YellowSphere

“Have you ever find out that you spent 3 days in something that could be done in 3 hours? Or maybe you just missunderstood some part of the documentation? Well, this space is created to avoid that. The main goal is to have a repository or Configurations, Workarounds and Technotes of the Lotus and WebSphere brands but from the user side. Documentation is the base, experience is the key.”

YelloSphere

Procedural vs. OO in Notes/Domino Java

In a comment to my “Is the lack of Java adoption *still* the Achilles’ heel of IBM?” post, Charles Ross has an interesting comment (emphasis *not* mine).

“I tend to learn by stealing and modifying/refactoring code. This is one kind of reuse. Most of the Java examples you find in the Lotus venues (LDD, Notes help, Sandbox, magazines etc) are not object oriented – not even structured. You can actually find more Lotuscript object oriented samples than Java ones. And at least in LS, the use of Subroutines is common practice in the Lotus templates. That’s good stuff to steal.

That lack of Domino Java source examples is a sore point. One OO thing I worked with was I mapped the Headfirst design patterns Ducks classes (Strategy pattern example) into a Notes Library and agent. Not quite coding, but educational.

So what we need is some nice Domino application classes to steal, basically.”

Something to think about… Maybe it’s because code in Java is so convoluted and hard to read due to the way the program flow may not be obvious that it’s easier to post Java snippets than full “programs”. Maybe this means that the posted code doesn’t lend itself to easy “stealing”. Hmm…

New screenshot tool in Sametime 8

Adam Gartenberg shows how the screenshot tool in Sametime 8 Standard can be used outside of an active chat. What have been a bit disappointing so far was the lack of additional annotations once the image had been captured (see my previously post called “A bit disappointed with Sametime 7.5.1 screen capture annotations“).

So what I’m really excited about is that Adam came through for me/us. The tool now supports more annotation tools than simply freehand drawing. Now the tool supports annotations such as drawing shapes, arrows and setting the color. See the top of the two last screenshots in Adams post.

Localized versions of Notes 8 standard

For customers using languages other than English, French German or Japanese. A MUI install is necessary to get support for other languages. For more see the following post on Ed Brills blog (includes link to actual technote). For those speaking Spanish please read the comments on Eds blog as it could be that Spanish will be added to the mix.

Notes Client Multilingual User Interface (MUI) functionality changes for Notes 8.x

Amazed I tell you!


At a customer site today they were opening new Lenovo T60 laptops and what’s included in the pack? An order form for Lotus SmartSuite Millenium Edition and Lotus Notes. And not just Lotus Notes but Lotus Notes R5!!

It’s amazing value – you both get the Lotus Notes R5 CD *AND* the Users Guide. On CD!! 🙂

We were all laughing out loud… I hope someone at IBM will get this rectified and get a coupon for Notes 8 in there in stead.

Apache Directory Studio

I’m currently on a Lotus Connections project and needed a LDAP browser to test authentication and searching. Previously I have been using a Java LDAP browser with a UI that really was lacking. Today I discovered Apache Directory Studio which is built on the Eclipse platform. The application is free and a really good LDAP browser. It also contains a LDIF editor.

The application is a full fletched LDAP browser and is made up of a couple of Eclipse features. You can download the application as a standalone RCP (rich client platform) application, as features for your existing Eclipse IDE but should actually just as well be able to use the LDAP browser directly from Notes 8 Standard. The LDAP browser ships with a perspective so it should be doable.

If it ran inside of Notes 8 it would be a killer admin. tool and easily distributable inside your organization.

I tried to install the perspective in Notes 8 but it isn’t possible since the features depend on the org.eclipse.search feature which isn’t shipped with Notes 8. org.eclipse.search is however supplied with the standard Eclipse 3.2.1 which is the same version as Expeditor 6.1.1 builds upon so it should be possible to download the Directory Studio source code and repackage the perspective to do a perspective which is installable in Notes 8.

For now however I have to run the application in Eclipse or as standalone.