lekkimworld.com

I found a solution to my problems with Firefox 1.5 and Domino Web Access. The solution is simply to press the Esc-key once the window with the richtext editing has loaded. This allows you to write new and reply to e-mail. Probably not the way Lotus intended it to work but it doesn… Looks like I’ll have to file a PMR with Lotus Support.

Well it appears I’m not the only one having problems with Domino Web Access in Firefox 1.5 and it appears I’m not alone. Chris and Richard are also having some problems with it…

I have been looking into it some more and have tried various combinations of Java. I thought it might be it since I recently downgraded my JRE from 1.5 to 1.4.2 due to some deployment issues with a J2EE application. But unfortunately it wasn’t it. After poking a little more I took a look at the CSS using the JavaScript console (in the Tools-menu and it appears there are numerous CSS errors there.

Considering that the styling of the richtext editing is probably being done with CSS it makes sense that CSS errors would cause havok. Misspellings in the CSS probably doesn’t help either… 🙂

In a VM I just rechecked all the previous versions leading to Firefox 1.5 (RC3, RC2, RC1, B2, B1) without any success. I guess I’ll have to downgrade to 1.0.7 to use Domino Web Access in Firefox.

Bummer – now I know what to ask Santa for Christmas… 🙂

After upgrading my Firefox to 1.5 I have been unable to run Domino Web Access through Firefox. The inbox and and calendar displays just fine but I am unable to write new e-mails or reply to received e-mails. Basically everything that requires me to write in the “Body”-item is “broken”.

As you can see from the screenshot it looks like Firefox is unable to start the component it uses for “rich text” editing. The page finishes loading but no errors are displayed in the JavaScript console or via LiveHTTPHeaders.

Bummer…

UPDATE: Another guy at my office run iNotes under Firefox 1.5 – maybe it’s just my copy…

Well the customer is one of those that are a little slow in the uptake so they are still mainly running Notes 5 on the clients. The IT department is also using Notes 6.5 and 7 clients apart from the internally supported Notes 5 client. Most servers are however on 6.5.4FP1 due to a recent ugrade.

When I do the design refresh I normally borrow a Notes client on their network and do the signing, refreshing and (re)scheduling of agents. Normally this works just fine. I didn’t however consider the ramifications of the client I borrowed recently being upgraded to Notes 7 (used to be a Notes 5 client). After the design refresh the application was running very slowly and all views were constantly refreshing (flickering) with the resulting loss of performance.

After some poking around I decided that the only difference to the last time I did the design refresh was the version of the Notes client used. I switched to a Notes 5 client and repeated the entire procedure which solved the problems just like that. Hmmmm – try that one on for size…

The really funny part was that my big brother was at a christmas lunch yesterday with some former colleagues from his time at IBM and one of the guys is the head of IBM Lotus Software in Denmark. In a discussion about the release of Notes 7 he apparently told my brother, that there are a number of cases out there with the compability issues with the Notes 7 client. The issues IBM are seeing has to do with view indexes taking up double the space, and views having some refreshing issues. Whether this is “official” or not I don’t know, but it sure sounds like what I was experiencing. Very interesting…

I guess that mixing versions is okay but that you will have to be vary for possible consequences. Anyone experiencing similar things?

Working with the new version of the MySQL database I saw that it supports regular expressions in the WHERE clause of SELECT statements out of the box. This is totally cool and has the posibility of seriously simplifying complex WHERE statements. Previously I have opted to a simpler condition and then filter the rest in the application, but having regular expressions in the database allows me to keep the filtering as close to the data as possible. Cool.

Since we are an IBM shop at the office we run DB2 internally so I searched for a way to do this in DB2. It isn’t natively available but so is the next best thing – as a UDF (user defined function). I even found an article on developerWorks describing how to do it using a UDF in the C-programming language: Bringing the Power of Regular Expression Matching to SQL.

I haven’t tried yet but it looks very promising though I might consider doing the UDF in Java which will be easier, at least for me, being more comfortable with Java than C. Doing it in the C programming language you would need a C-compiler though I think you would do it using cygwin instead of Microsoft Visual Studio.

…is up and I’m starting to get really excited – I almost can’t wait.

I am currently building a website for a customer and have been developing a small LotusScript API and a web service so they can manage redirection rules in the Domino Directory from the client site. The problem is that Domino isn’t picking up the configuration change even though it should do so after 20 minutes. And yes – we’re configuring HTTP through the “Internet Sites”-view.

