Falling Dominos » programming

Notes with Internet Explorer

Tom ONeil — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:26:50 +0000

I had a frustrating problem this week.

I converted a Lotus Notes application to a Domino/Web application. Testing went well for a while but then I had an interesting complaint.

The user was using Microsoft Internet Explorer within their Notes client. Granted… I’ve always thought that a browser “inside” of your email client was a bad idea… but I had to live with it as a developer.

I digress…

The user was using IE within his Notes Client. My application has a few modal dialog boxes. One of those boxes was used for text entry. The user’s complaint was that they could not navigate to their email (or other Notes databases) with the dialog box open.

At first I couldn’t believe it. “Notes with Internet Explorer” is a dumb idea but would a dialog box really freeze up the entire Lotus Notes application? Yes. I would have figured that just the tab would freeze (I can’t confirm what happens in R8.0.x).

What can I do? I can’t stop using dialog boxes just because of these few users. I wondered if I could do some sort of Ajax/DHTML dialog box that “pretends” to be modal.

My initial response to the user was that we program our applications for Internet Explorer (company standard) and they we don’t program for IE inside of the Lotus Notes client.

My response (at first) was rejected… we’ll see where negotiations go.

Lotus RSS Advertising

Tom ONeil — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:36:10 +0000

I just about fell of my chair. A Lotus Domino ad. A real Lotus Notes/Domino ad… in Boing Boing’s RSS Feed.

I like it. I am not sure that Boing Boing is an appropriate feed to place ads. They tend to have some NSFW content. But hey… I hope it works.

Busy vs Productive

Tom ONeil — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:59:51 +0000

Brad Bollenbach at 30Sleeps has written a great comparison of busy people vs productive people.

A few of my favorites:

Busy	Productive
Rolls their own	Uses someone else’s
Sees the toolchain as a competitive advantage	Sees the user-kickassness as a competitive advantage
Writes a detailed specification	Implements a prototype

Prevent Excel from Manipulating Exported Numbers

Tom ONeil — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:47:46 +0000

I ran into a small frustration exporting number data to Microsoft Excel using HTML. My Account Numbers were being translated into exponential numbers. I needed these numbers to show as text (without formatting).

This site gave a great tip on how to format those numbers to show correctly. In my instance… I set the style of my cell to mso-number-format:\@.

But, we’ll make a bit a bit of exception in this case, to adopt a Microsoft-specific style attribute. Actually, the output is still HTML 4.0 compliant; it just isn’t standard CSS. No problem; doesn’t mess up other browsers, and it’s just a hint for the Internet Explorer “Export to Excel” option anyway. At least Microsoft chose to do this the “right” way — formatting hints are declared as style sheet directives, thus cleanly separating data from formatting. Nice.

The solution? The mso-number-format style attribute, to be put on table cells ( ). Several number formats are available. These are some of the more common:

mso-number-format:\@

text

mso-number-format:”0\.000″

3 decimals

mso-number-format:\#\,\#\#0\.000

comma separators (and 3 decimals)

mso-number-format:”mm\/dd\/yy”

Date format

mso-number-format:”d\\-mmm\\-yyyy”

another date format

mso-number-format:Percent

percent

Gridlines for Printing Excel from a Web Agent

Tom ONeil — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:19:32 +0000

Have you ever noticed that Microsoft Excel content printed from a Web Agent usually doesn’t have gridlines. You can put borders around your data by adding border=1 (or whatever) but it still doesn’t show the default gridlines.

The is the only way I have found to add gridlines is by adding some Microsoft XML settings in the header. I found the code on one of those “Expert Exchange” forums but it’s almost impossible to link to it without paying the fee.

Here is the code. I return the full header in a string. You really only need to pay attention to what is between the tags.

