Classes and Dojo are very cool
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 1:10p Bob Balfe Tonight I am looking for a way to make different presentation styles in the attachment viewer. I figure I would look into making the different presentations with JavaScript classes and with a little bit of inheritance to boot. Unfortunately JavaScript does not support classes very well and there are a thousand ways to accomplish this, just Google it and you will see. I of course chose Dojo to get this done because it was dead simple!
I want to have three presentation styles to start R [read] Keywords: dojo
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CouchDB scales, it’s not a slogan, its science!
Mon, Aug 30th 2010 12:40p Bob Balfe Check out this impressive write-up about CouchDb. Remember Dr. Cox at Lotusphere 2010 and the CERN project?
Metson says the learning curve for CouchDB is quite shallow. In fact, DMWM had a summer intern with some programming experience, but no experience in CouchDB, who was able to build a simple data quality evaluation application using the database. The only drawback, Metson says, is that you may need to do a lot of unlearning if you’re well versed in SQL. “The more you know Or [read] Keywords: lotus
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The Cloud, is it a platform or just more of the same?
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 12:10p Bob Balfe I have been digging into the various “cloud” offerings on the net and trying to see if there is a common ground in this space and as usual it appears the usual players are making bets on their “cloud” offerings. When you start seeing sites like SalesForce.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, or API’s like Microsofts Azure, all using different technologies to provide applications within “their cloud” it quickly shows people are off in their own camps. I have been [read] Keywords: collaboration
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The Inventor’s Guide to Trademarks and Patents
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 8:11a Bob Balfe If you want to learn how to get money for your intellectual property or patent something in the software world then you should check out this book. I was just re-arranging my books and found this little gem. It has a lot of great ideas and pointers for where to get started. [read] Keywords:
51
What is your web site worth?
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 12:10p Bob Balfe Just playing around tonight I noticed a section of a site I hit that showed the “value” of their site. This intrigued me because I wondered how they could possibly know that? So I scoured the net and looked for as many services as I could to see my sites value and it clearly looks like this is not a scientific approach by no means. My highest value is $46,000 and my lowest is $98, that’s useful…
$34,800.98
How Much is Your Site Worth?
My site is worth $17,367. [read] Keywords: javascript
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Poll: Do you or your customers develop or use applications on salesforce.com?
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 8:40a Bob Balfe I have been checking out developer.force.com this week and it is a pretty extensive cloud based solution for developing, deploying, and using applications in the cloud. I checked out their Eclipse based development videos and the development environment looks pretty comprehensive. I would like to hear if anyone who reads this blog has any real experiences they would like to share about it. I am also interested to hear how many of my readers have real exposure to SalesForce.com.
If you use [read] Keywords: domino
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New Attachment viewer with ODF thumbnails and JAR file support
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 8:10a Bob Balfe As promised in the last post, here is a new updated widget for the attachment viewer. You can download the latest source files from the OpenNTF project. If you want to learn how to install this into Notes 8.5.1 and above check out the video I posted to show how to do that.
Here is a summary of the support and you can also watch a video here or below:
- ODF thumbnail support added, .odp, .odt, .docx, .dotx, .docm, .dotm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xltx, .xltm, .pptx, .pptm, .potx
- Modified Zip file to li [read] Keywords: notes
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Why BrowserFunction is so cool
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 10:10a Bob Balfe If you are familiar with the embedded browser in the Lotus products you may or may not have heard of BrowserFunction, most likely not! The problem is this class is not very well documented and was part of E4 and is scheduled for Eclipse 3.6. Notes 8.5.2 does however support this SWT class so you can begin to play with it once 8.5.2 is available.
Why is this so important? Well, just imagine, now you can completely communicate between Java and JavaScript using this. You can use the SWT Bro [read] Keywords: lotus
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I think I hate GMail email threads and the reply history
Fri, Aug 20th 2010 12:10p Bob Balfe I am not sure if I am on this island alone but when there are a lot of responses in an email thread the GMail UI gets unbearable! I quickly get lost on where a reply is, to what section of the thread, etc. And navigating down the thread is just cumbersome. Unfortunately I have been using GMail for a couple of years and this has not gotten any better. Is there a way to not thread messages in this way? I did not see a setting. [read] Keywords: email
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Poll ends today: How do you want to preview attachments?
Fri, Aug 20th 2010 8:31a Bob Balfe Link to original post.
I have been playing with the attachment viewer a lot lately and over the weekend I figured out how to show the thumbnails from files based on the Open Document Format (ODF). I learned, thanks to some colleagues, that these files are really just zip files and showing those thumbnails is as easy as using the zip viewer I just created. Anyway, there have been a lot of discussions on where people want to view attachments. Lots of opinions!
So this poll is to ask you, whe [read] Keywords: odf
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Demo: Attachment viewer supports JAR files and ODF thumbnails!
