I've been playing with something off and on since Friday that I think has some serious potential. Rather than silo the idea, I've decided to show you what I've come up with so far and ask if any of you want to lend a hand.
First, let me tease you with a couple screenshots.
Nothing terribly exciting so far, I suppose. How about something a tiny bit fancier?
Okay, I guess that's a little more interesting. It's starting to look like a real XPage now. But what if we pan up a bit?
One final tease... let's slide up just a bit more and a little to the left:
That's right, my friends: none of these screenshots were taken in Designer. Or even Eclipse. It's just Chrome. On a Mac.
This is an XPage app for writing XPage apps. I know that's a bit matryoshka, but I think there are a few fundamental implications lurking beneath this proof of concept:
Immediate, full-fidelity preview. This is not the Design tab in Designer, which gives you a static approximation of what your app might look like; this shows you what your app will look like. Right away. No "Preview in Web Browser"... you're already in the browser. That's why I'm tentatively calling it WYSIWYX: what you see is what you experience.
It's lightweight. No gigabyte footprint installation eating up half your RAM and occasionally all of your CPU. Just whatever browser you already have installed. Hell, it even works in IE.
Did I happen to mention I'm using this on a Mac? I suppose the whole browser thing makes it obvious that the operating system doesn't matter, but in my opinion this is the biggest implication. No need to set up a virtual machine and make sure the guest Windows installation is properly licensed (or, if you're the rebellious type, risk the wrath of Redmond by running it without licensing it). No need to install anything at all. If you've got a browser, you can do your job.
There's a huge amount left to be done. At the moment, it's not hooked up to the VFS, so you can't actually save the result as an XPage directly from the browser. I know how to do this, the code just needs to be written. The component registry that makes what already works possible can also be leveraged to create a component palette much like the one in Designer, as well as a property editor, so developers won't have to type all the XML by hand. Right now it only supports namespaced components; it needs support for passthru as well, but more importantly, resources, data sources, and the like. It's also only handling hardcoded attribute values at the moment... obviously we need to support method and value bindings as well. And of course, it needs some sort of application navigator or package explorer, allowing the developer to add applications and select which XPage they want to edit. The infrastructure is already in place to display multiple editors at once... it just needs to be hooked into some actual navigation.
In short, I'm pretty pleased with the potential represented by the five hours I've spent on this so far (feel free to try out the in-progress proof of concept). But I'm also too excited about what this could become to wait as long as I'd have to if I insisted on writing this all myself. So......... any volunteers?
learn the Java Collections Framework
Thu, May 24th 2012 12:40a Tim Tripcony If you're a Domino developer, you're likely already developing XPage applications or headed in that direction. And if you're already developing with XPages, you're likely at least curious about Java, if not already familiar with at least a few concepts of the language.
I'm asked with increasing frequency, "how should I start learning Java?" That's not a surprising question, given both the complexity of the language and the sheer amount of information available; it's comparatively eas [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
notes
xpages applications
community
development
java
oracle
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the most useful content in the Lotus application development wiki
Tue, May 22nd 2012 1:21p Tim Tripcony The Lotus Notes and Domino Application Development wiki is by now chock full of useful content. But one page in particular stands out to me as being possibly the most enlightening of all: the XPages configuration file format article. I reference this article constantly. It documents nearly everything that can be defined in a .xsp-config file. In a control library, these are the files that define what controls the library contributes, but in some cases, also defines validators, converters, data s [read] Keywords: domino
ldd
lotus
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xpages application
development
wiki
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5 years
Mon, May 21st 2012 9:37a Tim Tripcony Five years ago today I started a new job at some tiny little consulting company called Lotus 911. Since that time, my specific role and job duties have periodically shifted, that tiny little company was acquired by what is now the largest Lotus-centric IBM Business Partner on the planet, and the platform itself has evolved in ways I never would have anticipated, but the initial impression I had in the very first hour all those years ago remains to this day: I love my job, and I'm honored that t [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
notes
xpages consulting
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250
quick tip: conditional event handlers
Sat, Apr 28th 2012 7:20p Tim Tripcony I was recently asked by a colleague whether a partial refresh event can be canceled during its execution - if, in other words, the code first checks whether the rest of the code is necessary or useful, and that check returns false, can the code then somehow prevent the refresh from occurring?
I told him that I didn't believe this was possible. The reason for my answer was that, because the standard event handlers in XPages use Dojo's XHR (XMLHttpRequest), what triggers the event in the firs [read] Keywords: domino
xpages ajax
applications
dojo
javascript
network
server
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LotusLearns wants you to think my content is theirs
Fri, Apr 20th 2012 3:28p Tim Tripcony It was brought to my attention today that LotusLearns.com has been aggregating all sorts of Lotus-related content (including some of mine) without obvious attribution.
Check out Nathan's post for more information.
If information that I share is useful to others, then I'm always happy to see it reach a wider audience. But our community has a pretty good track record of giving credit where credit's due, and it concerns me that LotusLearns is representing so much content as their own. For [read] Keywords: lotus
ntf
xpages community
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planetlotus
planetlotus.org
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why extensive use of Themes speeds up XPage execution
Sun, Apr 15th 2012 11:11p Tim Tripcony I've mentioned before in my presentations on Themes in XPages that deferring as much component property evaluation to Themes as possible actually makes XPage execution more efficient. But I've recently had a reason to investigate more thoroughly the reason for that result, so I wanted to share my findings. I've been able to identify two completely separate reasons for this increased efficiency (although there certainly could be more):
Themes are not evaluated until the "render response" p [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
xpages interface
java
oracle
properties
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when to create reusable controls
Fri, Apr 13th 2012 5:30a Tim Tripcony Most of us understand why our code should be reusable, even if it isn't: keeping duplication of effort to a minimum, such as the capacity to apply a fix or enhancement once and gain distributed benefit. In terms of XPage controls, there is also a lot of information available about how to structure code to make it reusable. For instance, I recently submitted two guest tutorials to Notes in 9: an example of how to implement an in-view-edit Custom Control, and a demonstration of converting a Custo [read] Keywords: domino
notes
xpages application
applications
development
interface
the XPages Extension Library book is almost here
Mon, Mar 19th 2012 1:45a Tim Tripcony After more than a year of discussing, planning, writing, editing, reviewing, and mailing paperwork around the globe, it's almost here: the definitive guide to the XPages Extension Library is scheduled for publication effective May 9.
The official authors are Paul Hannan from IBM, Declan, Jeremy, Paul Withers, and myself, but we had help from quite a few others in the Domino community, including several IBMers, such as Niklas Heidloff... in my opinion, the content he provided that demonstrate [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
xpages applications
community
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