Native Look and Feel With Java Swing Windows | Blog
Mon, May 14th 2012 8:00a Jake Howlett A while back I talked about how I'd been using Java Swing components within code running inside the Lotus Notes client to "extend its interface" however I liked. As an example, I showed this progress-bar-enabled output window: It works but looks a bit too Java-ery for my liking. Too obviously not a standard part of the client itself. It just jarred with me ('scuse the Java pun there). Well, if you add the following line in to the Java code before opening the window above:UIManager.setLookA [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
notes client
database
interface
java
269
RFC: SharePoint From A Domino Perspective | Blog
Wed, May 9th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett As a Domino developer, when you start to learn SharePoint, the first things that strikes you is how similar the two are. Well, they're quite different, but there are undeniable parallels. As I work my way through this book I am compiling a table of the elements that make up SharePoint and trying to match them to Domino design elements I'm familiar with. There's no real point to it other than try and understand SharePoint from a perspective I'm used to. Here's the table as it stands (very mu [read] Keywords: acl
agent
domino
script library
application
database
microsoft
office
profile
sharepoint
sql
201
Solution to Java Applet Puzzle | Blog
Fri, May 4th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Here's the explanation and the solution to the Java applet issue I mentioned yesterday. As you saw the page combined a Domino Java View applet and an ActionBar applet. They are two separate applets. They talk to each other using JavaScript. You can see how by looking at the source to the page. Clicking the Refresh button on the applet calls this JavaScript function:function Action1_onClick() {
document.applets.view.refresh();
return false;
}
That code is calling an exposed method of the Vie [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
database
java
javascript
network
oracle
security
server
xml
161
Fancy A "Fun" Debugging Challenge? | Blog
Thu, May 3rd 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Yesterday I debugged a particularly nasty issue. The solution to which I thought I'd share with the world. Before I do I thought it would be fun to reproduce the problem, by way of a challenge for you guys. Fancy yourself as a half decent hacker? Take a look at the the following link: http://www.codestore.net/apps/applets.nsf/view Pressing the Refresh button on the Action Bar should simply refresh the view. It doesn't. It just empties it. See if you can work out why. Muhaha. Your only clue: i [read] Keywords: domino
154
Gardening Advice Needed | Blog
Wed, May 2nd 2012 4:11a Jake Howlett Four years ago this week I moved in to - what was then - a newly-built office, shown below: As somebody commented back then it looks like all it needs is a Ladies / Gentlemen sign above each door. They were right - it does have the look of a public convenience to it. The plan was to grow ivy up it as a form of camouflage and soon after it was built I planted ivy plants along its length. Here's what it looks like now, four years on: I was expecting that, by now it would be completely covered i [read] Keywords: office
365
How I'm Learning SharePoint | Blog
Tue, May 1st 2012 4:50a Jake Howlett The fact that I'm learning SharePoint development (again) might seem like an about turn, seeing as though I didn't have much good to say about it a couple of years back when I first delved in. But back then I was using SharePoint 2007, which by all accounts, was a dog. In comparison SharePoint 2010 is a dream to work with. Dare I say it, it's almost enjoyable. My adventures with SharePoint back then were short-lived. Although it was enough to give me a good grounding and understanding of what [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
development
interface
microsoft
office
sharepoint
315
A Personal Update | Blog
Fri, Apr 27th 2012 4:00a Jake Howlett It's been a while since I posted anything of a personal nature on here. Last time I did, if I remember right, it was when I was down in the dumps, desperate for work and considering throwing the towel in. Assuming anybody still cares here's a quick update on work, family and this site. Work Work is going well at the moment. I've got enough of it to keep me busy and pay the bills (and, more importantly, the taxman!!). Mostly I'm still doing Lotus Domino work. Legacy and maintenance stuff th [read] Keywords: admin
domino
lotus
xpages mobile
sharepoint
240
SharePoint: Lists Based on Domino Views With CRUD | Blog
Wed, Apr 25th 2012 4:50a Jake Howlett Here's an example of a typical SharePoint List: What's different about this List is that it's displaying data from this Lotus Notes View: Not only does the List display this data but it also offers full CRUD-like capabilities - you can also create, change and remove the documents from the Notes database using the SharePoint List frontend. Here it is creating a new document from within the SharePoint site that will update in to the Notes database. All this with very little (as in no) evid [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
database
microsoft
security
sharepoint
208
Making Your Code Tidier With Fluent Interfaces | Blog
Tue, Apr 24th 2012 5:01a Jake Howlett I'm not saying it's the best way, or anything, but my preference when coding is to write the least number of lines possible. Going back to the OutputWindow class I talked about last month, you create and display it like this:OutputWindow output = new OutputWindow();
output.show();
But that's two lines of code, where the following single line would feel more natural, to me at least:
OutputWindow output = new OutputWindow().show();
Maybe it's just me?