Thu, Aug 19th 2010 9:14a Bob Balfe A new extension has been added to the attachment viewer to support ODF thumbnails. As I learned from a colleague last week the ODF file format is really just an archive (ZIP to be exact) so the same Java API’s I used for the ZIP provider work equally as well in the ODF file provider. I enhanced the ODF provider to only show image files since there is a lot of directory structure and XML in the file. This of course will be replaced when we get a true ODF viewer. Lastly, I also added JAR fil [read] Keywords: odf
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New Mail Utilities has been released!
Wed, Aug 18th 2010 8:40a Bob Balfe I just uploaded a new release of the mail utilities. You can just install this new release over the existing one or install it from nothing and it will work fine. I modified the toolbar contribution to always show up at the request from many people. So now you will always see the icon and be able to run the rules from any view or window.
You can check out the project here on OpenNTF. [read] Keywords: openntf
Poll: How do you want to preview attachments?
Tue, Aug 17th 2010 9:20a Bob Balfe I have been playing with the attachment viewer a lot lately and over the weekend I figured out how to show the thumbnails from files based on the Open Document Format (ODF). I learned, thanks to some colleagues, that these files are really just zip files and showing those thumbnails is as easy as using the zip viewer I just created. Anyway, there have been a lot of discussions on where people want to view attachments. Lots of opinions!
So this poll is to ask you, where and how do you want [read] Keywords: odf
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New Attachment viewer, with ZIP file support
Tue, Aug 10th 2010 8:50a Bob Balfe The latest attachment viewer with source has been posted to OpenNTF, you can watch the video I posted a few days back to see how it works. The OSGI extension model is also complete so anyone can now extend the viewer with more file types. Hopefully the many implementations I have in the project will be good enough documentation for others.
You can drag the icon below to your My Widgets panel in Lotus Notes 8.5.1 or above. You can watch a video that shows how to do this here.
Any issues wi [read] Keywords: lotus
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Dojo.query and forEach loop, a powerful combination
Thu, Aug 5th 2010 5:21p Bob Balfe In the latest version of the attachment viewer -which has not been published yet – I had to really think through the Zip file provider. The problem is the zip file is a collection of other files – so the one provider had to really know how to call the other file providers for each of the entries in the archive. This got a little tricky with the providers that used dynamic JavaScript like dojox.embed.Quicktime or the Flash player. The problem was the fact the zip file is simply [read] Keywords: archive
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Demo: Attachment viewer now supports Zip files
Tue, Aug 3rd 2010 12:11p Bob Balfe I have now completed the extension model for the attachment viewer and will hopefully be posting a new update to OpenNTF by end of week. I had several people request ZIP file support so I went ahead and added it since Java comes with some pretty good API’s for ZIP files. I used some basic HTML and created an index of the ZIP file contents with anchors to the actual zip entries. The concept is the ZIP file would just act like a multiple selection but with an anchor index. Check out [read] Keywords: application
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A powerful function…
Fri, Jul 30th 2010 9:20a Bob Balfe Many have downloaded, looked at, and have commented on the source code for the attachment viewer project but some may not be aware of a powerful function the SWT Browser brings to the table. As described in a past post about the architecture, the line where the browser is connected with the embedded browser process (its actually a dotted line) is where this call happens. The function, or method, is the execute method on the SWT browser. This allows you to run essentially any JavaScript on [read] Keywords: blogger
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Open Source, graphics and me – not a good mix
Thu, Jul 29th 2010 12:32p Bob Balfe Because of IP laws and such, I had to create an icon for the attachment viewer project so tonight I decided to figure out how I will do this. I am no artist by far but I do have some pretty easy to use and free tools at my disposal. I figured the best way is to use some kind of presentation editor like Symphony, then use GIMP to actually size and save the image as a jpeg. The paste into GIMP was not very good so I basically scaled it down and took a screen shot to get a good icon sized ima [read] Keywords: notes
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Attachment Viewer update
Tue, Jul 27th 2010 12:31p Bob Balfe Just an FYI, I have commented in a few places on my blog but in case you missed it. If you have the second update of the attachment viewer and are running on the Mac you can uninstall and then reinstall the Widget to get it working again. You need to actually uninstall the widget from My Widgets and then drag the bitmap below (which points to the extension.xml) back on to the My Widgets panel.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Extension Points and OSGI services, what’s the difference?
Tue, Jul 27th 2010 9:40a Bob Balfe If you are new to Eclipse you may have heard of Extension Points and OSGI services. Then, when you learn what each of them are you might ask yourself “Why two ways to provide extensibility at the code level?”. I have been asked this many times over the years and my responses are probably more confusing than helpful. Neil Bartlett has an excellent article about this and it is a must read. Why is this important? Well, if you are following the Domino server and other server ba [read] Keywords: domino
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Testing your code…
Mon, Jul 26th 2010 10:31a Bob Balfe As many readers have been reading on my site the attachment viewer has gotten a lot of attention both on the site, internally at IBM and also in my personal email. This last update actually broke in a couple of places – first was the MAC issue where I unintentionally put requirements on a specific bundles (something that Eclipse does automatically when you select a dependency). And second – the debug options are displaying by default. I figured I would take this time to explain [read] Keywords: ibm
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Attachment viewer architecture diagram and explanation
Fri, Jul 23rd 2010 10:10a Bob Balfe You can check out the screen shots and this image also on OpenNTF. If you are good at looking at the source code and project setup you can probably figure this out pretty easily. I figured posting this diagram to the project would help out “other contributors” so they can assist with the project.