The Domino Administration documentation is referring to a setting the server document that allows you to change this timeout value. Hmmm…. I can’t find it… I took a look at the design and there’s no field there.

Seems like a setting that has disappeared from a BETA to the Gold build.

The only thing I found on the subject was a post on Lotus developer domain (HTTP Server Config Refresh Interval).

Just opened a PMR with Lotus Support to hear from them…

UPDATE: I received an answer from Lotus Support. It appears that the notes.ini setting HTTPConfigRefreshTimeout will set the timeout.

HTTPConfigRefreshTimeout=# of minutes

After setting the notes.ini variable restart the HTTP task.

Caution is advised since using the notes.ini variable may lead the server to crash. Please refer to this search at Lotus Support for more information. So far it is running smoothly on my servers though.

We are having an issue at a small customer that received BIG amounts of e-mail which they actually subscribe to. The customer is broking crops and grain and they’re receiving massive ammounts of e-mails with bids, ship positions etc. This means their mail boxes are in the gigabyte range even though we do regular archiving. This of cause leads to the index task being put to work to keep view indexes up to date.

They have been having some problems with their Domino 7 server that simply stops processing user requests when rebuilding views. This is an issue…

We contacted Lotus Support to have them help in the troubleshooting and they have been a great help so far. Sadly the issue isn’t worked out yet though. A paragraph in their latest reply had us laughing though:

"Over the past 18 months IBM has encountered a significant customer base which has users with mail databases above the recommended 100 meg maximum."

When were the last time you met an user with a mail database below 100MB? Maybe you can find a couple in your organization but with todays use of e-mail a mail database below 100MB is not the norm.

I find it a little disturbing that the above quote is coming from the tech support of a leading company delivering Enterprise collaborative software. Of cause we all know that Domino handles much larger mail databases without issues but how can you make yourself write stuff this this?

Maybe this is why the new catch phrase for Domino 7 is “think outside the inbox”… It makes you wonder? 🙂

Code

<html>
<body>


var months = new Array("", "januar", "februar", "marts", "april", "maj", "juni", "juli", "august", "september", "oktober", "november", "december");

function formatDate() {
   // declarations
   var result = "";
   var time = "";
   var source = "";

   // did we get a date argument (otherwise we get todays date)
   if (arguments.length == 1) {
      source = arguments[0];
   } else {
      var d = new Date();
      source = d.getDate() + "/" + d.getMonth() + "/" + d.getFullYear();
      time = " / kl. " + d.getUTCHours() + ":" + ((d.getUTCMinutes() ");
formatDate("01/07/2005");
document.write("
");
formatDate("11/07/2005");
document.write("
");
formatDate("10/09/2005 12:12:22");


</body>
</html>

Output

var months = new Array(“”, “januar”, “februar”, “marts”, “april”, “maj”, “juni”, “juli”, “august”, “september”, “oktober”, “november”, “december”);

function formatDate() {
// declarations
var result = “”;
var time = “”;
var source = “”;

// did we get a date argument (otherwise we get todays date)
if (arguments.length == 1) {
source = arguments[0];
} else {
var d = new Date();
source = d.getDate() + “/” + d.getMonth() + “/” + d.getFullYear();
time = ” / kl. ” + d.getUTCHours() + “:” + ((d.getUTCMinutes() < 10) ? "0" : "") + d.getUTCMinutes();
}

// split to space if no arguments
if (arguments.length == 1) {
// trim to space if present
if (/(.*) .*/.test(arguments[0])) {
source = source.split(/ /)[0];
}
}

// we received an argument – check format
if (/d{2}/d{2}/d{4}.*/.test(source)) {
// we received a date
var date_parts = source.split(///);
result += date_parts[0].match(/0?(d{1,2})/)[1];
result += ". ";
result += months[date_parts[1]-0];
result += " ";
result += date_parts[2];
if (arguments.length == 0) {
result += time;
}

// print to browser
document.write(result);
}
}

formatDate();
document.write("
“);
formatDate(“01/07/2005”);
document.write(“
“);
formatDate(“11/07/2005”);
document.write(“
“);
formatDate(“10/09/2005 12:12:22”);

This post on Jake Howletts blog points to a document describing how to change the DOCTYPE generated by Domino 6.5.3+ servers. This comes as a God sent since I am about to start a new web project where this will be very welcome.