Either way, if you don't know how to wr [read] Keywords: notes
interface
wiki
153
How To Enable Two Factor Login for Google Apps for Business Accounts | Blog
Thu, Apr 19th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Despite feeling quite safe online - following my self-imposed security review of a couple of years ago - there's always been that nagging doubt that a single point of failure existed in my relatively weak Google Accounts password. I did nothing about this until Jeff Atwood mentioned it this week and I finally turned on two factor authentication. You can do this through your Google Account page online, as below: I did this first for my "personal" Gmail account and then I tried to do it for [read] Keywords: admin
email
google
password
security
194
Web Services: Domino Data Inside SharePoint 2010 Using a Web Part | Blog
Wed, Apr 18th 2012 4:31a Jake Howlett In the last couple of posts on here I've been talking about how to display Domino-based data in an ASP.NET MVC application using Web Services. However, my goal was to find a way to get data in to SharePoint. So, taking it one step further, that's what I did. The image below is a SharePoint 2010 site with a "view" of Domino-based data inside it. How Did I Do That? Well, first thing you'll need is a SharePoint 2010 Server. Assuming you haven't already got one to hand and your PC is 64bit W [read] Keywords: domino
application
microsoft
server
sharepoint
vista
205
Web Services: Using Complex Types | Blog
Mon, Apr 16th 2012 4:40a Jake Howlett Last week I showed how simple it is to share data between Domino and ASP.NET using Web Services. That example was way too basic though and not a great example of how simple it really is - even in a more "real world" scenario. Here's a Notes database with some basic information about fashion designers that I made up: Now, let's share this information with our ASP.NET MVC website! First we create a new Web Service Provider in Domino Designer: I called it FashionDesignerLookup and renamed the [read] Keywords: domino
notes
database
java
properties
238
Connecting To Domino From ASP.NET / SharePoint | Blog
Wed, Apr 11th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett I got asked recently by a customer how they could have a SharePoint site talk to a Domino web server to obtain information from it. Obviously there are lots of options, but the one I ended up suggesting was Web Services. Before making the suggestion I wanted to be extra sure it was a) possible and b) as easy as I thought it would be. To do this I created a very simple test. Here's how. Step 1: Create a Web Service in Domino The first thing I did was create a database called WebServces.nsf and o [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
application
database
java
microsoft
server
sharepoint
206
Organising the Windows Desktop with Fences | Blog
Thu, Apr 5th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Continuing on from yesterday's perfect desk posting, let's look at perfecting the desktop shall we. I've always used my Windows desktop as my main storage area for either what I'm working on at the time as well as long-term project's folders, downloaded files and read-later links/reminders. Generally there's about 40 icons on there at any one time and I try to keep them organised in such a way that I can quickly find what I want. However, every now and then, explorer.exe will crash and th [read] Keywords: desktop
209
The Perfect Desk Quest - 2012 Update - New Monitor | Blog
Wed, Apr 4th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Last week I took delivery of probably the most game-changing piece of IT kit I think I've ever bought. No, not an iPad 3! A 27" monitor. I've been pondering buying one for a couple of years now and finally gave in to temptation. Going with all the positive reviews I went with the consistently top-rated Dell U2711 and am not disappointed. Not at all. In fact I'm blown away. The U2711 is running at a massive 2560 by 1440 pixels. Until last week I'd been using a 24" monitor at 1900 by 1200, [read] Keywords: domino
desktop
office
314
Making Domino Designer Tidier & Less Annoying | Blog
Tue, Apr 3rd 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Yesterday was a good day for me. I learnt of couple of tips from you guys that will help me loads. I'll share them here. Auto-Saving Java Firstly a big thanks to Andrew Magerman who has saved me hours and hours of time (potentially) with the following tip, which solves an annoyance I blogged about 3 years ago and have been suffering with ever since -- if you save a Java class from within an Agent or Script Library you have to then save the Library/Agent too. But now you don't need to, with the [read] Keywords: agent
domino
script library
xpages database
eclipse
java
318
Domino Designer's New Java Code Element | Blog
Mon, Apr 2nd 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Just lately I've been doing an inordinate amount of Java coding in Domino Designer. Which, for the most part, I'm really enjoying. I'd much rather it were C# and Visual Studio, but hey, it's work and I shouldn't complain. At some point recently I upgraded my Notes client to 8.5.3 and then some time later I noticed a new design element appeared under the Code section in Designer, as below: Inside this new area you can directly create and modify classes, like so: This appeals to me as I fin [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ibm
notes
notes client
xpages applications
database
eclipse
interface
java
345
Adding a Progress Bar to Notes Agent | Blog
Fri, Mar 30th 2012 5:51a Jake Howlett On Tuesday I showed a custom "Java Console" I'd thrown together. Today I'm going to extend it by adding a progress bar. Here's what it looks like in use: And when done: Here's the code for using it:public class JavaAgent extends AgentBase {
private OutputWindowWithProgressBar progressWindow = new OutputWindowWithProgressBar();
public void NotesMain() {
try {
Session session = getSession();
AgentContext agentContext = session.getAgentContext();
DocumentCollection docs = agentCo [read] Keywords: agent
notes
java
256
Annoyance With HTTPS Web Services and Domino | Blog
Thu, Mar 29th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett Obscure Domino annoyance alert! If you have a scheduled Java Agent on a server and that Agent connects to an external Web Service over HTTPS then you will likely encounter an error if both the following are true: You are using Internet Site documents. The server's Key File isn't in the default place - /keyfile.kyr The error you will see from a Java stack trace is: Error connecting to 'www.acme.com' on port '443', SSL Error: Keyring file not found. After a lot of head scratching and a lot [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ldd
lotus
notes
java
server
199
Your Own Custom Java Console in Notes Client | Blog
Tue, Mar 27th 2012 4:10a Jake Howlett When writing Java Agents that run in the Notes client you can use the Java Console to see the result of any System.out.println() calls. Useful for debugging and dumping stack traces to when there's an error. To display the Java Console you need to look inside the Tools menu of the Notes client. Not something an average user would know to do and not something you could expect them to do. The Java Console is therefore best used by us developers and isn't much use when it comes to displaying tex [read] Keywords: agent
notes
notes client
java
244
Using MIME-Based HTML Tables in Notes Client | Blog
Tue, Mar 20th 2012 4:01a Jake Howlett I remember back when I first started with Notes development having to create tables on Notes Forms to display data held in fields in the same document. Maybe you did something similar whereby you'd use one multi-value field for each column of data and add a table to your form with one field in each column. Then you'd hope there was no wrapping. All very messy. Having not done any real Notes development for 10+ years it's not something I've thought much about since. Until last week when I ne [read] Keywords: agent
notes
notes client
css
database
development
java
221
Planning for Zero Redundancy | Blog
Mon, Mar 19th 2012 5:30a Jake Howlett Following your solid reasoning I've given up on the idea of replacing a perfectly good SSD disk with one exactly the same just because it might - at some point - break. As you pointed out - it's crazy to replace a perfectly good piece of kit. Instead I took the advice given and have bought a spare hard drive of the same make, type and size and it's now sitting on my shelf in its box, unopened. Should the current SSD ever die, I can swap them over with minimum downtime. To perform this swap [read] Keywords: laptop
143
Compliance With European Cookie Legislation | Blog
Wed, Mar 14th 2012 4:40a Jake Howlett Here in the crazy land that is Europe there's a new law about to come in to effect in May which means businesses (everybody?) need to get permission from users before placing cookies on their machine. A customer of mine has asked that I implement this on a couple of Domino websites I've built for them. This is probably going to involve doing something very similar to what the ICO have done on their site, which is to show a huge great opt-in message at the top of every page which doesn't go a [read] Keywords: domino
google
javascript
password
server
155
Adobe Shadow: Easy Way to Test Websites on Mobile Devices | Blog
Mon, Mar 12th 2012 4:10a Jake Howlett Adobe just announced the free Shadow software, which lets you simultaneously browse websites on your PC and your mobile devices (iOS or Android) - making testing during development of websites a whole lot easier. It works by installing a mobile app on your devices (phones, iPads, etc) which listen for instructions from the Shadow software on your PC. In turn, the software on your PC listen for instructions from a Chrome browser extension. As you browse in Chrome all the connected devices follow [read] Keywords: development
iphone
mobile
422
One Year With SSD - Time for a New One? | Blog
Wed, Feb 29th 2012 5:20a Jake Howlett It's been a year since I upgraded my laptop to an SSD. I know this because I added a reminder to my calendar at the time to remind me that after 1 year it might be worth swapping it out. Why? Because I read some horror stories regarding their reliability and expected life-spans (most died within a year in the cases highlighted here). My plan was to change it after the first year. Should I though? Seems a crazy thing to do. considering the cost. But then, if it did fail, I'd curse myself for no [read] Keywords: laptop
273
Java: Test if a Document Exists in a Notes View | Blog
Thu, Feb 23rd 2012 4:50a Jake Howlett I'm writing some Java code in a Notes Agent that processes every single document in a database, apart from those that may exist in certain views. To test if the document is in a view or not I used this simple function:private boolean isDocumentInView(lotus.domino.View view, Document doc) throws Exception{
if (view==null) return false;
//Evaluate returns either a double of 0.0 or 1.0 for this! Dunno why?