As you can see from the diagram I use a thin layer (the SWT Embedded browser) for things like consuming the Eclipse selection and then calling a JavaScript(JS) function directly in t [read] Keywords: ntf
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Get the Lotus Notes attachment viewer today!
Fri, Jul 16th 2010 12:40p Bob Balfe Disclaimer - this code is really hot off the press so use at your own risk!.
I am currently getting the code approved for OpenNTF so you will actually be able to play with the Eclipse project and even contribute. There are literally dozens of ideas coming in already, hopefully we get people contributing to this project in the long run.
Here is the widget to install the viewer using Widgets:
You can also install through the Eclipse update site manager with this URL – http://blog.balfes.n [read] Keywords: ldd
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For Karsten….
Fri, Jul 16th 2010 10:10a Bob Balfe Ok, this is kind of a poor mans highlighting but works well for a demo. The ideal method would be to open the highlighter up through an extension point so others can add highlighting for their favorite file format. Supplying a simple XML file to the extension would all that would be needed.
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86
Demo: Attachment viewer “inside” of mail, supports code/text files
Thu, Jul 15th 2010 12:30p Bob Balfe After playing a little bit with the viewer and seeing what kind of files I get in email I realized a common format is simply code or text files. So I went ahead and added support for viewing text files, including C, Java, C++, XML, HTML, etc. The primary difference with these kinds of files is I have to actually read the contents then place them within the HTML. I also have to change things like to <> so it is not considered HTML by the browser.
Lastly, using the method shown [read] Keywords: ldd
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Adding Eclipse plugins to your Lotus Notes installs
Thu, Jul 15th 2010 9:11a Bob Balfe Many may not know this but you can optimize your install kits prior to deploying the new Notes 8.5 client. Check out the Domino Administrator help for how to use the addToKit tool to have Eclipse features and plug-ins automatically installed when the product is installed. This is a great way to deploy plug-ins without using things like Widgets or Composite Applications which would require the end user to restart the Notes process.
Link to help here.
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Demo: Attachment viewer for Notes 8
Wed, Jul 14th 2010 12:35p Bob Balfe So I was challenged a couple of days ago by Art Thomas to give him an attachment viewer for when he receives images, movies, etc in mail and he just wants to immediately view them without launching them individually. I started thinking about how I would implement it and I came to the conclusion that we kind of have the ultimate viewer right at our disposable – the SWT Browser! So in short, watch the video and let me know what you think.
I gave this out internally for now as a Widget an [read] Keywords: notes
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One year ago today…
Thu, Jul 8th 2010 9:20a Bob Balfe I met the person of my dreams. I instantly knew when I first laid eyes on Kim someone special was in my presence. I wasn’t sure why and I certainly did not know she would end up being one of the most special people in my life. I do know that I have the exact moment in which we met engraved in my head and I replay it all the time. The past year has been one of my most special years and I want to thank Kim for that, she is an amazing woman to me and my children. I am the luckiest m [read] Keywords: blogger
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Managed Browser, Landmarks, and XPath
Mon, Jun 28th 2010 1:30p Bob Balfe In a recent article posted by Chuck, article here, he writes about how the DataChange events happen in the Managed Browser container. The event is very powerful and allows for actions to be called when a DOM node changes. I described similar use cases in an article where we constructed a web browser component using XPath. In that article we show how the managed browser component can use XPath’s to DOM elements so we can extract data out of the current web page at a given URL (the lan [read] Keywords: ldd
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Tungle.me: The social calendar that does it all!
Thu, Jun 24th 2010 8:30a Bob Balfe I installed Tungle a couple of days ago and my first impressions of the site, WordPress plugin, the Notes plugin, and even the iPhone application (essentially all of the places I use calendar) is the stuff just works! Ok, so saying it “does it all” may be a bit misleading but in my mind with the depth of function, calendars and devices supported its pretty impressive for a young product.
The application is so easy to use on all of the devices that I have to give the Tungle team kud [read] Keywords: lotus
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REST services are a snap with Dojo
Wed, Jun 23rd 2010 8:31a Bob Balfe As I sit here late at night thinking about what to write about I figured I would share some insight into a night time project I have been playing around with. The project uses a basic Java servlet on Tomcat that serves up JSON to clients. I have constructed the servlet to handle many different kinds of requests based on what parameters are passed into it. The reason I wanted to blog about this was because my first client is being implemented in JavaScript, Dojo and HTML 5. I am using Ecl [read] Keywords: blogger
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Register now for the Eclipse Helios In Action online conference
Tue, Jun 22nd 2010 11:51p Bob Balfe On June 24, the Eclipse Foundation is presenting Helios In Action – a virtual conference where you can interact with project leads involved in the release and see demos of the new features. The annual simultaneous release has now grown to 39 projects with over 33 million lines of code, contributed by committers around the world. With such a large global community, Eclipse wants to bring Helios to you!
http://www.eclipse.org/helios/heliosinaction.php
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HTML 5 is ready for Game Time
Tue, Jun 22nd 2010 12:30p Bob Balfe The games being ported to HTML 5 are quite impressive. When you watch what is going on in this space you clearly see a new player in the web gaming industry. While Zynga pretty much rules the web gaming world with all of their popular games on Facebook, with HTML 5 and the Canvas support this will open up the competition to many more game developer shops and indie game developers. If you just search for “html 5 game” you will get a ton of hits dating back to 2008.