    Public Function getHeader() As String
        getHeader=  |Content-Type:application/vnd.ms-excel| & Chr(13) & Chr(10)
        getHeader = getHeader &  |Content-Disposition: attachment; filename= | &"D" & Cstr(Right(Rnd(),4)) & |.xls| &Chr(13) & Chr(10)
        getHeader = getHeader  &   "<html xmlns:x=""urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"">"
        getHeader = getHeader  &   "<head>"
        getHeader = getHeader  &   " "
        getHeader = getHeader  &   "head>"
    End Function

Yes… I know Julian has a great StringBuffer class. I will use it at some point.

I Protest!: Why (almost) every Web site needs an RDBMS

Tom ONeil — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:28:52 +0000

Leave it to IBM to publish an article that totally disregards one of their own products.

Nobody is going to argue with the author (David Mertz) about the necessity of a database for content management of a Web site. My argument is that while Lotus Notes is not an relational database… it has powered many (in my lifetime I have probably seen 1,000+ applications) web sites with ease. It’s unfair to leave this essential non-relational database out of the article.

I also have one more issue. I can’t quite figure out who the intended audience is. If it is written for developers who regularly read articles at developerWorks, I think the issue is almost moot. Are there really developers out there who don’t value a database backend for web sites? We’re the guys blogging with MySQL and Lotus Notes backends.

If the database is written for the users out there with non-RDBMS web sites, then the article is far too technical. The acronym ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) would never be used to help sell a database backend to a user.

Here’s why I think a database is an important piece for web sites:

Ease of Maintenance – You can build admin tools to maintain a sites contents, links, and styles
Security – Users and roles can be maintained to prevent unwanted changes to your site
Portablity – Need to change your front end system from PHP to Ruby? No problem. All of your content is safe.
Data Transformation – Need RSS? No Problem… we’ll dump your data into RSS XML files. Need your site to be viewed by mobile phones? No problem. (I actually worked at a site that claimed it was high tech but their vast intranet wasn’t a Content Management System. It was a mess.)

A database backend is important… just don’t forget Lotus Notes!

Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns

Tom ONeil — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:00:34 +0000

I stumbled upon Jonathan Snook’s review of Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns by Michael Bowers. From Jonathan’s review (and the 5 stars from Amazon) it looks like it would be a great book to help make better Domino web sites.

My favorite tool for web design is the Visibone (laminated) reference book I bought a couple of years ago but I think Michael Bower’s book will be a great compliment and I can’t wait for it to arrive.

Amazon S3 WSDL Issue

Tom ONeil — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:59:38 +0000

Thanks to this thread I fixed an issue I was having with my Amazon S3 Web Service script library.

If you’re playing around with the Amazon S3 Web Services in the script libraries: Remove the “Credential” parameter from all Service.Invoke calls.

Set GetBucketLoggingStatus = Service.Invoke("GetBucketLoggingStatus", Bucket, AWSAccessKeyId, Timestamp, Signature, Credential)

I apologize for blaming Lotus Domino for the fault

Web Service Debugging in Domino 8

Tom ONeil — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:58:59 +0000

Web Service debugging in Domino 8 is worthless. If a service fails, I get a generic error back from Domino:

If you are debugging the service… you would hope that a Fault Object would be populated but it is not:

My frustration lies within the fact that the values I am sending to the web service are correct. I have verified them in the AWS Scratchpad.

Domino… why are you failing me?

My Hidden Lotusphere Agenda

Tom ONeil — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:23:19 +0000

I will be attending my first Lotusphere this year. It was quite a surprise because our development team hasn’t sent anyone for over four years.

My manager has approved of the sessions that I signed up for but we agreed on a “hidden agenda.” There are a couple of things I want to try and learn how to do while I’m at Lotusphere. I’m hoping I can find other developers/administrators who have solved the same problems or a third-party vendor who can help.

Here are the issues I will be looking to solve:

Get CoreID working with the Domino 8 web servers
Find a better way to do TIBCO integration with Domino. We currently are using ASP.NET dll’s on our server to do TIBCO integration
Learn more about peoples experience with mixed (Domino 8 servers and Domino 6.5 clients) environments