Vector test = session.evaluate(view.getSelectionFormula(), doc);
Double result = (Dou [read] Keywords: agent
domino
lotus
notes
blogging
database
java
580
A Reason Not to Like Notes | Blog
Thu, Feb 16th 2012 5:50a Jake Howlett I've been working on a user registration "component" for a Domino database. Something to let users register for access and then, once logged in, change their passwords. As part of both processes the password entered is validated and checked it's of a certain quality. It has to be a certain length as well as containing both uppercase and lowercase letters along with some numbers. So, "P4ssw0rD" is ok but "p4ssw0rd" and "P4SSW0RD" aren't. I needed to perform this validation both in @Fo [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
notes
bug
database
password
392
Redirecting Users After Moving a Database | Blog
Thu, Feb 9th 2012 4:40a Jake Howlett I thought I'd share this tip as I just used it for the second time, so maybe you will one day. Imagine you need to move a Domino database and its content to a different server. Chances are that the web address will change. Let's say this database:https://server1.acme.com/database.nsf/ is moving to this new address:https://server2.acme.com/database.nsf/ How do you let users know? Do you setup URL Rewrite documents in the Domino Directory to auto-rewrite or redirect them as they come in? You co [read] Keywords: domino
database
server
275
Blocking Google Search Results | Blog
Thu, Feb 2nd 2012 8:21a Jake Howlett I've wanted this feature for ages - the ability to tell Google not to include results from certain websites. And now it's here: I first noticed it when doing the following: Searched for a solution to some obscure (often Notes-related) issue. Accidentally hit a result for a site that requires registration and/or payment. Immediately hit the back button. If now that, if you press the back button quickly enough, Google will show a "block this site" link under the result you clicked on. Or you [read] Keywords: notes
google
378
Why Might Notes Consider a MIME Field To Be Rich Text? | Blog
Tue, Jan 31st 2012 6:00a Jake Howlett I hate the idea of turning this site in to my own forum, but have an "interesting" problem for you, which might help to have the answer on the internet, so... I'm in the process of writing code to loop all messages in a Notes inbox, so I can examine their content. Now, consider this document and its Body field: The Body field is obviously MIME, right? As confirmed by ScanEz. If you were to run the following code against the above document, what would you expect to see?Item item = document.g [read] Keywords: notes
rich text
richtext
419
Two Websites I've Been Asked To Make | Blog
Fri, Jan 27th 2012 3:00a Jake Howlett Normally when family or friends say they need a website I roll my eyes and hope there's a way I can get out of doing it. But then my older brother, Tim, asked me to do one that actually got me quite interested. Tim's the engineer for a local radio station and is responsible for making sure - amongst other things - the station stays on air. He wants a way to monitor the output level of the station's signal remotely. So he's bought an Arduino kit and written a "sketch" file to have it monito [read] Keywords: network
276
New Desk Speakers: Bose Companion 5s | Blog
Thu, Jan 26th 2012 3:30a Jake Howlett Almost ten years ago I bought some Bose MediaMate. Thankfully Bose have got their online act together since then and buying the new pair you see below was quite a bit easier. I've replaced the MediaMates with a set of Companion 5s. They're a bit pricey, but I listen to music 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. The speakers I use are arguably as important a choice as the monitor. Well, that's the argument I made to my wife anyway. The MediaMate's (which are on ebay if you want them) were always go [read] Keywords:
362
Adding Even More HTML5 Goodness to Codestore
Mon, Jan 23rd 2012 3:00a Jake Howlett I used to pride myself on keeping this site up there on the bleeding edge of best web design practice. That hasn't been the case as much lately though and this site's backend HTML has stagnated for years. It keeps up with things but generally lags behind. In trying to catch up with the pace I posted on Friday about how I'd funked-up the search box. Not wanting to stop there I've now taken it a little further and converted as much of the site's markup to HTML5 as I dare. The general structu [read] Keywords: css
firefox
javascript
415
Adding a Little HTML5 and CSS3 to CodeStore
Fri, Jan 20th 2012 3:11a Jake Howlett For the last seven years the site-wide search field on this site has looked like this: This week - in a moment of boredom - I decided to spruce it up a little and now it should look like this: Whether it looks like that for you or not depends on the browser you're using. If you're using a modern and capable browser it should. If not you might see something like this: Either way it should still be obvious what it is without the field label or the "Go" button? How'd I Do That? Simple. Firs [read] Keywords: javascript
444
Writing LESS CSS
Thu, Jan 19th 2012 3:30a Jake Howlett Of all the code I write my CSS is probably the messiest and least well-maintained. While I get near-obsessed over the tidiness of other "actual" code I often find my CSS is a complete mess. When coding I try and follow the DRY approach but with CSS am usually "happy" to duplicate rules over and over; copy and pasting all over the place until CSS files become unmanageable. Writing CSS if no fun! Especially when you get to the nitty gritty of vendor-specific stuff in CSS3 like border radiuses, [read] Keywords: domino
css
twitter
291
Chrome Plugin to Open Documents in ScanEz
Thu, Jan 12th 2012 7:21a Jake Howlett If you're a Domino developer and you're not using either Chrome and/or Ytria's ScanEz then you need to stop and question why. While any browser will do (but Chrome is IMHO the best) you really need to check out ScanEz! My love of ScanEz is in no way influenced by the fact they gave it me for free. I say it because I genuinely think you'll be better off once using it. My promotion of it is like a public service kind of thing. Imagine for a second that you do use both. Wouldn't it be nice to [read] Keywords: domino
notes
google
server
355
Open a Notes Document in ScanEz from a Browser
Tue, Jan 10th 2012 4:10a Jake Howlett ScanEz just keeps getting better and better. The latest gem added is that there's now support for URLs beginning with "scanez://". So you can launch it direct from the browser (or desktop shortcuts etc). The major benefit of this - for me at least - is easier debugging. I use ScanEz day in and day out for all sorts of tasks. If you haven't tried it you really should. As I've said many times before I couldn't get by without it. Well, I could, but... Debugging Web Documents When working on [read] Keywords: domino
notes
database
desktop
workspace
315
Olive Oil Fries Mac Mini
Mon, Jan 9th 2012 4:10a Jake Howlett In the kitchen on Friday I reached to the back of the fridge and the inner light went out. I assumed it was dead. In the mean time the house's RCD had tripped, so I moved the fridge to unplug it before resetting the RCD. No joy - the RCD kept tripping out. So I unplug everything in the kitchen (which has it's own ring) and it's still tripping. Then I realised what had happened. A couple of minutes before I'd mopped up a spillage after one of the kids knocked over a jar of olives on the kitc [read] Keywords: bug
email
exchange
exchange
laptop
mac
office
233
Bootstrapping The Domino Errors Database
Thu, Jan 5th 2012 7:30a Jake Howlett For years and years there's been a database called errors.nsf on this server. It's called the Domino Errors Database and it has slowly built in to a record of general Notes-based errors and various suggested solutions. Until recently it was an embarrassment to have flying under the codestore banner. Badly, badly designed and lacking in functionality: no search, no view navigation etc. So, I've "bootstrapped" it (click the image below to go there and see): It still needs some work but it's [read] Keywords: domino
notes
css
database
server
226
Domino + Java: What To Recycle?
