I've put together a simple little teaser video that shows off the RenderKit architecture for the Lotus Notes Domino CMS I'm currently working on and plan to use to host not only this site, but also a few pro-bono websites I'm putting together.

Once complete, I plan on publishing the Lotus Notes Domino CMS to OpenNTF.org, so if you have any comments, questions, and suggestions, please feel free to comment in this post!

Just a quick video showing you the potential issues with NotesDocument UNID-based URLs and how you can easily create your own "permalink" functionality in your Lotus Notes/Domino Web Applications!

(Check out the HD version)

Feedback on the last video was awesome, so feel free to drop me a comment here or on the YouTube page with thoughts, suggestions, or requests!

The other day, a friend contacted me asking if I had a quick example of a $$ViewTemplate...

Just a few notes about this video:

1. I'm using Jing Pro (the more astute of you may see the recorder at the bottom-left of the screen - thoughts on the quality of the recording? (Check out the HD version)
2. With Jing, you're limited to 5 minutes - which is why this whole video might seemed rushed in some places. But having that 5-minute limit is good methinks as it will keep me from babbling on too much.
3. ... it's allergy season, so mind the occasional sniffle or heavy-breath. Those in Pennsylvania this time of year know my pain.

4. I'd like to continue this style of video tutorial as it was both quick and easy to put together and something that I think a lot of Lotus Notes/Domino developers can benefit from: a simple review to the basics.

Thoughts and suggestions -- as always -- are very welcome and appreciated!

I came to a realization today that I'm doing it wrong!

I've been using Domino Designer in Eclipse for a while now - both in pre-release as a Design Partner and the Public Beta, and as my primary development environment for the past few weeks... and I've been using it how I've been using Domino Designer for years now. In fact, I had been using the Lotus Notes 8.5 client the same way that I have for the past few years. That is, I've been relying on the Workspace as my Home Page, right-click Open in Designer... as needed, and keeping my Lotus Notes and Domino applications grouped in Workspace via tabs with even further visual segregation of the chicklets through use of whitespace. And this worked for me! I was able to quickly get to any of the applications I was working on, that I needed to work in, and I had it down to a science! That is until my laptop's hard drive decided to die on me!

Now, don't worry - I was able to recover all of my data (thankfully), but I vowed from that point onward to force myself to use the latest features within the applications that I spend the majority of my life in... and to start that bold new venture, I went with a fresh installation of the Lotus Notes 8.5 client.

After the initial setup, I fought the urge to set the Workspace as my Home Page and went with "Basic". Doing so, I found a new trick for non-Notebook users who blog, and I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with this entry point into the Lotus Notes client. I did, however, have some frustrations with the DDE client - specifically the time it took to launch a given Notes Application. This is the real subject of this post - and only several paragraphs in! - and something that I would urge all of you to check out.

See, prior to about 30 minutes ago... I would open a Notes Application in Domino Designer as needed. When I was done with whatever I was doing in that given application, I'd remove the application from the Domino Designer bookmarks. Sound familiar?

Well, if you try to do this in DDE, pack a sandwhich! Each time you do this, DDE builds out the project... and you wait.

It got to the point that opted to run Domino Designer 8.0 on another laptop instead of dealing with this apparent lag.

I see now that I was being a stupid end user. I wasn't using the DDE client as designed! I wasn't using the features that would alleviate my problems, because I was stuck in the past usage experiences. I was using the Workspace all over again...

So what do I recommend? Well, try this out. Open in Designer a Notes Application in DDE. Now exit the DDE client. Now open the DDE client directly - from either the DDE launcher in the Open menu or from your system's DDE Shortcut. Faster huh? So the answer is to leave all Notes Applications in DDE. Every. Single. One. But that could very well make the DDE client unusable... or at least the Applications Navigator Pane.

The answer is to manage your Notes Application into Working Sets!

What's a Working Set? From Lotus Domino Designer 8.5 Help:

When working with applications, you may wish to group several applications together as a "working set." The Applications Navigator can use working sets to restrict the sets of applications that are displayed. If a working set is selected in the Applications Navigator, only resources, children of resources, and parents of resources contained in the working set are shown.

So, from the Application Navigator, select Manage Working Sets.

From here, you can create, edit, and even delete Working Sets.

You can easily select the Notes Applications you wish to include in a given Working Set.

Now, you can apply load your chosen Working Sets at will - allowing you to filter what Notes Applications are displayed in the Application Navigator Pane in DDE.

Pretty simple, yet allows you to not only alleviate the aforementioned lag when opening a Notes Application in Domino Designer in Eclipse for the first time, but this new evolution in the Domino Designer allows you to better categorize and structure you work. See, it's faster and smarter!

I feel like I'm growing as a person...

So maybe I'm just slow on the uptake, but I had no idea that you could use your own XHTML markup in an XPage through the Source Pane, and have that markup render along with your XPage!

This was news to me, and opened up a whole new world of development with XPages as I now didn't have to rely on the XPage Design Pane in DDE to build some pretty amazing UIs for my Domino Web Applications. Using my preferred XHTML markup editor - TopStyle in this case - I can write my own UIs in markup and then quickly "port" them to XPages... where I can use the power of NotesDocuments and NotesViews to not only populate content but also generate markup when needed. But I'll get into more on that with an upcoming article I'm writing for developerWorks on XPages and Themes (and Mashups and Public Web Services...).

The real eye opener came when I found out that I could supress the Domino-generated <form> via a flag on the XPage. I'll say that again... I didn't have to hack my way around Domino "helping" me anymore by using the Navigator+Navigator Template or adding </form> to the top of my Form Design Element or any of the countless other hacks that we've all used over the years - I could tell Domino to just give me what I want and "roll my own" <form> elements to be rendered to the web browser client via a flag on the XPage!

There is a Properties entry point, but below is the direct Source Pane method for setting this option - in all of it's simple glory!

You'll see more of this type of extended XPage stuff in the aforementioned article, which will be a "build diary" for an XPage-based Employee Tracking Mashup with OpenStreetMap.org and geoCoder.us. If you haven't heard me say this before, I'll say it now: XPages rock!

Now if I could only control the Content Type... that would solve all of my problems...