Check out this [read] Keywords: application
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Sessions available for WWDC 2010!
Tue, Jun 22nd 2010 9:30a Bob Balfe You can watch the videos for free if you have an Apple developer id here.
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technorati tags: apple, developer [read] Keywords: apple
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30 Reasons Why Software Rules at IBM
Fri, Jun 11th 2010 3:50p Bob Balfe With all of the negativity going around the Yellowsphere I thought I would share some good press!
30 Reasons Why Software Rules at IBM – Enterprise Applications from eWeek.
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technorati tags: IBM, lotus, software [read] Keywords: connections
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iPhone enabled sites are perfect for Lotus Notes sidebar!
Fri, Jun 11th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe I had originally put this on LinkedIn and Twitter last Wednesday but the more I thought about it the more I think it should be persisted on my site. Matt Newman wrote a very nice post about this and I need to just pass it on. The concept is pretty darn simple and the fact that the Notes side bar is very popular it is also almost the perfect size for iPhone like applications.
Click for original article
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New Cool Social Toolbar on my site
Thu, Jun 10th 2010 12:30p Bob Balfe When you open a specific entry on my blog you will now see a cool social bookmark toolbar at the bottom of the entry. The plugin is a WordPress plugin called SexyBookmarks.
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technorati tags: bookmarks, linkedin, social sites, toolbar [read] Keywords: application
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Browser sniffing – Detecting what browser is being used with Dojo
Thu, Jun 10th 2010 8:30a Bob Balfe Even though Dojo does a great job in making cross browser and platform JavaScript development very easy there are times when you may want to do something that is specific for a browser. Instead of re-inventing the wheel you can use the many functions in the Dojo library to help with this. There is an entire article on “browser sniffing” on the Dojo toolkit web site and it comes with a few good examples to learn from:
dojo.isIE
dojo.isMozilla
dojo.isFF
dojo.isOpera
dojo.isSafari
do [read] Keywords: blogger
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Does anyone actually read ebooks on their iPhone?
Wed, Jun 9th 2010 12:20p Bob Balfe I downloaded The Kindle application for my iPhone but have yet to purchase a book. I am just not sure if I see myself reading a book on my iPhone. Does anyone have any experience with this?
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technorati tags: ebooks, iPhone [read] Keywords: application
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Playing with Android SDK – Part 2
Tue, Jun 8th 2010 11:20p Bob Balfe After getting to know the onTouchEvent() a little better I decided to figure out the coordinate system of the Android graphics system and put in some movement logic. I thought I needed to figure out how to use the velocity tracker in order to do this, which is a very cool class and its a little different approach than other graphics systems I have coded to in the past. Once I got the concept, I was able to capture where the touch was started and where it ended along with how fast it was. The [read] Keywords: application
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Dojo and Duck Typing
Tue, Jun 8th 2010 12:21p Bob Balfe JavaScript is powerful yet unruly language but through creativity, standards, and best practices you can control the unruliness. Dojo has put a lot of this into consideration and the topic I am writing about today is a technique called Duck Typing. In the book, Dojo The Definitive Guide, there is a chapter dedicated to utilities and within that chapter there is a section on type checking.
“Duck typing is based upon the saying that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a dck, then its a [read] Keywords: blogger
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Online Interviews with the industry best
Tue, Jun 8th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe The book I have been blogging a bit about lately has a site with a section under posts where the actual interviews with the industries brightest are posted. Each interview is a part of a chapter in the book, I believe Sam will be posting them all eventually. I think this is an interesting concept and I found the actual recording more interesting than the written interviews in the book because I got to hear their voices. I do think the textual versions of the interviews are very good in t [read] Keywords: blogger
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New articles for Notes 8.5.2
Mon, Jun 7th 2010 12:20p Bob Balfe There are five new articles on the Composite Application Wiki, each one hits some new or extended function you will see in the 8.5.2 release. I will be writing about these articles separately. This new content has come directly from excellent customer and business partner feedback.