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 4:30a Jake Howlett So, I've written a Java-based WebQuerySave Agent to resize uploaded JPEGs photos attached to a document. Users can upload any size of file and the code reduces them all to a maximum of 450px wide. The code is working but there are intermittent memory issues, like below: 28/12/2011 13:24:24 HTTP JVM: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError When this hits, the Java agent fails to complete (obviously, I guess) and the photo is not resized. Ouch. Before I pass blame to the server I need to make sure my code is [read] Keywords: agent
domino
java
server
291
You Need to Look at Bootstrap!
Thu, Dec 22nd 2011 6:30a Jake Howlett It's been a while since I found anything that excited me out there in developer land. Then, yesterday, I stumbled upon Bootstrap via Anil Dash's blog entry on it and I was instantly intrigued. So much so that, within an hour or two, I had this working classic Domino app up and running. I've been looking for something like Bootstrap for years! What is Bootstrap? At it's most simple it's just a CSS file. But it's more than that. It's a "framework" that lets you quickly and simply produ [read] Keywords: domino
css
dojo
javascript
twitter
157
Java: Custom Address Class to Check for Duplicates
Wed, Dec 14th 2011 3:10a Jake Howlett My adventures as a "proper" programmer continue apace. Yesterday I created a custom class in Java that implements the Comparable interface and now feel quite smug about it. Probably undeservedly so. I was writing a Domino-based reporting Agent in Java which need to loop a set of invoice documents for a given user and report back a sorted list of each unique billing addresses they'd supplied over the years, so that a data audit could take place. Here's the use case code for the class:ArrayLi [read] Keywords: agent
domino
interface
java
98
Quick Tip: One Gmail Account = Multiple Test Email Addresses
Thu, Dec 1st 2011 3:20a Jake Howlett Don't know about you but a lot of what I do requires having access to multiple email addresses (testing websites that require signup etc). To aide my development I have a few email accounts I use - a Gmail, a Hotmail, a Yahoo and a Google Apps one (my main account). That's only four addresses though, which can be quite limiting at times. In steps Gmail. If you have a Gmail account then you have access to "infinite" email addresses using that one account. The Gmail account I use for general t [read] Keywords: development
email
google
80
Processing Large Numbers of Documents From The Web
Mon, Nov 28th 2011 3:00a Jake Howlett Have you ever needed to call a server-side script that processes 1,000s upon 1,000s of documents or rows of data? If you're doing this from a browser you're going to need to take a couple of things in to account: Web connections, Agents and scripts can timeout. Users need re-assuring feedback that something is actually happening. If you make a website with a button, which, when clicked, calls a script that loops 10,000 plus document the likelihood is the browser will timeout or the user will [read] Keywords: connections
server
83
Free To Comment
Tue, Nov 8th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett My friend's pub, The Royal Oak, was a finalist in the "traditional pub" category of the Derbyshire Food Awards for the second year running. As proud publicans they asked me to make this more obvious on their website. So I stuck a couple of rosettes at the top of it, as you can see below: Take a look at the source code if you're curious how I did it. Basically it makes use of three "tricks": negative margins, floats and transparent PNGs. It was easier to do than I thought it might be. Whil [read] Keywords: email
87
Rockall Now In Ninth Year
Tue, Nov 1st 2011 4:01a Jake Howlett Today's a special day. Not just because it's my dad's 70th birthday, but because I'm still employed by Rockall Design ltd, which turned 8 years old yesterday. Today is the first day of the ninth year. There's normally nothing remarkable in the passing of another year, but considering the year I'd had before it's noteworthy that I made it through at all. As a recap: in year 7 my turnover plummeted. I hadn't accounted for this happening and, like an idiot, hadn't put aside enough money to [read] Keywords: domino
mobile
office
sharepoint
72
Preparing a Hard Drive for Sale on eBay
Mon, Oct 31st 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett Now that I have a new NAS I want to sell my old one. Possibly on eBay. Before I sell that I wanted to be sure the data on the drives is completely removed. Like un-retrievable - even by expert geeks. Here's how I went about it. The kit I used was: A Mac Mini A USB to SATA/IDE adapter (thanks Mark!) Remove the HDDs from your NAS and one at a time, connect them via the USB adapter to the Mac, as below: On your Mac press Apple-key + Space to open Spotlight and then search for Disk Utility. Open [read] Keywords: apple
application
mac
security
104
Looping LotusScript Lists
Wed, Oct 19th 2011 4:40a Jake Howlett LotusScript Lists are handy, but, if you've not used them for donkey's years and have completely forgotten how they work, then finding a refresher example can be hard. I was in this position last week. I knew a List was the solution I needed, but could I find a decent reference on their use? Nope! So, for my own benefit as much as future Googlers, here's a quick guide to the key principles involved in using them:Dim Groups List As String
Dim key As String, value As String
Set doc = collectio [read] Keywords: lotusscript
notes
291
SFTP Access To Amazon EC2 Using FileZilla
Wed, Oct 12th 2011 7:20a Jake Howlett As soon as you've setup a Linux instance on Amazon EC2 you're likely next step is to get FTP access so you can move files about. If, like me, your FTP tool of choice is FileZilla then this tip might save you some of the time it took me to work it out. First of all make sure port 22 is open in your instance's Security Group in Amazon's AWS site. You can test this from a Terminal using the following command:ssh Address-Of-EC2-Instance
If that times out then most likely port 22 isn't open. Oth [read] Keywords: linux
security
130
Using Java Enumerations With Domino
Tue, Oct 11th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett Recently I found myself writing a Java-based Agent in Domino for the first time in a year or more and found myself doing things I'd not thought possible the last time I did. Until two or three years ago the extent of my "programming" was that I could write Agents which contained simple where, while and if statements. Inside there I'd be calling some .replaceItemValue() and .save() methods. That was about as complicated as it got. Things only ever got any more complex than that if I stepped [read] Keywords: agent
domino
lotusscript
notes
database
development
java
109
Using The Latest Java Versions in Domino Agents
Mon, Oct 10th 2011 5:10a Jake Howlett The other week I figured out how to make Domino Designer let me code using more up-to-date versions of Java. I was trying to use a third-party API. To use the API required coding with a version of Java, which, although I knew my version of Domino supported, was giving me compilation errors nonetheless. As an example, create a new Domino "app" in Designer 8.5 and add a new Java Agent. Try to add a parameterized type, as below: Hovering over the error it says: "Syntax error, parameterized type [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ibm
lotus
notes
database
google
java
properties
server
wiki
67
My Coming of Age (as a Developer)
Wed, Oct 5th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett The other week I posted on Google+ about the warm fuzzy feeling I'd gotten when writing this line of code:public class Poster extends Entry implements IEntry
Why so? Because all the classes involved were of my own making. Finally things had started to come clear to me; I understood the importance of class inheritance and the role of implementable classes.
