Monthly Archives: July 2006

Aptana: The Web IDE

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Have a look at Aptana: The Web IDE. Aptana is a robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications. Highlights include the following features:

  • Code Assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, including your own JavaScript functions
  • Outliner that gives a snapshot view of your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code structure
  • Error and warning notification for your code
  • Support for Aptana UI customization and extensions
  • Cross-platform support
  • Free and open source

Please notice that the Aptana code assist feature has support for different popular AJAX Javascript libraries such as Dojo and Prototype.

The alpha version was released in March 2006 and Aptana is now in beta with the current version being 0.31. You can either download Aptana as a stand alone client or as a plugin for Eclipse.

I’ve tried the stand alone client and I really like the code assist and the integrated JavaScript and DOM documentation.

Hannover by Jeff Eisen

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Jeff Eisen has posted a great technical introduction to the next major release of Lotus Notes (code name “Hannover”).

To summarize, here are the main points from the introduction:

  • Hannover refers to the Notes client. The Domino server that will be released with Hannover is code-named “Domino Next”.
  • Hannover will most certainly be known as Lotus Notes 8.0 when officially released.
  • Hannover is based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform – more precisely on a common platform titled Lotus Expeditor. The Lotus Expeditor platform is also being used for the new Lotus Sametime 7.5.
  • Being based on Eclipse means that Eclipse developers can build Notes applications
  • And finally, there will still be a “traditional” technology non-Eclipse version of the Notes client delivered as part of the Hannover release.

You have probably heard all of this before but it is new to me that the Hannover release will include a standard Notes client (i.e. not based on Eclipse).

My previous posts on Hannover:

Draft Redbook on Linux virtual servers under z/VM

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A draft Redbook on Linux virtual servers on IBM zSeries and System z9 under z/VM is available. The Redbook shows in a cookbook format how to install and configure z/VM in an LPAR and then how to install Linux under the z/VM – thereby enabling Linux on z/Series. The book uses RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 for zSeries as the z/Linux distribution.

I have previously blogged about the IBM System z9 Business Class and its usefulness for virtualization and also about reasons for running Linux on the mainframe.

Lotus Domino and designing for accessibility (Show’n Tell Thursday)

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I have just completed a project with the purpose of modifying an existing web site based on Lotus Domino to make it accessible – that is to allow access to people with disabilities. The changes to the web site makes it usable to for example a person with visual disabilities who can use a screen reader such as IBM Home Page Reader to have the web site read and navigate using the keyboard only.

In the US it is required by law that all US federal agencies make their information technology accessible to their employees and customers with disabilities. This is stated in section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998.

The Lotus Notes Application Accessibility Checklist is a valuable checklist with specific information on how to make your Lotus Notes client application and Lotus Domino web application compliant with section 508. The following is one of the many checks to go through when designing for accessibility:

  • “Associate labels with editable fields on forms using field help or HTML TITLE”.
    This involves applying the <label> tag to all editable fields and relating the tags to the ID of each editable field.

If you want to apply the <label> tag to a field with no associated label text then you can apply the <label> tag around a hidden descriptive label text by surrounding the label text with <>. This creates a descriptive label text for the field that a screen reader can read. The following example shows how to do this:
<label for=”examplefieldID”><example field description></label>

Webcast: IBM Rational Data Architect for Blueprinting Your Enterprise Infrastructure

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IBM is hosting a webcast titled “IBM Rational Data Architect for Blueprinting Your Enterprise Infrastructure” on July 18, 2006.

From the description:

“Learn how Rational Data Architect can help your organization gain a full and thorough understanding of your enterprise information architecture and how to create master blueprint of this information in the form of enterprise compliant data models.

Topics of discussion will include discovering your enterprise information infrastructure, discovering and defining information infrastructure relationships, and creating compliant data models.”

PHP for SOA and the free Websphere Application Server

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IBM has announced “a simple way for customers to use PHP technology to develop and execute applications in a service oriented architecture (SOA) using IBM’s open source-based application server, WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Community Edition.”

Go ahead and download the free WebSphere Application Server Community Edition and the PHP Integration Kit for WAS CE.

[Via Jean-Francois Arseneault]

Using Eclipse for C/C++ software development

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Just wanted to remind you that you can use Eclipse and the Rational design and construction products for your C/C++ software development projects as well as for your Java projects.

There is an article on developerWorks called “C/C++ development with the Eclipse Platform” that provides an overview of how to use the Eclipse Platform in your C/C++ development projects. The article also mentions how to install and run the CDT plugin which is the C/C++ Integrated Development Environment for the Eclipse Platform – and necessary if you want to use Eclipse for C/C++.