For those of you who couldn't make it to Lotusphere 2012 and missed the GBS Sponsor session from Scott Hooks (with some awesome co-presenting live demo work from Brad Balassaitis), here's the 18-minute fail safe demo video I made in case the Lotusphere Wireless connectivity was an issue.

See, Scott -- who is extremely smart when it comes to stuff like this -- always has a backup plan, and in this case if he couldn't show a live demo of XLibrary (an IBM XPages-based Document Library mashup with Twitter, LinkedIn, Connections, and the Google Search API), he at least wanted to be able to show it off via a demo video.

(Demo video, upcoming article, and demo download details after the jump!)

The OpenNTF.org Extension Library (often referred to as ExtLib) is an absolutely must-have set of controls that can be used to quickly create some pretty amazing XPage applications. There are, however, limitations -- more due to the way things work than the technology or developers contributing to the ExtLib -- that can cause confusion and in some cases downright frustration!

I ran into one of those recently with my team, as we wanted to use the ExtLib Dialog control to surface a simple File Upload form. As you can probably guess from the name, this form stores files.

Putting the contents of an XPage inside of an ExtLib Dialog control is quite frankly a rather simple thing. What is not simple however is trying to use that Dialog'ed-form to save multi-type content back to a given NotesDocument.

Note: this is a rather long article. As such, I've created anchor links to the 11 minute YouTube video walkthru of the XPage demo application and techniques discussed here, or for those of you who prefer a more hands-on approach, you can simply jump right into the Dailog File Upload Controls -- Online XPage App Demo!

(Click thru for the complete article...)

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino XPage developers - like any developers - hate documentation. Most applications are lucky to have comments in the code, but how can we add documentation to Custom Controls? This quick article shows you one technique that might do the trick!

I rarely use the Design Pane when developing XPage apps. I just feel more at home hand-writing the XSP markup anymore. I can never seem to get the drag-and-drop working. Double-clicking often sends the control outside of the target where I could have sworn my cursor last was. And there's absolutely nothing like jumping directly into the XSP markup via the Source pane and making it do what you need it to do!

But I know a lot of XPage developers still use the Design pane, so this one is mostly for you...

(Click thru for the complete article...)

Most web applications retain a consistent layout throughout the user experience story. In fact, it's actually bad practice (with few exceptions that all but define the rule) to switch up the user experience specific to application layout.

Simply put, if you start the user with a form that has buttons that run across the top of the application (an action bar, for example, in the form header), another form that has it's action bar positioned in the form footer is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

As application developers (and often designers), it's our job to not only deliver excellent functionality, but also an intuitive and consistent user experience and interface.

Luckily, IBM XPages give us a rather easy to implement and certainly easy to maintain solution: Custom Controls!

The design element correlation between a traditional Lotus Notes Domino Subform and an XPage Custom Control is slightly off the mark.

Sure, a Custom Control can contain a subset of a form -- something like shared, hidden fields that need to be saved across multiple forms in your XPage applications -- but Custom Controls give us functionality that will break your brain if you continue comparing them explicitly to Subforms.

A Custom Control can have an Editable Area...

(Click thru for the complete article and online XPages demo!)

Sometimes I like to play with a given technique to see how far I can take it.

Thus said, I thought I'd mess around with the techniques discussed in Inline Buttons for XPage View Controls, Nested XPage viewPanels in viewColumns (with meme-themed demo), and IBM XPages + Google Maps Mashup (or Surfacing traditional Views as NotesViewEntryCollections with a viewPanel Control), and see just how far I could take them.

I'll admit, I didn't go that far - mostly because it got to the point where I confirmed my theories: it works, and works really well.

My playground was a simple NotesDatabase that contains no Form Design Elements, only 2 View Design Elements (used for NotesViewEntryCollection sorting more than anything...), and uses only core XPage controls.

(Click thru for the complete article and online demo...)