While I'd kind of understood this for a while it wasn't until it all clicked and I actually did it for myself that I could truly say it re [read] Keywords: google
java
properties
xml
75
Our Modernised Home Cinema
Thu, Sep 29th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett Two days after posting a picture of our antiquated TV I went out and bought a new one. Never thought I'd part with cash for a telly! I'm so glad I did though, as it's revolutionised our media consumption. Here's the new setup: The HDD/PVR box remains, but the old TV is replaced with this Sony 26" LED TV and there's also an Apple TV to the left of the PVR. Gone is the pile of DVDs in the old photo. All I can say is WOW. I can't believe how backward we were and how cutting edge we are now. [read] Keywords: apple
72
Our Antiquated Home Cinema
Mon, Sep 26th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett One reason for the recent network changes I've made is to drag our "home cinema" setup in to the 21st century. Check out our current setup: The telly is old. Like, ancient. Karen estimates it's about 13 years old. Notice the flap from the front is long gone. As is the remote control. To turn it on involves pressing three buttons in the right order and then waiting. It's all contained in an antique wardrobe in the corner of the living room, so we can hide the mess away when we have guests, [read] Keywords: apple
network
server
64
Making The Most Of Your Network With Jumbo Frames
Fri, Sep 23rd 2011 12:10a Jake Howlett Upgrading your network hardware to Gigabit-ready kit is only half the story. You also need to configure your PCs/Mac/NASs to let them boost their network throughput. Basically this involves enabling Jumbo Frames/Packets to each packet sent over the network contain more data in each. Hence less packet sent for any given file and less overhead for each = less time spent. As I understand it at least. Windows On Windows, open the properties dialog for your Local Area Connection, as below: Click the [read] Keywords: admin
mac
network
properties
server
88
Upgrading My SoHo Network
Thu, Sep 22nd 2011 12:51a Jake Howlett Here's a side elevation of our house showing what my network has evolved in to (click for larger): It's been swapped and changed while I've lived here, but is now the "perfect" arrangement of gear to suit the work/life needs of myself and the family. The WAP ended up in the loft as this is the place I found it gets best coverage of the whole house. Our internal walls are brick. In the loft it only ever need to come through wooden floors to get to any room. It also cover most the garden to [read] Keywords: admin
interface
network
networking
wifi
wireless
76
Using Image Sprites To Add Icons to HTML Input Buttons
Tue, Sep 20th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett Remember way back I talked about using buttons with the same name as a Field to make accessible forms that needed no JavaScript yet knew which button a user had pressed. The HTML looks like this:
On the Form we have a field called "Action" too and we can inspect its value to find out what the user wanted to do. All works well and it's a trick I've used a few times in the six years since I first talked about it.
Yeah, and? Well, the other week I talked about making nice-looking buttons. How [read] Keywords: css
database
javascript
network
109
Not Storing Credit Card Numbers In Domino
Wed, Sep 14th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett For the past few weeks I've been adding a shopping cart to an existing Domino application. The existing system stored credit card numbers in plain text, which - as I'm sure you know - is a massive huge great no-no when it comes to being PCI DSS compliant. I'll talk more about how I implemented a gateway part of the cart another day. For now I want to discuss how I avoided, at all costs, storing the credit card number entered by the user. Normally, to stop a field being saved on the backend d [read] Keywords: agent
domino
application
database
java
javascript
server
111
Android: Google+ Style Page Swiping
Tue, Sep 13th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett The Google+ app on Android has a nice view-paging system that's becoming an increasingly-common UI feature on mobile apps: See the light grey bar about 1/3 down in the shot above? See the arrow pointing upward to "All Circles"? That's the current page. Swiping to the right will take me (leftward) to the "Nearby" page and conversely, swiping left takes me to "Incoming". Unless you've used it you won't get just how nice it feels when used. When I first saw this interface in use I immedi [read] Keywords: database
google
interface
mobile
126
The Old Way Ain't Dead Yet!
Fri, Sep 9th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett The survey from earlier this week made for an interesting result. So, only 10% of you have converted completely to XPages. And only 40% of you are doing any XPages at all. What surprised me is that 77% of you are still doing Domino dev the old way. I wasn't expecting that! Now, when I say "you" I mean merely readers of this site. I don't want to extend the results to the all Domino developers as they don't all read this site - particularly, I'd expect, the hard-code XPagers. So that 10% f [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
xpages
86
Adding The Edge To Your Button Images
Wed, Sep 7th 2011 9:40a Jake Howlett Which one of these buttons looks best? More button-like if you will? Obviously "better" is a subjective term but most would agree it's the bottom-most one? Until now, whenever I've created my own buttons using Fireworks (as described here) I've always just used a flat button, like the topmost one of the three above. Then I saw these "glossy" buttons on Fireworkslabs.com and got curious how they got them looking so buttoney: To work this out I download the (editable) PNG file from their [read] Keywords:
92
Survey: Is There a Future For Non-XPages Domino How-Tos?
