Tag Archives: Lotus Domino

DanNotes 47th conference: links to presentations

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The DanNotes 47th conference takes place today and tomorrow. Here are links to presentations available online:

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Presentation: Create an app in 1 hour (almost) with XPages Extension Library

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I gave this presentation along with a live coding demo at the monthly NotesNet.dk meeting on April 19, 2012. The presentation covers elements of the XPages Extension Library that you can use to rapidly convert an existing Lotus Notes client application to a web application.

The sample database is available for download and uses a custom forum database as “backend”. You can easily modify the code to use another backend database.

XPages Extension Library – Create an app in 1 hour (almost)

XPages: 2 very easy performance optimization tricks

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Here are 2 very easy ways to optimize performance for your XPages applications:

  • Enable “Use runtime optimized JavaScript and CSS resources” to have your JS and CSS files combined into fewer files. This reduces the number of HTTP requests that the browser has to make against your server and application and thereby makes the site load much faster.
  • Select “GZip” as the compression method to have your Domino server compress files and images. This reduces the amount of data that the browser has to retrieve from your server and application which again makes your application load much faster

Both of these settings are in Application Properties on the XPages tab.

Once you have done those two, you now have more time to go into detailed performance optimization and look at optimizing backend code, server settings, and much more. Tim Tripcony has answered a question in the XPages Development forum about performance optimization that has a lot of details about performance optimization.

Learning XPages: available resources

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I often hear people new to XPages ask: what resources are available if you want to learn XPages?

The following lists (some of the) available resources if you want to learn XPages.

IBM provided resources

Books

Free community provided resources

  • XPages.info: lots of links to useful resources
  • XPageswiki.com
  • XPages.TV:  Notes In 9 videos, 2 hours of XPages jumpstart, and a introduction to Java for XPages develovers series
  • XPagescheatsheet.com: home of the original XPages cheatsheet and the new Social Tools cheatsheet

Free courses

Paid courses

Community provided support

Blogs
  • There are lots of blogs that cover XPages. Keep an eye on the XPages.info/news section that is updated daily with links to blog entries, wiki articles, OpenNTF projects and more.
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Happy XPages learning!

Thoughts from Lotusphere 2012: Lotus Notes Social Edition

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One of the highlights from Lotusphere 2012 was the accouncement of the next feature release of Lotus Notes called Lotus Notes Social Edition.

Lotus Notes Social Edition features a new homepage with activity streams and embedded apps (embedded experiences) using open standards such as OpenSocial. From the Lotus Notes homepage a user can interact with an external application without leaving the home page (collaboratio in-context). Lotus iNotes (the web mail component for Lotus Notes) will also support activity streams and embedded apps. The new homepage looks similar to the activity streams in the upcoming IBM Connections 4.0 release.

XPages and the Extension Library Social Enabler toolkit can be used to implemenet applications that support activity streams and OpenSocial gadgets in order to create embedded apps. The Social Enabler Toolkit is currently only part of the OpenNTF release and will be part of Upgrade Pack 2.

Social Edition also features a brand-new and more simple UI for mail (for both the Lotus Notes client and for iNotes webmail):

In between now (8.5.3) and Social Edition we will see a 8.5.4 release with features required to be able to deploy the Social Edition upgrade on top of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.4. In 2012 we will also see the release of Upgrade Pack 2 (IBM supported Extension Library with new features currently only available in the experimental part of the OpenNTF Extension Library).

Lotus Domino 8.5.4 is planned to support SAML and oAUTH for authentication. With Domino supporting oAUTH it will be possible to bring XPages applications into the context of other applications.

Finally, the Lotus Notes app browser plugin for Firefox/Windows was presented at Lotusphere. This plugin is a lightweight Lotus Notes client in the browser that can run Notes client applications. This enables organizations to focus on implementing new XPages web applications and have their existing/old Notes client applications use the plugin.

Ed Brill from IBM has blogged about Lotus Notes and Domino Social Edition and also posted his “Messaging and Collaboration Strategy” session from Lotusphere on Slideshare.

Chris Reckling from IBM has blogged about the Notes and iNotes announcements from the Lotusphere 2012 OGS.

Thoughts from Lotusphere 2012: IBM Connections 4 (“Next”)

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At the Lotusphere 2012 Opening General Session (OGS) and throughout the conference IBM showed the next version of IBM Connections (to be called IBM Connections 4.0?). My first impression of the next release of IBM Connections is that it looks really, really great! Among many things it features exciting new elements such as activity streams, social mail and embedded apps (using open standards such as Activity Streams and OpenSocial gadgets).

Embedded apps for activity streams can be created using e.g. XPages. An embedded app makes it possible for the user to take action directly from the invidual post in the activity stream (without leaving IBM Connections).

The integrated mail and calendar of IBM Connections (social mail) will support Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange as backend mail servers. This is an interesting move  that makes the underlying mail server in use irrelevant to the IBM Connections deployment.

IBM Connections 4 also includes community metrics (to track e.g. adoption rates), optional realtime group video chat using a plugin from Polycom, ECM library integration and realtime co-editing of documents, presentations and spreadsheets using IBM Docs (IBM Docs is currently in beta on IBM Greenhouse).

XPages Extension Library on OpenNTF updated to match Upgrade Pack 1

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The XPages Extension Library project on OpenNTF was updated yesterday to version 853-20111215. This version matches the newly released Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1.

If you want to use the OpenNTF version (and not Upgrade Pack 1) you can update your servers and clients using the update site method.

You can find the installation instructions for the OpenNTF version and for Upgrade Pack 1 on the Lotus Notes and Domino Application Development wiki.

Notes/Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1: Great news for XPages

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Great news for XPages today: Notes/Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 has just been released.

In short, Upgrade Pack 1 is an IBM supported version of the XPages Extension Library. This should help remove the fear of the Extension Library being open source that some customers have had, and thereby improve the adoption of XPages out there.

Upgrade Pack 1 is available on Passport Advantage as part number CI5HUEN.

The 46th DanNotes conference is a wrap

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Last week we held the 46th DanNotes conference. We had 80 participants and 7 speakers. Some of the presentations are available now as links on the agenda. Others will be added to the agenda later. We will also publish videos from the event once they have been edited.

On the agenda you can find links to the presentations by Chris Connor on XPages, Java, and Mobile – and links to the presentations by Ulrich Krause on compact, compress, DAOS and more. The presentation by Ulrich is also available on Slideshare.

The following presentations held by Stuart McIntyre and Niklas Heidloff have not yet been added to the agenda:

Niklas has blogged about the event – his blog entry contains links to the projects and controls that he showed in his sessions.

Stuart has blogged about his impression of the event. He even calls DanNotes for “the daddy of all user groups“.

I look forward to the 47th conference which takes place in May, 2012. Let me know if you are interested in speaking at the event.

IBM Certified Application Developer – Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5

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Last week at the DanNotes conference IBM offered certification tests at half the price. I took the LOT-951 test in record time between lunch and the developer BOF and passed with a score of 87.5%.

The test focuses on Domino Designer in Eclipse features, some @Formula and Lotusscript programming enhancements, and a lot of XPages. If you plan on taking the test, then rememember to have a look at the test objectives while preparing for the test.

Next up for me is the LOT-922 test which is required to upgrade my certification to the advanced level.