Lotus Domino Designer 6 Overview

Maureen Leland Software ArchitectIBM Lotus

Agenda

Design environment improvements New design elements - style sheets, file resources, data connection resources

New elements for page construction - layers, new field types View enhancements Design and runtime OLE control enhancements Enhanced programmability

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Quick Access

User Interface

Drag and Drop

Bookmarks Folders

Custom folders to hold the elements you choose

Design Element Folders

Currently working with the DB's views

Quickly access any Form

Quick Scroll Access to Design Elements

Design Element Views

More Information is displayed Columns are sortable for all design elements (Added to Agents) Edit properties for multiple design elements

New View for Shared Actions

See more information about your shared actions Multiple editing sessions

Affect styling in both the Notes client and Web clients Allow you to separate form from content Style sheets can be shared across databases Maintained and specified, but not created in Designer

Cascading Style Sheets

File Resources

Allow storage of any object in an nsf HTML files can be included on a form or a page Remember pass-through html now renders in the Notes client! Managed and selected in just the same way as style sheets

Integrate relational data directly into the application Design-time integration Browsing of metadata Associate form fields with relational data

Data Connection Resources

Layers

Easier, more precise placement of design elements Use for:

– Grouping design elements– Absolute positioning– Overlapping contents

Can be created in a Page, a Form or a Subform

See Welcome Pages in bookmark.nsf for examples

Embedded Editors

Create or view multiple documents from within a form Preview documents selected from an embedded view

Allows for Advanced application designs

such as those for the Welcome Pages

Embedded View Enhancements

Multiple views on a single page Show action bars Show selection margin Show discussion threading Show column headers Transparent background

Color Fields

A color field lets you display a color picker on a form. The chosen color is stored in hexidecimal format.

– For example, red is stored as 000000FF.

Rich Text Lite Fields

Provides users with a fast way to add object into a field. When the user clicks the helper icon, a dialog box appears which corresponds to the chosen element type.

The elements listed in the drop-down menu are the only elements the user is allowed to insert into the rich text lite field.

Possible elements:– Pictures– Shared Images– Attachments– Views– Date Picker– Shared Applets– Text– Ole Objects– Calendar– Inbox

– Help– Clear

Control all options for Tab Labels

Size Tabs Equally

Indent First Tab

Table Enhancements

Column Colors dfds

New display options in Standard Views

Background Images Background Grids Don't Show Empty Categories View Margins Column Total Colors Customize "Twisties" with your own icons Multiple column icons Many new date/time format options

Hide-when Columns

Use a hide-when formula to display a subset of documents Based on conditions in place when the view first displays For example, to hide documents from a particular user, click the Advanced tab on the Column Properties box, check "Hide column if formula is true," and enter formula: @If(@Name([CN];@Username) = "John Smith")

User Customizable Views

Programmers no longer have to tweak the view design, satisfying all users with one design

End users can change order and visibility of all the view columns

Property sheet interface Alphabetical or categorized property views Control properties and values exposed in property sheet

Design Environment for OLE Objects

Other OLE-Related Changes

In R5, dragging an object always created an object In 6, it now creates an attachment by default If you want to choose the format, right-click drag Attachments can be edited in place

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AutoComplete for @Functions and @Commands

Completes code as you type Shows parameter help

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AutoComplete for Lotuscript

Convert Notes Design to HTML and vice versa

The Event Model

Designer 6 distinguishes between the application of events to the Notes client and Web browser.

You code one JavaScript or LotusScript event for the Notes client and a separate JavaScript event for the Web browser.

Remote Agent Debugger

You can use the remote debugger to step through and debug LotusScript agents running on the server

The agent you want to debug must be running at the time that you start the remote debugging tool

Three Steps Involved:– 1. Enable remote debugging on the server– 2. Enable remote debugging in the agent– 3. Start the remote debugger

New @Formula Features

Looping Using braces to delimit a remark: REM {comments} Specify a text constant by enclosing characters in braces ({})

Example: Enter "Hello World" as {"Hello World"} instead of "\"Hello World\"" List subscript operator to return an element of a list

Example: To return element 2 of the Categories field: Categories[2] Variables can be assigned new values as a formula progresses

Example reassign "n" in a @While loop...n := 1;@While(n <= @Elements(Categories); @Prompt([OK]; "Category " + @Text(n); Categories[n]);n := n + 1)

Nesting assignment statementsExample: FIELD CityUpper := @UpperCase(FIELD City := "London" )

New and improved @Functions - @while and many more!

Print Source Code

This print dialog box lets you print source code from within the Programmer's pane

For formulas, simple actions, LotusScript, JavaScript, and Java (but not imported Java files)

Source...Current selectionCurrent object

Languages...All objectsCurrent languageAll languages

Thank you for watching!!!

QUESTIONS?

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Thank you! You can send additional questions to Maureen Leland via editor@searchdomino.com.