Tue, Sep 6th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett I've just finished plugging an e-commerce gateway in to an existing Domino website. To do this I added some fields to a standard Domino Form and then ran a Java WQS Agent when it saved to communicate directly, server-to-server, with Authorize.net. Nothing particularly ground-breaking in what I did, but there were a few gotchas, which made it tricky. Also, for the non-Java-heads it's would be a little harder than you might expect. A couple of years ago this would have been the kind of thing I [read] Keywords: agent
domino
xpages development
java
server
110
Quick LotusScript Tip
Mon, Aug 22nd 2011 4:53a Jake Howlett For most of you Notes developers this might already be second nature. For the rest of you, you need to know about this super-handy trick. You'll wonder how you ever managed without it! Now that Domino Designer is Eclipse-based you get to use the many code-editing tools that come with all the other Eclipse-based IDEs. One of the things we can now do in DDE is control-click on object in LotusScript code and get taken to their definitions. As an example, take the OpenLog script library. It refers [read] Keywords: domino
lotusscript
notes
script library
eclipse
91
The Domino Web Form That Would Not Save
Wed, Aug 17th 2011 4:03a Jake Howlett The other week I was asked to investigate some issues with a Domino-based website of which the original developer wanted nothing more to do. First issue was that a Form was "not working". So I took a look and, sure enough, it wouldn't save documents when submitted from the browser. Pressing the "Submit" button on the form POSTed the Form to the server and a response was received - with a URL ending in "&Seq=1", just like you'd expect. I'd even used HTTPWatch to sniff the traffic to [read] Keywords: agent
domino
notes
css
database
dojo
javascript
server
88
Getting More Advanced With Android
Fri, Aug 12th 2011 4:04a Jake Howlett Yesterday I talked about getting started with Android dev. The result of that exercise was to get a working demo of the various APIs at your disposal. With the source to each demo handy you can easily go and plug the bits together to realise your end goal. The next big thing, right? As a standalone app though the ApiDemo is useless. Not only because it doesn't do anything, but mainly because it's not built like a real app and so you can't learn from it how you'd build a proper app. When I' [read] Keywords: application
eclipse
email
mac
workspace
xml
96
Getting Started With Android Development
Thu, Aug 11th 2011 4:36a Jake Howlett Best way to get started with any new platform and SDK is to dive in to some working samples. Don't you think? Samples, samples, samples! Without samples you're lost. Or at least I am. I like to learn by example. If all I had was an SDK with a brilliantly-documented API, yet no examples, I'd be completely lost. Getting Ready First things first. Before you can do any Android dev you'll need Eclipse. There are of course other ways but I'll assume you want to do it the "normal" way. Go and d [read] Keywords: development
eclipse
java
105
Decrypting RC4 Encoded Data In Java (Lotus Domino + FoxyCart)
Wed, Aug 10th 2011 4:43a Jake Howlett I've just spent a day working out how to integrate Lotus Domino and the FoxyCart payment gateway. As part of this I had to decrypt the transaction data they send back to your server as part of the payment process. Hopefully I can save somebody some time in doing this by posting what I did. First of all here's the code that does the job:String password = "YOUR_SECRET_KEY";
Cipher rc4 = Cipher.getInstance("RC4");
rc4.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE,
new SecretKeySpec(password.getBytes(), "RC4" [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ibm
lotus
archive
java
oracle
password
security
server
xml
82
One More Pointless App In The Android Market
Mon, Aug 8th 2011 6:23a Jake Howlett I present to you the game-changing app that is "Signature Saver": With this app you can create a PNG image file of your signature and share it via email or any of the other sharing services on your phone, such as Dropbox, Evernote etc. What's the point of it? Good question. I don't know really. I personally have never had cause to digitise my signature, but I can imagine others needing to. For sticking at the bottom of a Word mail-out or something. You can download the app from here if yo [read] Keywords: email
88
Mobile: A New Unit of Measurement
Fri, Jul 29th 2011 4:03a Jake Howlett If you get in to mobile development, in particular with Android, one of things you need to get used to is the variety of screen sizes out there. Not only the size of the screen, but - more importantly - the DPI or Dots Per Inch (aka "density"). If you define screen layout and font sizes in terms of exact pixels then it will look ok on one screen but not scale up or down to others with larger or smaller screens, respectively. In steps the unit of measurement known as Density-independent Pixel ( [read] Keywords: development
mobile
83
A Week (Well Spent) With Eclipse and Android
Mon, Jul 25th 2011 7:17a Jake Howlett As a follow-up to A Week (Wasted) With Titanium Studio I thought it only right that I report on my week spent doing pure Android development using Eclipse and ADT. It's similar to the version made with Titanium - minus the tabs and plus a few other bits. Looks aside, the two end results are very similar. So what sets them apart? Well, in a word, performance. Oh, and reliability. Here are both apps listed on my phone: No prize for guessing which one was built using Titanium! For apps being do [read] Keywords: development
eclipse
javascript
mobile
network
62
Dad's Find In Local Museum
Wed, Jul 20th 2011 4:01a Jake Howlett Last year I posted Dad's Mystery Archaeological Find in which I asked if anybody knew what this bit of pottery might be: Since then it's pretty much all I've heard dad prattle on about. Hopefully the whole saga will soon come to a close though, as the whole find is on show in his local museum, after which it will all be going to live at Nottingham Uni. Here's a snippet dad sent me from an article that was in their local paper: As you can see the "experts" think that what we thought migh [read] Keywords:
94
A Week (Wasted) With Titanium Studio
Tue, Jul 19th 2011 4:20a Jake Howlett Last week I thought I'd invest some time in furthering my skillset and learn to develop mobile apps for both iOS and Android using Appcelerator's Titanium Studio. My long-term plan is to get in to the mobile app-making market. To start down this path I need to be able to show that I've made some apps. So, I thought I'd make one and get it on the markets for free download. Then I can at least prove I know what I'm doing. Titanium Studio seems the obvious choice for this task, as: You can ta [read] Keywords: eclipse
java
javascript
mobile
136
Slanted Menu Items
Mon, Jul 11th 2011 4:43a Jake Howlett On Friday I set a "challenge" to come up with the following navigation bar using CSS. I think I might have over-sold what I'm about to describe as being some amazingly-clever trick using the latest in CSS3 techniques. That it ain't. All I've done is use some lateral thinking. You can see a working example of the menu here. In the example notice how the items "blend" in to each other when you hover over the menu items next to the already selected item. This was the challenge and where the [read] Keywords: css
59
Proud Moments
Mon, Jul 11th 2011 4:04a Jake Howlett On Saturday morning I took Minnie to ballet class for the first time. She was a bit hesitant at first but joined in with the other girls after a while. I watched her from afar and had one of the lump-in-throat moments you get as a parent. Later on the same day we went in to town to get Felix his first school uniform for when he starts in September (another tear-inducing time in life). While in town we passed a make-shift running track in Slab Square (something to do with the Olympics next year) [read] Keywords:
79
Friday CSS Challenge
Fri, Jul 8th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett This week I had to realise a designer's vision of having slanted menu items in a standard navigation bar. A bit like this: The menu items can be of any width and they need to show the diamond when hovering over the unselected ones. At first I though it was easy enough. Then I thought some more and decided it was "impossible". Then I thought even more and came up with a hack that worked. How would you do it though? If you fancy the challenge you've got until Monday when I'll show how I did [read] Keywords: css
89
Finally, the Perfect Desk?
