBM again is putting their Intranet 2.0 software Lotus Connections on the web. Ok I have heard that more than 40.000 companies already bought that piece of xxxx software but does it really have to be taken on the web? It wasn't designed to work there, at least it feels like that.
IBM is now buying into OpenNTF. That is a good story and Niklas Heidloff already has some details. I do really like the idea but would prefer that IBM ships a Wiki with the Domino product line (just a Wiki, everything else they can put on OpenNTF). I work with very conservative companies that don't care much about stuff like Connections or Sametime but they do love Wikis. And the Wikis they love all look like MediaWiki / Wikipedia. I know that many people like OpenNTF but it doesn't work well for me. I cannot rely on a product that is developed in the spare time of others and too difficult to keep it running myself. MediaWiki is free too but it runs the Wikipedia website.
What I would prefer is more software in the 100$ category and a working system to ask for enhancements, maybe even as a payable service.
So far this is neither OpenNTF nor the Smart Market.
I am a but worried that now as all good parts of IBM Workplace have been morphed into Domino IBM development run out of ideas. So far Lotusphere had not much to say about what is coming Next.
By the way NSF2DB2 (the use of DB/2 as a datastore for Domino) is dead too. I am one of the little people who think that SQL would have been a good addition for Domino but unfortunately it didn't work.
Well at least L2009 didn't announce something that is going to replace Notes and Domino again. I have heard lot's of me-too stuff and little innovation but nothing that I worry about (maybe the .Doc announcement but it was dead anyway). If this is everything IBM is in danger that the after Sphere events morph into a Lotusphere yawns to You series.
*Update:On Wednesday IBM announced that Lotus Traveller will get iPhone Support this year and that IBM is going to license Active Sync from Microsoft to make it happen. I did not expect from IBM to go that far and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised. I do not own an iPhone (and don't want one) but I have seen a lot of pressure in Domino shops to make it happen.

This was once a Lotusscript Library that contained some useful database scripts

Now this seems to be the new method of DDE to show Admins that they should stop coding.
If I get this error all elements that contain script are not accessible anymore.
A nsd with kill and a restart cures the problem. But believe me, when this happens in the morning after you just added a lot of new code you are not amused.

While there has been much talk about XPages silently the already-promised-for-R7 HTTP compression arrived.

If you have CPU resources left (and current computers have a lot of that) you can improve overall site performance significantly especially for visitors with limited bandwidth.. HTTP compression basically sends all HTML data (and more) zipped to the client that, if the browser supports it, will deflate the data on-the-fly.
From my experience HTTP compression can help reduce initial load times significantly.
Basically the browser itself sends to the webserver the formats it is able to handle and the server responds accordingly. Of course this will also work for javascript and css.
Very nice.
Update: I have disabled the feature for now because the HTTP task is having problems at the moment.

When IBM announced the Public Beta program of Domino Designer 8.5 the code quality was so bad that it was hard to make anything useful with it except maybe XPages. Later on if you report something you most got the answer that this problem has been fixed in a later build (which was not public).
Now that the final is available I must say that I would really like to love Designer 85 because it has many new possibilities. Unfortunately everything that IBM has thrown out on the client side in the Notes 8 product line stinks and so does Designer 8.5 Eclipse. It is slow and it is buggy.
Focus issues, Design elements just don't open no matter how often you click the mouse button (pressing for example CTRL on the keyboard seems to help sometimes) and strange error messages.

I know that the Lotus community is forgiving almost everything but from my opinion a 1000$ product deserves a better code quality. Sorry for me this is a Release Candidate, nothing more nothing less.
Maybe a comparision with Notes 6.5 is unfair because putting Designer on Eclipse is a huge task but as a customer should it really matter?
I will stay with Designer 8.5 for now because the bugs are annoying but not critical.
I can't say much negative about the Domino 8.5 server. All upgrades (5 so far) went smooth. You should be aware that upgrading a 8.5 beta server to the final code will probably break your server (it is not supported anyway).
Of course you can remove anything but keep the databases.

It took several hours for IBM to build a list of 29 downloadable files. They started with a few and 5 hours later at least the list seems complete.

Now that the list has been done IBM is working hard to get all files available for download too.
I can't help but this reminds me a bit of Sledge Hammer

Trust me - I know what I'm doing!

Update: Another three hours and everything is fine. Already upgraded 5 servers(including the first Hotfix). Fix Central works much better than Passport Advantage.

If you are using Domino 8.0.2 and using Internet Sites then don't be surprised when the view looks corrupt. The fix is simple. The third column named $5 has set the newline separator to Newline instead of "None". It seems only to be a display problem but can be quite annoying if you use Internet Sites on a German Domino server.
If you run the design task at night you will better fix it in the template (pubnames.ntf) too.

