Welcome to the August edition of the LotusUserGroup.org Developer Tips newsletter. As I mournfully mentioned last month, Jess Stratton is no longer my co-writer and co-editor here on the Developer Tips newsletter. She's trying to free up some of her time for her new blog site — http://momelettes.com. Even if you're not a mom or don't have young rugrats crawling around, it's still fun to read. Just come back here and finish this newsletter after you've visited her site, okay?

Fortunately for you, however, you´re not stuck with me going solo. We somehow conned Rob McDonagh, aka Captain Oblivious, to join me in this monthly mayhem. If you've ever had the pleasure of seeing one of his sessions at Lotusphere or other conferences you know that underneath that baseball cap is a head full of Notes knowledge and goodness, which is fortunate, since there's definitely not much hair hiding under there.

So with August´s edition we give you Rob´s debut appearance. He starts off with an article that dives into the techniques of creating charts in Notes. Yes, it *can* be done, and it´s not as difficult as you may think. His other article guides us mere mortals down the starting path of XPages. Again, with some explanation and screen shots, you find it´s not as hard as you think.

On my side, I talk about an upcoming release of Notes/Domino that´s fairly important... and it´s NOT Notes/Domino 8.5! Find out why Notes/Domino 8.0.2 — scheduled for an August release — should be something on your radar screen. Finally, I wrap up with a book review of “Painting the Web,” by Shelley Powers. If you followed my Moving from Plumber to Painter article last month, you´ll understand why I think this book is so important for the “plumber/developers” out there.

So rather than hold you up any longer, I´ll let you get to the meat of this newsletter. Please take a moment and email Rob with any comments, questions, ideas, or just to say hi. Same goes with me...

Enjoy this month's newsletter!

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Some things are so obvious there´s no reason to discuss them. In math geek terms we call these givens. For example, babies are cute, vacations are fun, and Lotus Notes is horrible at reporting.

Yeah, about that last one? I'm not so sure that's a given anymore.

People have been saying that Notes can´t perform reporting, graphing, or charting for as long as I´ve been working with it (1994, and yes, that does make me officially old). For a long time, I took that as fact. Over the last few years, though, I´ve realized that it's more of a myth than a truism.

Sure, Notes does not include a point-and-click reporting wizard, at least not out of the box. And you can´t select a group of documents in a view and click on a button to see them in a graph, at least not without writing code, that is. True, if you want to have a report with charts and graphs automatically emailed to your boss, you can´t rely on built-in tools, menus, and wizards, but you can build all of that yourself, and the thing that seems to surprise a lot of people is that it's not terribly difficult. Plus, starting in this month´s newsletter and continuing in others, I´m going to make it a little bit easier (unless, of course, you never need to create reports or charts or graphs for people whose job titles include the letters VP or CxO? Right, that´s what I thought, moving on...).

At Lotusphere 2008 I was lucky enough to be allowed to present a session on this topic (in front of actual people, and with a microphone and everything). Fortunately for the sake of the attendees, the Lotusphere “Powers That Be” were smart enough to let me work with a guy who´s way better at all of this than I am. My partner was the legendary Julian “NSFTools” Robichaux. Together, we came up with some samples and demos showing a wide variety of reporting options for Notes/Domino applications (Julian´s were much cooler than mine, of course). We then revised the session for ILUG 08, adding several new demos, and that version of the demo database is available for download.

So this is me asking you to download the database. Go ahead. I'll wait. It's right here: (download here)

In the database, we put the usual outline navigator on the left. Yep, our demo database uses an outline, and on the left no less. Julian and I invested a lot of energy in building a cutting-edge user interface for our demonstration database. Not convinced yet? Open the Web Charts view in a browser. That's some fine design work there... or not. I think in Tom´s “Plumber to Painter” model (Developer Tips newsletter, July 2008), we were in the drawing-with-crayons stage.

Today I´m going to focus on the charts we built into standard Notes views. We call them View Charts, ´cause we´re clever like that. So open up the database, look at the outline, and that's where you´ll find the View Charts, as well as a link to the Help Documentation for all of the samples in the database. You can also see Java Charts, Web Charts, Flash Charts, and the Data Sets (from which you can launch various spreadsheet exports, including Lotus Symphony).

