The March 2008 Blog
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LotusScript CodeLock (Monday, Mar 31)
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I've used LotusScript code locking exactly once before in my life, I think, and that time I'm not sure if I actually ended up using it in production or I ditched it before I was done playing. For reference, here's a class I dug up that makes code locking take a few less lines of code:

Anyway, I found a technote that said there was a CodeLock server crash condition fixed in 6.5.5 and 7.0.1, but there wasn't much else on it. Does anyone have any warnings or caveats to offer before I use this function? It may be necessary in the very specific case I'm dealing with.

Web of Deception: Chapter 2 (Tuesday, Mar 18)
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If you haven't been keeping up, Ben Langhinrichs proposed a fun little writing challenge where several people join together to write a story, one person per chapter. Chapter 1 is on Ben's site, and I just finished the second chapter here:

I gave it its own page because it was easier to read that way. Rob McDonagh has been tagged for the next chapter, and you can always follow the story at the Web Of Deception RSS feed.

I Park Like An Idiot (dot com) (Wednesday, Mar 12)
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I heard about this site on the radio this afternoon:

I Park Like An Idiot Bumper Sticker

The concept is (so I'm told) that whenever you see someone parked very horribly in a parking lot -- a large, shiny pickup truck double-parked across two handicapped spaces was the example that was used -- you're supposed to pull a handful of I Park Like An Idiot bumper stickers out of your glove box and plaster them all over the offending vehicle.

If you're lucky, the owner of said pickup truck won't see you do it, beat you senseless, and plaster "I Just Got My Ass Whooped" stickers all over your broken body.

Around here, the main offenders seem to be handicapped spaces occupied by brand new BMW's and Mercedes, driven by people who don't have handicapped stickers and don't appear to have any physical handicap. Perhaps the handicap is a condition where they feel compelled to spend over $50,000 on an automobile and park in handicapped spaces... I dunno.

Screenshots of Database Using Java Views (Tuesday, Mar 4)
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In the coming months, I'll be doing several Notes 8-specific sessions at the Lotus Developer 2008 conference in Boston and the Lotus Notes and Domino 8 Development Seminars (in various cities). Come by and say "Hi!".

It's actually been very interesting putting together the sessions for Notes 8, because (A) I have to keep digging deeper and deeper into the technology to see what's going on, and (B) there were a lot of little changes between Notes 8.0 and 8.0.1. The last two weeks have had me going back through all the slides and demos to make updates for the 8.0.1 release.

One of my demo apps was pretty fun to put together. It's the session on "Deconstructing the Mail Template", where I go through a lot of the interesting UI features of the Mail and Contacts databases and show how to implement them in your own application. Many of these things require "Java Views" (a.k.a. Eclipse-based UI features), which are currently unsupported for custom applications but are useable thanks to some research by Stephan Wissel. Here are some screenshots of the demo -- you'll recognize many of the features from Mail and Contacts:

Filter view by letter
Tabbed navigation lets you filter by letter.

Java view preview options
Side preview option and business card view.

Preview on the side

Business card view

Split action buttons
Split action buttons with a default action.

Wrap-around text
Wrap-around text in views, and hover text on view icons.

To see how it all works, you'll need to go to one of the conferences though. Or you can figure it out from publicly available information -- like Stephan's article and the Reviewer's Guide, and the very fact that the database design of the Mail and Contact databases is open -- but it's a lot more fun if you come to a conference.
;-)