New Component Level Access Control in Notes 8.5.2 by Michael Cooper
Using a Notes Outline to control page navigation in a composite application by Bob Balfe
Understanding the DataChange event in Container Componen [read] Keywords: ldd
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Adding a dynamic global button to the Notes toolbar
Mon, Jun 7th 2010 8:27a Bob Balfe Last week I posted an update to the Mail Rule Utilities on OpenNTF. The primary change, as I wrote about, was to move the icon to the global toolbar in Notes. I not only did this but I also put a condition in the logic to only be visible when certain views have focus. One can argue if this was or was not the right thing to do in this specific case but I figure I would play around a little. You can get the source files right from the release download on the OpenNTF site for reference. A [read] Keywords: ibm
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New Mail Rule Utility for Notes 8.5.1 and 8.5.2
Fri, Jun 4th 2010 12:21p Bob Balfe I have just updated the OpenNTF project with a new version of the utilities. The new version puts the icon in the global toolbar and gets shown when you are in a mail or notes view and hides otherwise. This uses the org.eclipse.ui.actionSetPartAssociations extension to associate it with the various Notes Java views. I will be writing up a nice post on how to do that soon.
technorati tags: eclipse, mail rules, OpenNTF [read] Keywords: notes
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Why I stopped linking to my PlanetLotus posts
Fri, Jun 4th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe So I read the post from Marie Scott on the top 15 ways to get higher ratings on Planet Lotus and found the #1 way to be interesting. While yes, you can certainly link the Planet Lotus URL via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook but there is a fundamental flaw with this. I did this for almost a year and decided to stop doing it because I could not tell where my readers were truly coming from. Planet Lotus was by far my #1 referrer and actually still is but not as much. My numbers are down on [read] Keywords: lotus
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Intents have lots of applications
Thu, Jun 3rd 2010 10:50p Bob Balfe I have been playing around with the Android SDK with Eclipse in my spare time, I introduced it here, and my latest discover is Intents. For a quick primer on what these can do you should really watch the second day key note from Google IO(see below). What is amazing is I can easily see the benefit of having something like this in the Notes client or simply on my laptop as a service. Many times I want to send a file, document or URL to my device so I can take it quickly on the go. I cur [read] Keywords: notes
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Software is a team sport
Thu, Jun 3rd 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe That line was taken from Making it Big in Software by Sam Lightstone. I really love this book and since I have read it I have used it frequently as my little hidden consultant and mentor. The great thing about the book is it really is a mentor because it literally hits on every aspect of my job at IBM. I do have a primary team at IBM but the reality is I am on many teams. Management teams, documentation teams, test teams, development teams, sales teams, etc. IBM is a massive company an [read] Keywords: ibm
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If you want to Innovate with Lotus then you should be in Orlando next week
Wed, Jun 2nd 2010 9:40a Bob Balfe Innovate 2010 is next week! There a lot of great sessions on Web 2.0, Dojo, Composites, Vulcan – check it out if you can.
Top 5 reasons to attend Innovate 2010
1. Over 350 sessions focused on software, systems, services and more.
2. New Solution Tracks: Agile, Cloud, Jazz, Packaged Applications, Power Systems, and Systems Development.
3. Over twenty hands-on technical workshops.
4. Participate in interactive Fishbowl and U-Innovate sessions.
5. Networking and innovating with 4,000 pee [read] Keywords: ibm
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DominoPower Magazine
Fri, May 28th 2010 12:20p Bob Balfe Recently, I have noticed a lot of hits coming from DominoPower Magazine. I checked the site out and its a pretty good source of Lotus/Domino information in the form of products, blogs, and articles. If you want to learn more about Notes and Domino check it out.
technorati tags: Domino, dominopower, magazine [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
74
Book Review: High Performance JavaScript
Fri, May 28th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe This book is a great resource and reference. It is probably not something you will read from front to back but more reference the individual sections when needed. What I did was somewhat scan the entire book first and then revisited each chapter for a clearer picture. What I found was an amazing amount of tips and tricks to have high performing JavaScript in your code. Many may think with frameworks like Dojo you don’t need this stuff but that is not the case. You will need to wr [read] Keywords: applications
dojo
javascript
66
IBM and Ariba partner in the cloud
Thu, May 27th 2010 12:20p Bob Balfe I worked on a very early release of the Ariba product at Key Services corporation. I saw from the announcement that IBM is now partnering with them, you can check it out here.
Back then, in 1999, Ariba was state of the art. The Swing UI with declarative extensions and modular UI elements essentially allowed a company to extend both the UI and business flow for any transaction. The workflow was absolutely amazing. Using web enabled punch out’s were very new back then, now you see [read] Keywords: ibm
108
All web developers, please use “email”, “number”, and “url” types for input!
Thu, May 27th 2010 8:21a Bob Balfe I can’t tell you how nice the custom keyboard on the iPhone is for sites that are using type=”number”, type=”email” and type=”url” on their forms. You can check out this article I found that explains all of the different keyboards the iPhone supports. I also found another good article that hits on a few more nice to knows in the mobile web space.
technorati tags: html, iPhone, mobile, web [read] Keywords: email
iphone
mobile
128
n.Fluent is now on all IBM wikis!
Wed, May 26th 2010 12:21p Bob Balfe Watch out Google Translate, n.Fluent technology is now on all IBM wiki’s! I only hope the translation is better than Google’s. If you see something wrong in your native language don’t hesitate to write in or help change it. This is one of the benefits of all of the wiki’s using the same design – they are all updated! Check out the Composite Application Wiki for a sample:
technorati tags: lotus, n.fluent, translate, wiki [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
application
google
wiki
113
Does anyone use the Content Delivery Network for Dojo?