There are five View Charts in the database, labeled Bar Chart, Bar Chart 2 (There we go with the clever naming again), Gantt Chart, Simple Gantt Chart, and Timelines. I´m going to review the principles behind each chart. For the specific view column formulas, you can refer to the demo database. The code in the view columns isn't complicated; the interesting parts of these charts are less about a particular column formula and more about a way of thinking of views as more than just sorted lists.

Bar Chart

First let's look at the Bar Chart, shown in Figure 1.

Duffbert used this one as his response to the “Lotusphere Challenge” that he and Jess (*sob* We miss you, Jess!) came up with, where everyone was supposed to choose something they saw in Orlando and put it into practice right away. Tom, really, you went to Lotusphere and saw all that amazing stuff, and implementing this one was your challenge? Ah, I kid, I kid. This is one of my favorites, specifically because it´s so easy to implement. This chart simply repeats an extended Unicode character 2588 (Full Block) a certain number of times, based on the particular data point you want to chart. Simple, but like most charts, surprisingly effective.

Bar Chart 2

Next, let's look at Bar Chart 2, shown in Figure 2.

There are a number of other ways to generate bar charts within Notes views, including:

• The use of color columns, which you´ll see in the Gantt Chart and the Timelines views (the limitation is that you need a color column for each unit you want to display)
• The use of variable sized graphics (though you need a graphic to represent every unit you chart, which could be hard to manage)
• The use of repeating graphics (very similar to the repeating Full Block, the only issue being that you have to manage the graphics themselves, which is very minor)

The Bar Chart 2 example uses the repeating graphics technique.

Gantt Chart

Now let's look at the Gantt Chart, shown in Figure 3.

The relevant difference between a Gantt chart and a bar chart is the starting point for each line on the chart. On a bar chart, all data points can start at the same place (the beginning of the column); on a Gantt chart, the starting point is variable, depending on what range of data you´re trying to display (typically, a day or week in a project calendar).

The Gantt chart technique demonstrated here is a blending of Nathan Freeman's original “It Gantt Be Done” demonstration database with Ulrich Krause´s variation, along with some simple adjustments to make the demonstration simpler. The basic principle is that you have three date fields in your document: the “zero date,” the start date, and the finish date. In this case the zero date is the beginning of the month. There are then two columns for each day of the month in the view: one a color column to indicate something about the task (is it overdue?), the other a data column to allow the inclusion of text (in this case the length of the task in days). Of course, maintaining roughly 64 columns is a bit more painful than we´d prefer, which is why Nathan´s original technique dynamically generates the columns with LotusScript. In the interests of this simple demo, we built our view by hand.

Simple Gantt Chart

Now for the Simple Gantt Chart, shown in Figure 4.

The Simple Gantt Chart is the least likely to be truly useful and is only included to demonstrate a simple idea that might come in handy. The Simple Gantt Chart combines the concepts above to generate a very simple Gantt look in a view by using the Bar Chart technique. Rather than simply repeating the Full Block character, this view calculates a number of blank spaces to add before the visible character. This is a very limited chart because there´s really no indication of the specific data in the chart (the days aren´t shown). It does show a progression of events or tasks, though, and those items could be different colors depending on some criterion (overdue?) if a color column was inserted before the data column. This is mostly an exercise in creative thinking, and creative thinking is basically the underlying theme of this article.

Timelines

Finally, let's look at the Timelines view, shown in Figure 5.

This view makes use of the techniques used in the Gantt Chart, with a couple of twists. First, this view is based on the months of the year, and rather than relying on start and end dates, we simply rely on a field value from a checkbox field to identify which months are relevant for a given project phase. The general purpose is to show a high-level project schedule overview, and projects go through several phases (requirements, development, testing, pilot, and rollout). Each phase can span multiple months, and each month can contain multiple phases. The column colors indicate the furthest progress planned for that month (so if a month contains both testing and pilot, the color representing pilot will be used).

