DDE: I think we need a bigger dialog box...

06/02/2011 12:26 PM by Chris Toohey

You've all seen the option in Domino Designer (well, at least since 8.5) to Display XPage instead for both the Lotus Notes (ie., XPiNC) and the Web Browser Clients. It's certainly an easy thing to set... but not one to read. This is due, in no small part, to the fixed-width display of the dropdown in the Form Properties dialog box for both of these settings:

Highlighted above in red, you can see that the name of the selected XPage is cut off due to the fixed-width display of the dropdown. Really not cool if you're creating a naming scheme for your XPages based on their function/usage (eg., "form_[original form name]", "view_[original view name]", etc.).

In fact, there's really no way from the Form Properties dialog that you can tell if the XPage you've selected is form_Security_Access.xsp or form_Security_Acceptance.xsp.

There is a way to see these properties however in Domino Designer... just not from within the given Form.

The Notes Client and Web Browser Client Display XPage instead properties write to the $XPageAlt and the $XPageAltClient NotesItems on the Design Element respectively. Luckily, we can see these values by simply highlighting the Form Design Element from the Forms view in Domino Designer and using the Fields pane.

As shown above, you can now see exactly what XPage you've selected for both the Lotus Notes and Web Browser Clients. Not the easiest way mind you, and if we had complete DXL it'd be a breeze to just add the following to your Form DXL:

... but this is certainly a workaround!