Wed, May 26th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe I must say, the Dojo toolkit site is much nicer than what I remember over a year ago. I am able to find things a lot faster and the code samples are getting a lot better. I started looking at the page about CDN’s and while I think this is interesting I also feel my site could easily break if I reference one of these and it happens to not be available. I have started integrating small amounts of Dojo into my blog and the first thing I came up against is whether I house Dojo on my site [read] Keywords: domino
dojo
network
server
wiki
145
Learning the Android SDK
Tue, May 25th 2010 12:20p Bob Balfe This is clearly a home side project so don’t expect much real work information here. I read a little about the Android SDK and since its free and I can quickly get up and running in Eclipse I decided to mess around with it in my spare time. I also bought the book, Pro Android 2, which has been an excellent primer and reference so far. If you want a really good introduction to the Android architecture you must watch the introductory videos, the platform is pretty impressive. One o [read] Keywords: eclipse
interface
xml
109
JDojo is not GWT!
Mon, May 24th 2010 12:20p Bob Balfe After my two previous posts I have received a lot of questions and interest in JDojo so I figure I would pass on a section of the Jazz site that explains what JDojo is compared to GWT.
GWT is a cross-compiler, web runtime and window toolkit.
However, Jazz ships Dojo as a web runtime and window toolkit, greatly enhanced by home-brew server side logic to support OSGi web bundles, dynamic merging and shrinking of JavaScript code etc. While it would certainly be possible to integrate GWT in the Jaz [read] Keywords: ibm
application
applications
community
dojo
eclipse
google
java
javascript
server
wiki
122
New Visitors map for my site – I love it!
Fri, May 21st 2010 7:53a Bob Balfe As you can see on the right of my site there is a new visitors map. The map is a dynamic map that shows where people are hitting my site from. I use the WordPress plugin created by: Stefan Aichholzer
Here is a larger map below to show you the full map:
Visitor map
technorati tags: google maps, site, visitors [read] Keywords: google
114
Who uses the E4 Rhino JavaScript debugger?
Thu, May 20th 2010 7:20a Bob Balfe I hear a lot of people use Firebug and other means to debug their JavaScript or they are starting to use other things like GWT based development to debug. The JDojo site promotes the use of the E4 Rhino JavaScript debugger and I have not used this as of yet. You can read more about E4 here on the site.
What combination or technique do you use?
technorati tags: debugger, JavaScript, jDojo, Rhino [read] Keywords: development
eclipse
javascript
wiki
115
Gist integration with Lotus Notes, great demo!
Wed, May 19th 2010 7:20a Bob Balfe Wow, what a great demo! This video shows so many areas of integration I don’t know where to begin. First off it shows Gist integration with the Notes toolbars – most likely an Eclipse extension and then it shows how Gist can integrate with a composite application. The great thing about this composite is the demonstration shows integration with a web page and a native application using the OpenSpan container.
Great demo!
technorati tags: cae, Composite Applications, eclipse, [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
application
applications
eclipse
integration
70
Continuous Integration with Hudson
Tue, May 18th 2010 10:50a Bob Balfe I was doing my casual nightly reading and stumbled across Hudson. Continuous integration is something I am very familiar with. My early years at Iris Associates were the test automation lead for Lotus Notes/Domino. We essentially built an internal tool that is very similar to Hudson. We used a combination of cross platform C/C++, Lotus Notes, Lotus Script and Java in the entire architecture. It was a pretty robust and complex system and much of it is still in use today for automation t [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
development
eclipse
integration
java
wiki
142
Learning JDojo Part 1
Wed, May 12th 2010 8:00a Bob Balfe I started going through the different pages on the JDojo site and decided to go ahead and set up a dev environment to play with this cool technology a little more. I started by installing what I consider the best tools for JavaScript development tools:
Eclipse 3.5
Aptana
Web Tools Platform
I will say, the only thing I really wanted to do was write Java and compile it to JavaScript. Because you set the project type to enable the JDojo nature and builder it automatically puts your files into [read] Keywords: ibm
ajax
application
development
dojo
eclipse
java
javascript
wiki
xml
200
Introducing jDojo!
Fri, May 7th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe Ok, I don’t really have any authority or any involvement whatsoever with jDojo but I figured I would introduce it on my site. I am going to be checking it out more closely going forward and seeing what benefit it really gives us.