The second twist is the way multiple phases per month are represented. Each phase is assigned an icon, and when there are multiple phases in a given month the view shows multiple icons. This relies on the way Notes view columns will show multiple icons if the icons are presented as a list. The 12 columns for the months (and the icons), plus 12 more for the color columns, is relatively manageable.

The Timelines view uses the “Project” form, which is a drastically simplified version of a real project tracking form. One other way this view can be used is to have other fields on the form representing departments and individual developers (and testers, and analysts). Then a similar view, categorized on those field values, shows you resource allocation. A similar approach is to add a field for the end-user departments involved and then categorize a view on those departments, which can help you avoid overloading one group of end users while ignoring others for months.

REGISTER TODAY FOR OUR NEXT VIRTUAL USER GROUP MEETING

What is a Virtual User Group meeting? Think about all the things that a live user group meeting contains — a presentation, some time for networking and questions, and perhaps a snack. Well, we can´t vouch for the snack, but we are providing the presentation and the networking. LotusUserGroup.org´s Virtual User Group meetings include a Webcast presentation, followed up by a week-long moderated discussion forum/chat online.

Don't miss our next Virtual User Group Meeting and Presentation:

Searching Lotus Notes with Google
August 25, 2008 - 12:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)

Why is it that you can find the “number of steps in the Statue of Liberty” in under a second, and yet you can waste so much time finding that old presentation stored in a Lotus Notes database somewhere? With Google´s universal search for business, you can find all information within your company — including all Lotus Notes/Domino content — through a single search box. Join us for our next Virtual User Group Meeting and hear an overview of Google´s universal search, view a live demo of the Lotus Notes connector, learn how users gain improved productivity, and more.

The presentation is free for LotusUserGroup.org members, but requires pre-registration. Register today!

2 NEW PODCAST INTERVIEWS: CHRIS MILLER & CARL TYLER

Be sure to check out the 2 newest podcast interviews on LotusUserGroup.org. Program Director, Scott Treggiari interviewed two of the presenters at the upcoming Collaboration University event in Chicago and London. Check out these interesting and informative podcasts and get an insight into how these well-known gurus got started in Lotus (you´ll be shocked at how long they´ve been around), interesting projects they´ve worked on, some sneak peeks at what they´re covering at Collaboration University, and some other fun details that may surprise you. Listen in!

UKLUG BEHIND THE SCENES: INTERVIEW WITH WARREN ELSMORE

User group meetings can take on all sorts of different forms. Have you ever wondered, though, what it takes to put on a user group event the size of the UKLUG conference? Well to find out, we talked with Warren Elsmore, who runs the upcoming UKLUG conference and who provided some insight into UKLUG, the conference, and what it takes to put it together. You can read the interview on our site.

And don't forget to register for the conference!

GET EXPERT GUIDANCE IN OUR ONLINE FORUMS

The LotusUserGroup.org Moderated topic forums are designed to give you access to the world´s leading experts on Lotus technologies, development, management, design, workflow, and everything else Lotus. Each week a different world-class expert monitors and moderates a forum on a particular discussion topic to answer questions that are posted, provides additional insight, and facilitates an atmosphere for Lotus professionals to share knowledge, experiences, and feedback.

Here are some upcoming Forums:

Mail Policy Settings for Better Client Security and Control
Aug. 11, 2008
Moderator: Susan Bulloch

Customizing IBM Lotus Symphony
Aug. 18, 2008
Moderator: Paul Bastide

Migrating Quickplace(s) to Quickr
Aug. 25, 2008
Moderator: Miki Banatwala

iPhone and Lotus
Sept. 8, 2008
Moderator: Rob Wunderlich

The topics are specific but the conversations can get pretty general and the participants' areas of expertise are broad. So, if you have something to say or ask, jump in and participate.

