Don’t know if twitter.com changed the API or the service is just unreliable but today the service stopped working for me using TwitNotes. I get a “CWPST0071E: The maximum number of login attempts has been exceeded.” and some funny stacktraces in the log of the Notes client. I also see a “java.net.UnknownHostException: twitter.com” message. Using the website works fine though using the same username/password combination.
I will look into it.
With Notes 8.5 just around the corner we also have Domino Designer for Eclipse (DDE) just around the corner. Domino Designer being built on Eclipse opens up the door for plug-in developers and tool vendors to provide tools that plug-in into Designer just like (sidebar) plug-ins plug into the Notes client. The API’s are the same so the stuff you already know can be reused.
Please note: The below requires that you’re running a Notes 8.5 beta with DDE and that your Eclipse IDE is configured for Notes 8.5. See this post for instructions on configuring Eclipse for Notes 8.5.
Developing plug-ins for DDE is however a little tricky as the Expeditor Toolkit or my own instructions will launch the Notes client and not DDE. Unfortunately you can’t just launch DDE once Notes is launched from Eclipse since this will result in a Notes initialization error as Notes is already running and DDE is launched anew. That aside it would also be unnecessarily time consuming for day-to-day development.
The solution is to edit your existing Eclipse launch configuration (or create a new) that launches DDE instead of Notes. So how do you do it? Read on…
First bring up your Notes launch configuration. Now change the “Run a product” dropdown to “com.ibm.designer.domino.product.dde” and then switch to the “Arguments”-tab and change the “Program arguments” field from
-personality com.ibm.rcp.platform.personality -product com.ibm.notes.branding.notes -debug -console -nl en_US
to
-personality com.ibm.designer.domino.personality -product com.ibm.designer.domino.product.dde -debug -console -nl en_US
Apply the settings and run the configuration and notice how DDE now launches instead of Notes. Don’t you just love Eclipse?
Now we just need some published extension points…
Be sure to stop by booth 828 in the showcase to learn about the OnTime Suite and meet up with me off cause… 🙂
I read on planetlotus.org that the learning plug-in is available for download from the Domino wiki. For those who want to learn more about developing Notes 8 plug-ins please note that this is actually the sample plug-in from the Extending Sametime 7.5 Building Plug-ins for Sametime Redbook.
I haven’t heard/read any other bloggers mention it so I might as well do it – the Bloggers Anual Lotusphere Dinner aka BALD. As has been the case the previous years I assume we’ll meet up at the Brewery on the boardwalk on Saturday before Lotusphere around 5 PM for a pint or 5…
I’m flying in Friday to make sure I’m there! 🙂
Notes 8.5 brings Domino Designer in Eclipse (DDE) and this means you might want to launch Designer from the command line which is easy once you know the configuration name.
<Notes directory>frameworkrcprcplauncher.exe -config designer
Of cause you can also add the -console command line option to get the OSGi console.
My Lotusphere session preparation is in full swing and as previously mentioned this includes preparing demos.
The latest one I have done is about drag’n’drop and how you can use it to do some cool stuff. The demo shows how you can drag text from an e-mail to a sidebar plug-in and have the sidebar plug-in accept the drop. Then when you drag the text from the sidebar plug-in it is converted into a PDF document hence drag’n’drop from the sidebar plug-in results in a file. Text in – file out.
Using Wink I did a Flash movie that shows the demo.
Think how this could be extended to converting product items to PDF for custom quotations on the fly…
Part of going out and preaching the extensible nature of Notes 8 is having a presentation and demos to back it up. The demos I have but I have been working on the presentation and a graphic for the closing slide. You can see the result so far on the right. It’s clear that I’m not a graphics wizard but I did manage to follow a description on how to create a rubber stamp effect on top of the Notes 8 graphics.
If you are please update your bookmarks and feedreader to use lekkimworld.com instead.
Part of my preparation for Lotusphere is preparing my session presentation as well as preparing demos for the session. One of the demos is an example of the different extension points available to you as a plug-in developer. As a general rule most of what you see in Notes 8 can be extended.
The demo I did this afternoon is a demo that shows how you might extend the search capability of Lotus Notes by adding your own search provider. In lack of better example I did an search provider that searches the IBM whois service. When the plug-in is loaded you see an additional entry in the search box in the upper right corner of the Notes client. When you submit the search I search the IBM whois service, parse the resulting HTML page and present the results in main search result UI. All in all the demo took me 1,5 hours to do with the HTML parsing being the most difficult part.
Imagine a similar plug-in for your organization to search for license codes, product numbers, DHL tracking codes… The possibilities are endless.
If you’re looking for specific demos you would like to see please let me know…