Wed, Jul 6th 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett Last night I dropped the family off at my parents' house in Mansfield and went over to the PC World Megastore they have there now. Got to say I'm impressed. I've never liked PC World but the store is geek heaven. I could easily have spent an hour or more just mincing around playing with all the kit. I was there in search of a wireless keyboard. I left empty-handed as none of them had a decent quality feel to them. As it happens I like the keyboard I have (a Lenovo), so I decided to make it " [read] Keywords: mac
twitter
wireless
82
The Best Thing Lotus Ever Made
Mon, Jul 4th 2011 5:00a Jake Howlett Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. Here's me stood next to my favourite car - the Lotus Esprit, as driven by my favourite of the Bonds - Roger Moore. The photo was taken yesterday at Waddington Air Show where I took Felix for a boys day out. He wasn't nearly as impressed by the USAF's Thunderbirds or the Vulcan as I was. In fact he seemed completely unimpressed by everything but the hook-a-duck stand at the fair. Kids! The day out came at the end of our family holiday and my annual week off, [read] Keywords: lotus
wiki
125
Yahoo Query Language
Wed, Jun 22nd 2011 4:10a Jake Howlett Not sure how YQL (Yahoo Query Language) has escaped my attention for so long, as it seems so useful. YQL lets you query any of the Yahoo's APIs using a SQL-like syntax. For me this came in handy when I wanted to create a simple stock-tracking mobile app. In JavaScript I could get the stock quote for Google's stock as JSON, like so:function getStock(symbol){
var YQL="select * from yahoo.finance.quotes where symbol ='"+symbol+"'";
var URL="http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=" [read] Keywords: ajax
google
javascript
mobile
sql
64
The Never-Ending Quest For the Perfect Desk - Update
Mon, Jun 20th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett I've talked before about how I'm continually trying to arrive at the perfect desk setup. For the last year or so nothing has changed in my setup. But I've started thinking about it again now. I want de-clutter. Last week I bought a wireless Apple keyboard and Magic Trackpad, as you can see below. This has removed a few wires and saves some valuable space, compared to my desk before. But it also highlights what a mess the rest of my desk is. The Magic Trackpad, by the way, is a really nice [read] Keywords: apple
laptop
mac
macbook
vm
wireless
109
Sending Push Notifications To Your Mobile App Users
Thu, Jun 16th 2011 4:01a Jake Howlett Late last night I came in from the office and gave Karen the iPad. I then sat down with my laptop, and sent her a message, like below. Proud as punch, I was! Her response? "Stop dicking about it's the climax of Miss Marple!" Seriously, what do you have to do to impress a woman nowadays. Did she not realise it took me two hours of "dicking about" with SSL certificates, Provisioning Profiles, secret keys and the like to get that to work! Notice in the image above there's an app (row 2 col [read] Keywords: apple
application
blackberry
google
iphone
laptop
mac
mobile
office
profile
twitter
wiki
130
Money Saving Expert
Wed, Jun 15th 2011 7:23a Jake Howlett As part of our on-going cost-cutting exercise chez Howlett the latest cut (not literally) is our phone line. Getting rid of the BT line will save us about £90 a quarter. At the same time I've moved all our mobile contracts from Vodafone to Tesco Mobile. Tesco are doing a SIM-only package with 500mins, 5000texts and 500MB for a tenner a month at the moment! Tesco's mobile network runs on O2's network and, so far, we noticed an improvement in general service and reception strength. Al [read] Keywords: mobile
network
office
45
Making The Most of Smart Phones
Mon, Jun 13th 2011 4:03a Jake Howlett While my old HTC Hero was probably considered a "smart phone", it never really felt like one and only ever got used for email and phone. Now that I own a true smartphone (Galaxy S2) I want to force myself in to the habit of making the most of it. It doesn't matter how many great apps and services you have installed on a phone, unless you get in to the habit of using them they're pointless. As a case in point, take Evernote. It's a brilliant idea - create and sync notes between all your devi [read] Keywords: notes
desktop
email
google
widget
widgets
wifi
60
My New Phone - Galaxy S2
Fri, Jun 10th 2011 4:06a Jake Howlett Remember last month I talked about the Galaxy Tab I'd bought? It was meant to be a cheap way to aide my learning mobile development. The Android phone I had (HTC Hero) was stuck on a version of Android unsupported by Flex. Anyway, a couple of weeks in to owning the Tab I realised it was a bit daft having two tablets and a phone. Although I bought the Tab as a development tool I did end up using it day-to-day and grew to really like it, but I just couldn't justify owning an extra device. So, I [read] Keywords: apple
development
google
iphone
mobile
38
No Longer So Desperate
Thu, Jun 9th 2011 5:23a Jake Howlett Following up on last Friday's plea for help in finding work I'm happy to report things now appear a little rosier. Or at least I feel a bit better about the short-term future. I got two things out of the exercise. First of all I got a few leads. Leads are good. They don't always turn in to business (whether that's my fault or not I don't know), but they're always good to have. While leads help with the short term, the other thing I got out of it was ideas for the long-term way forward. Ini [read] Keywords: blogging
linkedin
networking
profile
93
My Son, The Lego Genius?
Wed, Jun 8th 2011 4:43a Jake Howlett Here's a couple of the Lego creations my son, Felix (4.5 years), has come up with recently. I don't know what the benchmark is for the creativity of others his age, but, to me, this seems quite advanced. Note the attention to the symmetry on the "craft" in the foreground. He can also build a Lego model from scratch using the instruction leaflets. While he gives us cause for concern in other areas (mainly his speech), it makes me feel a bit better about things when I see there's a budding [read] Keywords:
73
Desperately Seeking Work
Fri, Jun 3rd 2011 4:03a Jake Howlett Over the last couple of years, when things have gotten close to desperate I've always thought that, should things get truly desperate I could always come to you, my loyal readers, cap in hand, and get some work. Thankfully it's never come to that. Although, again, I find myself painfully close. This isn't (but kind of is) me begging for work. What I want to do is ask for advice on how to find work (rather than simply expect it handed to me on a plate, charity-like) of my own accord. I've al [read] Keywords: domino
google
linkedin
twitter
83
Why Learning Flex is Worth Your While
Wed, Jun 1st 2011 4:13a Jake Howlett Last week I talked about how learning to write ASP.NET apps in Visual Studio had paid dividends when I needed to write a Windows app. Well, the same (and more) is true of learning to create Flex apps in Flash Builder. When I started with Flex (3+ years ago) I was merely interested in being able to quickly create rich web experiences apps for my customers. Three years on and I'm so glad it's something I invested the time in. Being a competent Flex developer means I am now in the enviable posit [read] Keywords: applications
blackberry
desktop
linux
mac
mobile
72
WTF is WPF?