INTEGRATING SHAREPOINT WITH LOTUS NOTES: STRATEGIC COEXISTENCE
New whitepaper from Mainsoft posted on lotususergroup.org

Many enterprises with Lotus Notes have IT users who use Microsoft SharePoint for document management and team collaboration. These Notes users are challenged by the lack of an easy way to integrate SharePoint´s document sharing capabilities into their day-to-day, Notes-dominated work. Download Mainsoft´s whitepaper, “Integrating SharePoint with Lotus Notes: Strategic Coexistence” and find out how to achieve the benefits of an integrated collaboration environment without the hassles or risks of a migration. Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes is a client-side plug-in that lets Notes access SharePoint document libraries from a sidebar in Notes. Users can also store updated documents onto SharePoint sites and subsites, initiate a Lotus Sametime chat session from a SharePoint document, incorporate Notes emails into a SharePoint-based enterprise content management solution, and use composite applications that integrate data and business logic from multiple systems. Additional integration points, including federating team calendars and contacts in Notes, and offline access to SharePoint, will be available with the release of Lotus Notes 8.5.

Be sure not to miss this whitepaper from Mainsoft, hosted by LotusUserGroup.org. View the white paper today!

You're hearing a lot about XPages these days, right? XPages will revolutionize Domino Web development. XPages are a major paradigm shift. XPages are Web 2.0-enabled and fully buzzword-compliant. Oh, and yes, it's true: XPages slice, dice, and even make Julienne fries (Limited time offer! Call now!).

Yep, there´s a teeny, tiny bit of excitement floating around the online Domino community, to say the least. Last month, Duffbert the Wise and Powerful took you on a tour around some of the Domino blogs that have recently focused on XPages. You saw some very experienced and normally skeptical, maybe even cynical, alpha geeks rave about the possibilities. In a random act of kindness, since I´m probably closer to a gamma geek, Duffbert even threw in a reference to my own extremely positive commentary.

All of this excitement sounds great, right? So where´s the downside? Come on, we all know it´s there somewhere. Every silver lining has a cloud (or something like that). And if you read everything you can find on XPages, you´ll see a theme emerge: It seems there may be something called a “learning curve” involved. What is this learning curve, you say? Well, pay attention to your friendly neighborhood LotusUserGroup.org newsletters, because one of the things we´re going to do over the next few months is turn that learning curve into a gentle onramp, and since XPages truly are revolutionary and paradigm shifting (and buzzword-compliant!), you´ll want to get on that ramp so you´ll be ready when 8.5 ships.

So how should you start? Let's start with something simple; something you can use easily within your existing Domino applications. By the way, by “simple” I mean something simple within an XPage; this particular example is actually quite challenging in a traditional Domino system. We´re going to add the navigation style known as paging, made famous by various Internet search engines. For an example of a Domino view using an XPage to generate paged navigation, see Figure 1.

Before we start the long and complicated process (30 minutes and a few mouse clicks) of adding this to one of your applications, lets talk about some very nice functionality you´ll get with no effort at all. First, as is normally the case with these paged navigation techniques, the number of pages listed is dynamically determined based on the number of rows available in the view. Second, the example shows a categorized view, and handling categories within paged navigation correctly is very tricky without XPages (I'm using the words “very tricky” here because I don´t want the good people at LotusUserGroup.org to be blocked by Web and email filters due to profanity...). In this case, the first two categories are collapsed, with the remaining ones expanded. The Pager shows three pages. If I expand the top two categories, that number will increase to 5. That´s extremely cool.

Now let's add that technique to an existing Domino application. Start by looking at Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows Domino Designer 8.5, with an XPage I built called PagedView. In case you haven´t spent much time in the new version of Designer, there are a few things you´ll need to know to get the XPages example setup:

• On the top left, the Database Navigator has a new section for XPages, and you can create a new XPage by right-clicking on XPages and choosing New XPage, or by double-clicking on XPages to open up the list of XPages, with the traditional “New” button above it.



• Below the Navigator is the Outline, which lists and allows you to easily select every element on the XPage, displayed in the appropriate hierarchy (within a view is a column, etc). The Outline is extremely useful when you're working with XPages, so take some time and play around with it.



• In the middle top, we have the XPage itself.



• Below the XPage is the Properties panels.



• On the right are the various controls that can be dragged and dropped onto an XPage.

