lekkimworld.comnotes85

Diagnosing wierd widget installation issue

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:57:39 GMT

I had a customer report a widget (plugin) installation issue to me. They had clients being unable to install a widget (and hence a plugin) from an update site on our servers (external to their network). The error was reported as below:

Unable to access "http://<host>/site.xml". 
Contains: Error parsing site stream. [White spaces are 
   required between publicId and systemId.]

The issue turned out to be caused by a firewall issue and hence wrongly reported in the log. The issue was solved by relocating the update site to the customers network.

Deploying XTAF dictionaries to Notes clients via a Widget Catalog

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:17:04 GMT

So Vladislav Tatarincev just blogger this as well but I wanted to highlight it as it pertains to plugins and widget deployment which is so dear to my heart. IBM has written up a very nice technote on how to deploy extra dictionaries for use with Sametime and Notes 8 and it's really worth a read. Especially if you write emails and chats in some languages other than English. And yes there are some of us who do... :-)

Now if just there was an easy ways to switch between the dictionaries at runtime and by easy I mean something that does not require the use of the preferences dialog. It really has to be easy as most - if not everyone - installing extra dictionaries write in multiple languages say Danish and English, German and English etc.

Deploying XTAF dictionaries to Notes clients via a Widget Catalog

Configure Eclipse 3.5 for Notes 8.5.3

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 09:33:14 GMT

For completeness sake I just updated my guide to manually configuring Eclipse 3.5 for Notes plugin development to work with Notes 8.5.3 which went Gold the other day. Please find a like to the guide below.

Configuring Eclipse 3.5 for Notes 8.5.3.

Tip of the day - my Copy Link Location plugin

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:36:29 GMT

There are some questions I get asked a lot by customers, colleagues and people I meet at conferences. One of them is why there isn't an easy way to copy links detected in Notes documents using LiveText to the clipboard. And I must admit that it is odd. To remedy I've actually developed a plugin that installs into Notes 8 to add an action item to links in Notes documents. After installing the plugin an action to the Copy Link Location to the clipboard is added to all links in the Notes client.

The plugin really highlights the power of Notes, LiveText and the plugin architecture in Notes. As you will probably recall - plugins are fun!!!

Besides that a right-click context menu is also added when right-clicking Notes documents to copy the Notes link (notes://) to the clipboard. It's all part of the same package.

To see how to install etc. head over to my Notes 8 Utils page.

AbcWidget is trying to be downgraded to a lower installation scope. Reinstallation of this item will not be permitted.

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:45:53 GMT

When trying to update a plugin (feature) using a widget the installation failed and I got the below message.

<widget name> is trying to be downgraded to a lower installation 
scope. Reinstallation of this item will not be permitted.

I wondered what it meant as I didn't really understabd the "installation scope" thing so I asked IBM and here's the answer I got from Doug MacDonald. Very useful and nicely explains why the installation failed.

When you install a widget, it is assign a scope. The scopes have a heirarchy.

If the widget was installed from the corporate catalog using a category of widgets, the scope is catalog.push.

If the widget was installed from the corporate catalog using drag and drop, the scope is user.catalog.

If the widget was installed from a location other than the corporate catalog, the scope is user.import.

You cannot move down the scope hierarchy. For example:

Not allowed: If you install a widget from the corporate catalog using a category of widgets and then you try to drag and drop the same widget.

Not allowed: If you install a widget from the corporate catalog using drag and drop and then you try to drag and drop the same widget from a file on the file system.

You can move up in scope. For example:

Allowed: If you install a widget from the corporate catalog using drag and drop and then you install the same widget from the corporate catalog using a category of widgets.

Allowed: If you install a widget by drag and drop from the file system and then install the same widget from the corporate catalog using drag and drop.

Developing an Eclipse plug-in from start to finish

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:27:36 GMT

Ryan Baxter from IBM who I had the honor of co-presenting with at Lotusphere just published a new article on the appdev wiki titled Developing an Eclipse plug-in from start to finish. The article takes you step-by-step through building a nice plugin and uses the Eclipse WindowBuilder (GUI editor) for taking the hassle out of building the UI.

A very nice Friday read.

March Lotus Technical Information and Education (LTIE) community meeting

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:57:37 GMT

If you're interested in plugin development and the recently published RedWiki on plugin development for Lotus Notes, Sametime and Symphony (easy url is http://bit.ly/pluginredwiki) be sure to join us for the March March Lotus Technical Information and Education (LTIE) community meeting. The conference call will be on 22 March at 10am Central Time (10am Eastern, 3pm CET).

For more info head over to the Lotus Technical Information and Education wiki on Lotus Greenhouse (look under "When we meet" at the bottom of the page).

jWidgets to make it easier to develop Eclipse based components for composite applications

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:24:27 GMT

Perusing the the Composite Application Wiki I discovered a technology IBM calls jWidgets. Basically they are for Composite Application Java component development what iWidgets are to websites that is a widget framework for easily and more quickly doing stuff. Developing Java components for composite applications is a little hard as you have to manage wires etc. yourself. A framework would make that a lot easier and that's exactly what jWidgets are.

Having the technology available to Lotus Notes (and not just Lotus Expeditor) would be really cool. From an IBM'er I however learned that they haven't been formally tested in Notes, but the technical capability is there. They have only been tested formally in Lotus Expeditor 6.2.2.

jWidgets - Easy Creation of Java Composite Application Components