You will need to register to get into the jDojo site so go ahead – I think it is well worth it. The latest version now has support for Dojo 1.4 – which tells me these guys are making sure the community has the ability to support very current API [read] Keywords: applications
community
css
development
dojo
eclipse
enterprise
google
java
javascript
web 2.0
wiki
147
Listening for the Notes login in Eclipse/Java
Thu, May 6th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe I just had an email exchange about this with a colleague so I figured I would share with everyone. Hunter has a nice little post with a code snippet that shows how you can listen for when the user completes logging into Lotus Notes. Using the Accounts API’s will allow you to be notified when a user has logged into the system by setting up a listener on the service. The great thing about this API is you can now know any time a user changes id’s or completes logging in so your co [read] Keywords: expeditor
ibm
lotus
notes
eclipse
email
exchange
exchange
java
security
74
Getting better with GIMP
Wed, May 5th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe So I have been using GIMP for all of my graphic needs for the past year or so. Unfortunately for me I am not a graphics person so 90% of what I do is very basic. My youngest son just had his first communion and I decided to make a picture for his gift table to show the holiness of the occasion. I used GIMP to merge the two photos of him and Jesus but the hardest part was cropping out him from the original picture. I took his picture near my stair case (he put on his most holy of faces), he [read] Keywords:
55
Facebook is viral
Wed, May 5th 2010 7:20a Bob Balfe More and more sites have my Facebook friends or connection to/from Facebook. It seems everywhere I look I see that popular “f” logo and in many cases some list showing what my friends have posted relevant to that site. My latest discovery was when I was looking on CNN.com and noticed Sean Dehlinger on the right hand side. You can see below in the picture who Sean is and if you want to see him on Facebook you know how to find him. I think this is pretty interesting from a busi [read] Keywords: facebook
social software
128
Using LotusScript to communicate with Java/Plug-ins
Tue, May 4th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe As many are aware, EventAdmin is a publish/subscribe event system that ships with Lotus Notes and is the primary communication mechanism used between OSGI plug-ins. What is really missing in the Notes client is a pub/sub model to communicate between Lotus Script and the Eclipse Java world. While you can certainly role your own through some creative coding the real answer would be to have the entire Notes core side (written in C) publish its various events to the Java side through the use of [read] Keywords: admin
lotus
lotusscript
lsx
notes
notes client
applications
eclipse
email
java
openntf
44
Book Review: Making it Big in Software
Mon, May 3rd 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe This book was captivating from the preface. I knew it would be a good read after the first chapter. This book is a must read for software professionals, students, and managers in the software industry.
The book gave some very interesting quotes from the industries most successful people. Chapter 2 has the “reality checks” section and it is something I can definitely relate with. The Lotus community is an interesting group where “compatibility” and “newR [read] Keywords: lotus
community
107
Accessing advanced properties from an XPage component
Fri, Apr 30th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe A question from the business partner forum was asked how to access a components preference, the ones entered in the Advanced Preferences panel in the Composite Application Editor. I got this tip from Padraic Edwards on the XPages team. This should help anyone wanting to get an XPage component into a composite or an Eclipse based perspective.
I edited my XPage component to include a new property named “BobsValue” with a value of “The Value is RED”:
What you have to do in the XPage ap [read] Keywords: xpages application
eclipse
properties
83
Buyer’s Guide to SaaS E-mail
Thu, Apr 29th 2010 8:30a Bob Balfe So I just got my Information Week and there is a great article in it called “Buyer’s Guide to SaaS E-Mail“. You won’t see the nice comparison table in the online article – which is why I get the printed version – so I will attempt to explain a little of it here. In a nutshell, IBM Lotus Live is the cheapest by far when you include the fact encryption is included for free. It is tied for the lowest amount of free disk space (1 GB) with NaviSite but I am n [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
email
google
integration
microsoft
VMForce.com looks interesting
Wed, Apr 28th 2010 8:13a Bob Balfe I was actually researching the OpenSocial specification and did a Google search on what sites use OpenSocial. To no surprise, there are clearly two camps here – Facebook and OpenSocial. With the announcement of MS Office for Facebook you can clearly see the two camps that have been formed. Check out an interesting slide presentation from Jawad Shuaib – yes it was posted quite some time ago but I think it is still somewhat relevant (you can also see it below). One small point [read] Keywords: application
applications
development
eclipse
facebook
google
java
office
vmware
xml
55
Kids writing games with XNA
Tue, Apr 27th 2010 9:10a Bob Balfe Bradley Jones has two great articles for programming XNA (XBox games). I really like XNA and played with it for quite a while. I think it is the perfect tool set and framework to get into game programming. The framework hides a lot of the dirty details with video, sound, and synchronization but also allows you to really dig into the concepts at a fairly low level. Check out these two articles and when you mix the tooling with other freely available tools like GIMP, Blender, Audacity, and [read] Keywords: development
microsoft
193
Did Microsoft just derail Google?
Fri, Apr 23rd 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe I am pretty sure most, if not all, of the readers of this blog have read about or have seen Microsoft Docs and how it integrates with Facebook. There was another article on ZDNet that asked this same question “Is Microsoft Docs really a ‘Google Docs killer’ and four other questions (and answers)“.
I think this is a great play for Microsoft because Facebook is so damn popular right now; they are going to hit a ton of young and old users right out of the gate. A key lin [read] Keywords: application
desktop
facebook
google
microsoft
mobile
office
47
Oh Canada…
Thu, Apr 22nd 2010 8:20p Bob Balfe The trip is over, after 4 days with 5 kids and just me and Kim I think I need a vacation! I lived in New York almost my entire life and I had never been to the Canadian side of the Niagra Falls. As you can see from the pictures the falls are a lot different from the other side - it was very cool!