So now that you know everything there is to know about Domino Designer 8.5 (ha!), create an XPage within the existing application you chose and give it an appropriate name (Fiona is a lovely name, for example). Drag a View control from the Container Controls section on the right onto your XPage. You´ll see the dialog that is shown in Figure 3, though I´ve already selected my view in that picture. The remaining elements like the columns are populated once you choose the view. Once you choose “OK” in that dialog, your view control will be visible on the XPage, as well as in the Outline.

In the outline, expand the View element, and then also expand the element immediately below (called “xp.this.facets,” cryptically enough) to see the Pager element. Select it. Once you know that the Pager element is the smaller rectangle above the columns, you can select it directly within the XPage, but the Outline is very useful when you're working with an XPage so it´s a good idea to start using it right away. Selecting the Pager element causes the Properties panel change to reflect the available options.

In Figure 4, you can see my Pager Properties, including the two changes I´ve made. First, I identified what the Pager is bound to (using the “For” dropdown menu), in this case ViewPanel1. In other words, I told the Pager that it was connected to the View, which may seem redundant since the Pager was created with the View automatically, but when there are several Views on an XPage (yes, really, as many as you like) that property is pretty important. Second, I chose the Pager Style I wanted to use. In this case it's Sample 2 because it's snazzy and cool and stuff.

Now for one last change. In Figure 1, the Pager was showing both above and below the view. The Pager on the XPage in Figure 4 is only showing above the view. To make the Pager show below as well, select the View in the Outline, then click on the Display tab within the Properties panel (conveniently showing in Figure 2) and select the checkbox labeled “Show Pager in footer.” Now save your XPage.

Now you must be asking, “How do I see my results?” First, I need to make a quick point about testing your XPages. If you´re used to building and testing your application on your local workstation using the “Preview in Web browser” option, you´re going to have to make an adjustment. Domino Designer 8.5 beta does not have a “Preview in Web browser” option for XPages; the menu option is simply grayed out. In order to test an XPage element, you will need a Domino server. This is because the XPages runtime is not included in the Domino Designer client, it is only included in the server. So when you go download the 8.5 betas, make sure to grab the server as well.

Now that you have a test server running the 8.5 beta (hey, those administrators have to do SOME work, right?), point your browser to the database containing your XPage and refer to the specific page like this:
http://MyCoolServer.MyCompany.com/MyDatabase.nsf/MyXpage.xsp

The .xsp is the important part because that tells the XPages runtime to process your request instead of treating is as a normal page. You should see something that looks a lot like Figure 1.

We´re done. Really. Aside from describing where things are in Domino Designer 8.5 and adding a bit of explanation about XPages-specific elements, the whole process boils down to five simple steps:

1. Create XPage
2. Drag View control onto XPage
3. Choose View
4. Choose formatting options for built-in Pager functionality
5. Show your boss how brilliant you are.

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I´m well aware that all the really “big” news in the Notes/Domino community is currently centered on the ND8.5 beta. That´s the release that will bring us stuff like XPages and Domino Designer built around Eclipse. And yes, we *should* all be looking forward to it.

But something that may have slipped by your professional radar is that Notes/Domino 8.0.2 is in final beta and is due to be shipped this month (August 2008). Normally point releases aren't major events in terms of excitement, but I think this one will differ from that in a couple of ways.

First, there are significant improvements in the load times of the standard Notes client (i.e., the one that runs with the Eclipse framework). This is a big deal in terms of perception. Since Notes 8 Standard has much higher requirements in terms of memory, it´s possible that your users will be sitting around longer staring at the splash screen. It may be worth the wait to you, but tell that to the user who is taking 30 to 60 seconds to start up, day after day after day.

Ed Brill talked about this upcoming release in his blog entry titled “Notes 8.0.2 beta 2”. In the posting, he commented on faster screen repaints on calendar views, as well as an improved start-up sequence. The sign on screen comes up much more quickly, while the client still continues to load in the background. It may be a minor thing, but seconds count when an end user wants to get started. There's also a progress bar on the splash screen that shows the progression of the load. That´s another significant indicator that helps the user know that something really is going on behind the curtain. It´s my firm belief that those two things alone could help minimize criticism about Notes slowness by people who are still running machines that aren´t quite at the top of the memory/CPU curve.