Whenever there is a new Domino version I hope that it will stop using ecblank.gif for html rendering (because Netscape 2.0 required this about 10 years ago).
Well the new design elements like XPages now got rid of that but the oldschool domino elements like forms, views still love ecblank.gif. But wait isn't there a new database application property?
And indeed the HTTP server now closes the img tag with a proper "/".

<img width="1" height="1" src="/icons/ecblank.gif" border="0" alt="" />

Well there has been a lot of talk around XPages and other new stuff. Again IBM added a new collar but the face itself remains quite ugly. This is not bad because companies already running Notes and Domino enhance their toolsets but if this should ever attract new customers (and developers) the mess around the Notes core has to be fixed too. And if you thought Notes 8 is slow then be prepared that the Eclipse Domino Designer beta opens a new level of response times, even on my Dual-Core 4 GB machine (it is beta release so I expect some improvements in this area).
I am not disappointed about R8.5. It is not a major release so more comparable to 6.5 which basically only introduced IBM Lotus Sametime but I do not share all of the enthusiasm that has been around.
If you want Domino to learn new tricks you now have to completely revamp your applications, more comparable to a migration that an upgrade. And if you consider that the develop once, run everywhere paradigm is still broken (it is since Notes 5 so that really is nothing new) you could also develop your web applications in any other available web platform.
I do not know if this is intentional. XPages and Server Side Javascript were designed for IBM Workplace using all the heavy IBM stuff like Websphere, full DB/2 and I guess porting it to work with Domino was a challenge. Unfortunately information about where IBM is going with Notes and Domino are sparse.

So the server has been upgraded. The setup messed with the installation paths but at the end I won. 45 minutes downtime is not so bad and I am running unsupported again (this time Ubuntu 8.0.4 LTS) .
It seems that the IBM marketing department is now responsible for the Domino server console

20.06.2008 22:28:27 XSP Command Manager initialized - Open for Web2.0!

So now I finally own some of Web 2.0. How cool is that?

This is not from me but from Jerry Glover posted on notes.net. Normally there is no easy way to display Notes Doclinks in Client views. Well now there is. I admire people that are able to think around the corner.

The following recipe is a solution (or workaround depending on your point of view) to displaying a link icon in a view which, when clicked, opens a document in another database related to the one displayed in the current view. The solution takes advantage of the InViewEdit feature of Notes.

Assumptions:
- There is a field on the displayed documents containing a UNID for the related document to be displayed.
- Actual in-view editing is not required for the view.

First, create a column to display an icon for the link. Enter a formula for the column value as follows:

Icon := 41;
Icon


This value (41) represents the tan dog-eared page icon which is similar to the standard doclink icon. It's important to use the variable assignment rather than a numeric literal because the Editable Column option will be grayed out and unavailable if a literal is used.

Next, bring up column properties and select the checkboxes for "Display values as icons" and "Editable Column"
Finally, open the view's InViewEdit event and add the following LotusScript code and modify as necessary to open your target documents.

----------

Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim caret As String
Dim URLparts(4) As String

caret = Source.CaretNoteID
If caret = "0" Then Exit Sub 'check for click on a doc, not a category

Set db = Source.View.Parent
Set doc = db.GetDocumentByID(caret)

'build the url to the link target document
URLparts(0) = "Notes:/" 'Notes protocol for the URL
URLparts(1) = db.Server 'this assumes the target db is on the same server as the current db
URLparts(2) = "my/target/database.nsf" 'your db path goes here
URLparts(3) = "0" 'special view placeholder, don't change
URLparts(4) = doc.LinkUNID(0) 'replace with fieldname containing a UNID for the target doc

Call ws.URLOpen( Join( URLparts, "/") )
----------

Hope this helps,
-jerry

---

Yes, it does.
Thank you very much.

I know the product has been put EOL (at least a bit) but I still have demand for replacing FileServer systems with something that works.
I have never been a big fan of Domino.doc but with the DB/2 option available with D8 I decided to look at Domino.doc again (that is now Lotus Domino Document Manager).
What I saw was somewhat disappointing. There is a Flash Demo available at ibm.com but it looks quite outdated.

Even Open Source solutions like the popular Alfresco have a more modern look (and a Windows Explorer integration using CIFS)

Some functionality is also available within IBM Lotus Quickr. Quickr has a better look and some interesting functionality.

Quickr can be a good investment if you are a Domino shop with little development resources but it is still using a blackbox approach and does not have an equivalent Notes client interface.
The updated UI looks nice but if you have a corporate identity standard be prepared that it will take more than changing one or two css files. While you can use Quickplace on the Extranet its bandwidth requirements and overall performance is optimized for 100 MBit usage. The page of the Quickr screenshot counts 4612 lines within Firefox, has 455 html errors and 20 warning messages and hundreds of lines filled with javascript code. The developers behind the Quickr project have all my respect because this stuff is artwork.
I still think that the Domino Network Filestore (DNFS) introduced in R5 and silently removed later was a good idea that deserves a successor . Especially if the Domino document libraries get the long awaited facelift with R8.5.