XPages, XHTML and Domino-generated Form supression

11/18/2008 10:36 AM by Chris Toohey

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...