Notes 8.0.2 may well be the version that ends up being the initial installation for quite a few organizations.

The other important feature coming out in Notes/Domino 8.0.2 is the new iNotes mail template for use with mobile devices... like iPhone! Paul Mooney took a crack at it, expecting it to be something far less than likable. To his surprise, he was actually impressed. Read his blog posting, “Using the infamous iNotes UltraLight for my iPhone”. He also picked up some IBM screen shots, which he shares in “iNotes UltraLight — IBM screenshots of newer versions”.

At my place of employment, we´ve been getting the “when can we use our iPhones to access Notes mail?” question. I was able to get a copy of the beta code for ND 8.0.2 and have our admin set it up on a server. His testing so far has been very positive, and this will likely be the key to allow us to further make our Notes mailboxes available to users in far more situations than we currently support. Heck... *I* may even have to start checking my work mail from home now using this process.

I realize you could paralyze yourself when it comes to upgrades of software, always waiting for the “next release” to get the newest widget or gadget, only to see something even brighter “if I just wait a couple more months” for the next release. I´m definitely not suggesting that you put any ND8 migrations on hold until 8.0.2 comes out. But I would strongly recommend that you download the code when it finally goes gold next month and quickly slot that in as your production version to be rolling out. I think you'll be very glad you did.

Painting the Web
Shelley Powers
638 pages
O'Reilly
ISBN: 978-0-596-51509-6

I´ve been trying to pay more attention to graphical design on my Notes applications. This includes colors, pictures, typography... all the things that we “plumbers” usually try to ignore. The book Painting the Web is, in my opinion, a “must-have” book if you´re trying to make the same type of transition. Powers touches on just about everything you need to know to become competent as a designer. You might even become, well, good!

Table of Contents:

1. You Must Have Fun
2. Imagine
3. Photographs: From Camera to Web Page
4. The Web as Frame
5. Pop Graphics
6. Vector This: Early Days and Markup
7. SVG Bootcamp
8. CSS Uber Zone
9. Design for the Non-Designer
10. Dynamic Web Page Graphics
11. Canvassing
12. Dynamic SVG and canvas
13. Image Magic: Programming and Power Tools
14. The Geo Zone
15. Like Peanut Butter and Jelly: Data and Graphics
    Index

From the beginning, Powers seeks to “demystify” much of the world of graphic design. Rather than recommend spending thousands on high-end graphic packages, she works with lower-cost and free applications, such as GIMP. As such, the barrier of entry to get into what she´s talking about is virtually non-existent. The first chapter covers a bit of the history of Web graphics, as well as some of the more horrid examples that have been used over the years. From there, she moves on to the basic image formats like PNG, JPEG, and GIF, explaining the pros and cons of each. This is very helpful information.

The material then moves into images and how they can be manipulated using a number of different software applications. This is the part where you find out how to correct under- and over-exposures, clip out parts of a picture, and all those cool techniques that you always wished you could do. You also find out how to make graphical elements like buttons and banners that look more classy than cheesy.

For those who want to programmatically create their images, there is more than enough information on how SVG graphics work, as well as how CSS can be used to graphically control a page´s design. At this point it will help to know a bit of JavaScript, CSS, or PHP, but even if you're not a programmer the material is still informative and useful in terms of understanding what you *can* do (if you buy the programmer down the hall a pizza and six pack).

Personally, I found chapter 9, Design for the Non-Designer, an excellent resource for those of us who are more comfortable programming than putting color on the screen. Powers covers the concepts of a good design, usable navigation, effective typography, and correct color usage. Even if you went straight to chapter 9 and stayed there, you´d come away a far better Web developer than when you first opened the book.

It´s possible to get all this information in more detail in a number of other books, but that´s the problem... it´d be in a number of other books, and would likely be far more than you're ready to digest. Painting The Web strikes a perfect balance between aid for the graphically impaired and meat for the graphically inclined. This will *not* be a book I loan out to others, as I want to make sure it's around when I need it.