Tue, May 31st 2011 4:05a Jake Howlett If I said "Windows Presentation Foundation" to you, you're more likely to think WTF than WPF, right? To me, the name "Windows Presentation Foundation" says very little. Even now I know what it is, it still means nothing. When you first launch Visual C# Express and start a new Project, you see this choice of project types: Only having a vague idea what I was doing I looked through the description of each option and plumped for a Windows Forms Application as the one for me. Having looked at [read] Keywords: xpages application
applications
database
xml
74
Converting a SIM to a Micro SIM
Thu, May 26th 2011 2:10p Jake Howlett I just had a phone call with Tesco Mobile that went something like this: Me: Hi, I called about 10 minutes ago to order a SIM-only package and I forgot to mention I need a microSIM. Her: Is it for an iPhone 4? Me: Yes. Her: Ok, I'll need to cancel and refund your order and place a new order for the "iPhone package". That only comes with 250 minutes a month instead of 500 though! Me: Why? Her: Apparently the microSIMs are more expensive to produce. Me: But, even if that were true, production [read] Keywords: iphone
mobile
101
Sometimes You Have to Go Native
Thu, May 26th 2011 8:40a Jake Howlett Learning to create web applications using ASP.NET (MVC) with C# in Visual Studio and with Entity Framework has had a beneficial side effect, which I hadn't realised until this last week -- I can now easily write "native" Windows apps too! Until now I've been using Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, which only lets you create web applications. But, I have recently downloaded Visual C# Express 2010 Express with which you can create Windows Forms applications. Windows Forms apps run on top of [read] Keywords: application
applications
database
java
microsoft
server
sql
70
UKLUG Redux
Thu, May 26th 2011 4:30a Jake Howlett So, I went to UKLUG in the end. Like dad says, it was a no-brainer really: drink "free" beer with other geeks or sit alone in my office, drinking tea and changing the odd nappy - as dad so eloquently puts it. Manchester is only about 60 miles away, so, compared to most attendees, I had no excuse not to, considering the lengths others went to to get there. Am I glad I went? Yeah, I guess so. I had a nice time and it was nice to put some faces to some names and chew the fat. Did I learn anythin [read] Keywords: connections
lotus
networking
office
73
To LUG Or Not To LUG?
Thu, May 19th 2011 4:20a Jake Howlett Next week it's the UKLUG in Manchester and I'm registered to attend. Should I go though? That's what I can't decide. The reason I registered in the first place was that I made a resolution at the start of the year to network more. Work has picked up a little since those dark times, but it doesn't mean I don't still need to get out there and network. I might have work on for this month and the next, but what about next year and the year after that. Networking has never been my strong point [read] Keywords: network
networking
61
Dot-Style Photo Navigation Re-Visited
Wed, May 18th 2011 5:00a Jake Howlett Last week's post about Karen not "getting" my app design was a bit of an eye-opener. I knew I had it wrong with. Just not how wrong. Turns out almost all of you thought, like Karen, that the dot-like navigation system was in fact a star rating. Since then I noticed on BBC's iPlayer they use a similar UI pattern but that they include arrows to each side. The use of arrows was suggested by a couple of you guys last week too, so I took a stab at it. Here's the same app again: Hopefully thi [read] Keywords: development
mobile
61
Say What You See
Mon, May 16th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett I saw this on Twitter over the weekend and it took me a while to work out what it meant. How about you? I thought I'd have a go at something equally as geek for you guys. Here it is: Maybe somebody could have one done before this time next week? See you there, hopefully. [read] Keywords: twitter
72
The Arrogance Of The Designer
Fri, May 13th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett I was going to call this blog "The Stupidity of the User". The user in question being Karen, but I ran it by her first and she took offence, for some reason. She suggested I call it "The Arrogance of the Designer", which is a much more valid title. What happened was, in light of the muppets on the Apprentice making a mobile app and the show highlighting what a massive market it is I thought I'd show Karen (my business "partner", as she keeps reminding me) that I can do it too. I showed he [read] Keywords: mobile
properties
139
Apple-Style Dot-Based Scroll Indicators in Flex
Thu, May 12th 2011 4:00a Jake Howlett What do you call those rows of dots you see on tablet-based apps nowadays? The ones that let you know your looking at number 2 of 6 of something. Like these: If you've not used an iPad and can't work out what they mean, then it simply says you're looking at screen 2 of 6. There's a screen of icons to the left and four more to the right. As you swipe between each screen/desktop the white dot moves along with you. It's a brilliantly simple little indicator that works really well. So well tha [read] Keywords: apple
desktop
mobile
properties
59
Android A Go-Go
Wed, May 11th 2011 5:10a Jake Howlett The Galaxy Tab I mentioned I'd bought yesterday arrived this morning and - after an hour or two of faffing about - I managed to get Flash Builder setup to run projects on it. Here you can see the demo Expense tracker app: Next I'll be having a go at making my own apps. Not only for Android but also for iOS once the updated happens in June. I'll share anything interesting I find along the way. All I need now is a customer to actually ask me to make a mobile app. At least now I'm ready, if an [read] Keywords: application
mobile
61
More on Flex For Mobile
Tue, May 10th 2011 4:40a Jake Howlett Last week I blogged "A New Future For Flex?" in which I said that when Flex 4.5 support for iOS development come in June it will probably work by porting your ActionScript to native iOS code. I was wrong. Flex will work on all the mobile platforms it supports (Android v2.2+, iOS and Blackberry Playbook) by virtue of the AIR runtime. In fact, with Flash Builder 4.5, you can already create ActionScript Mobile Projects to run on iOS (iPhone, iPod and iPad). Coming in June is a new release of AIR [read] Keywords: application
blackberry
development
iphone
ipod
linux
mac
mobile
twitter
92
A New Future For Flex?
Thu, May 5th 2011 4:03a Jake Howlett My love for Flex waned a little over the last year or so. In fact I must have gone a year or more without using it at all. It's only recently I've started using it again. This happens to coincide with some exciting news about future directions for Flex as version 4.5 is released. Part of the reason it's fallen out of favour with me is the rise of the mobile device. In particular the iPad. The trouble with suggesting Flex apps as solutions to customers is that you then have to be able to expla [read] Keywords: apple
applications
blackberry
desktop
javascript
mobile
2011-11-28 07:58:36 Failed to fetch http://www.codestore.info/store.nsf/rss.xml. (HTTP Response: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
). 