We went on just about every attraction related to the Falls as you can. The Maid of The Mist boat ride was awesome, of course it was like taking a shower but the ponchos came in very handy.
The ho [read] Keywords:
56
Akismet is working like a charm!
Sun, Apr 18th 2010 8:20a Bob Balfe Ok, I have to thank Chris Aniszczyk for the Akismet tip. The plugin has already caught every single spam since I turned it on 3 days ago.
technorati tags: Akismet, blog, site, spam [read] Keywords:
90
Lotus Knows ad in an online video
Sat, Apr 17th 2010 4:10p Bob Balfe I just watched this video I happen to click on from a Facebook post and the first thing that popped up was a Lotus Knows Ad. Very Cool Lotus!
technorati tags: Ad, lotus, Lotus Knows [read] Keywords: lotus
facebook
64
Recording available for the OpenSpan and IBM Lotus webinar from earlier this week.
Fri, Apr 16th 2010 1:14p Bob Balfe This really is an impressive video, if you get the chance check it out.
Duration is 39 minutes.
In this 45-minute presentation, IBM and OpenSpan will explain the Lotus Windows Container strategy, which maximizes the ROI associated with implementing or migrating to Notes 8.5 or Expeditor 6.2. The OpenSpan Windows Container and the OpenSpan Scripting Container extend the value of Lotus Notes and Expeditor solutions by enabling the rapid integration of a broad range of Windows applications into com [read] Keywords: expeditor
ibm
lotus
notes
applications
integration
103
I love Sync!
Fri, Apr 16th 2010 12:23p Bob Balfe So I got a new vehicle from Ford and it has the Sync feature in it. I get a three year subscription and I am already totally impressed with it after only a days use. I get USB connectivity for MP3 players, its totally integrated through blue tooth with my iPhone for both hands free and voice activated calling and I can also stream the audio from the iPhone (meaning anything from YouTube videos and songs to videos on the phone itself). The streaming audio is amazing, it picks up right where [read] Keywords: iphone
microsoft
Using FireBug to speed up your site
Thu, Apr 15th 2010 7:41a Bob Balfe I have been really diving on my site, making tweaks and optimizations and some minor cosmetic changes. One tool that I have been using to speed up my site is Firebug. The optimizations this great tool points out can be found under the “Page Speed” tab of the Firebug user interface. You can systematically go down each item found and fix them; some are more valuable than others but the point is the way the tool works is very slick. You can even compare your site score to some m [read] Keywords: development
eclipse
interface
javascript
108
Cool OpenSpan demo in a composite
Wed, Apr 14th 2010 3:07p Bob Balfe I just viewed the online webinar for the OpenSpan integration with Lotus Notes and Lotus Expeditor. It was a pretty good crowd size and I thought the demo was very cool. They integrated the Lotus Notes contact component with a C++ application and the FedEx shipping site. As you select a contact their information is pushed into the CRM (C++) application which then sends the shipping information over to the web browser for a FedEx look up. The entire application was assembled in the Compos [read] Keywords: expeditor
lotus
notes
application
integration
143
Eclipse Rich Client Platform, Second Edition
Wed, Apr 14th 2010 7:40a Bob Balfe I just read from Chris’s blog the second edition for the ever so popular book Eclipse Rich Client Platform can be pre-ordered at this time. Check out the books site and pre-order your copy today. This series has been what I consider the books to get your head around what Eclipse really offers, if you are serious about Eclipse or any of the products based on Eclipse then this book is for you. This is not a book review and I could of course be wrong about promoting this but I am pretty [read] Keywords: eclipse
111
Blog spam is out of control!
Tue, Apr 13th 2010 12:14p Bob Balfe Not sure where to begin with this one but I want to let my readers know the pain and suffering I go through each day. If it wasn’t for the fact I have a WordPress application on my iPhone and marking comments as spam is as easy as a single click I think I would just kill the site. I am now getting 5-20 spam posts a day on this site and I even have a basic spam control on the comment form. I could log into the actual site each day and click the spam button on each of these but I like [read] Keywords: application
iphone
118
Creating wiki articles and some great tips
Tue, Apr 13th 2010 7:43a Bob Balfe Amanda Bauman posted a nice Wiki Help article on the Composite Application Wiki. The post shows you how to format the text for your articles including many other tips like moving a document from Microsoft Word to the wiki or including an SWF file in your article. This formatting is good for all of the wikis based on the XPages wiki template, you can check the LotusWikis.com for the full list of wikis.
technorati tags: articles, format, tips, wiki, xpages [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
xpages application
community
microsoft
wiki
68
New “Bob’s Picks” on my site
Fri, Apr 9th 2010 7:10a Bob Balfe I added a new Amazon widget to my site (check it out in the upper right of the site). I look at the new carousel widget as quick links to products that I am either reading or reviewing. I actually had to make a few minor changes to the overall site in order to get this thing to display. I moved the page navigation to the left and I had to make a few size and CSS adjustments. All in all I think I like the widget.
technorati tags: amazon, bobs picks, books, carousel, review [read] Keywords: css
widget
