Lord Lotus Blog

Configuring a Notes date field for use with the Dojo date picker

Mike Sobczak — Fri, 5 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Credit goes to Michelle O'Rorke. She had blogged about how to do this, but it didn't sink in for me the first time around. You need to change the field display settings so that Domino will render the date into international format ("yyyy-mm-dd"). When the Dojo control processes the value in the field, it will format the date into the format using the i18n settings it detects in your browser.

When you submit the form, Domino will be able to process the date because of the display settings for the field. The only other thing to do is add a computed for display field that will display the date normally ("mm/dd/yyyy" for us Yanks) when a document is being read. Here's a picture of how to do the date field settings:

Use JavaScript control and dojo widgets: plot thickens

Mike Sobczak — Fri, 5 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I did some testing and narrowed down what is happening. When you select the new Use JavaScript Control Display setting for a rich text field, Domino automatically adds dojo includes to your HTML Header. Domino's code is in blue. The code I'm adding via my own $$HTMLHead field is in green:

My guess is the dojo.registerModulePath() function is cancelling out the dojo stuff I include. I tried to register the dojo stuff again using the following, to no avail:

I found some more info on registerModulePath() here and here, but I admit I have no clue on what I'm doing. I need to submit a PMR on this.

(I converted the HTML/Javascript using this utility.)

Gah! org.eclipse.swt.SWTException

Mike Sobczak — Fri, 5 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Am I the only unlucky soul who's getting this error after working with the Domino Designer for Eclipse for extended periods of time:

Adding bullets to paragraph styles in Lotusscript

Mike Sobczak — Wed, 3 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I can't believe that in 2009, with version 8.5, we still can't programmatically add bullets to a Rich Text Field!

I know, Genii has a solution for this. But how hard can it be to add simple bullet capability to the NotesRichTextParagraphStyle object? We can apply fonts to the NotesRichTextStyle objects, after all, as well as bold, underline, strikethrough, colors, ...

More fun with Dojo: "Using JavaScript control" nullifies other Dojo components

Mike Sobczak — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I've been including dojo components in my Domino form using the following $$HTMLHead field:

However, when I change a Rich Text field to use the new "Using JavaScript control" setting, the dojo rich text area appears, but none of my other dojo controls (FilteringSelect, ComboBox, TextArea, etc.) will load. Nice...

Question on dojo date picker

Mike Sobczak — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I've been having a fun time trying to get the dojo date picker to work. I'm using dojo 1.1.1 that ships with Domino 8.5.

It seems that the dijit.form.DateTextBox widget won't load a date value that already exists in the document if its not in the format dojo is expecting, which is "yyyy-mm-dd". I tried reformatting the date in the "HTML Attributes" event for the field, but the date is still cleared out by the widget:

date := SurveyDate;
year := @Text ( @Year ( date ) );

month := @Text ( @Month ( date ) );
@If ( @Length ( month ) < 2; month := "0" + month; "" );

day := @Text ( @Day ( date ) );
@If ( @Length ( day ) < 2; day := "0" + day; "" );

"dojoType=\"dijit.form.DateTextBox\" value=\"" + year + "-" + month + "-" + day + "\""

The Dojomino dojomino.dijit.form.DateTextBox widget solves this problem, but the load time for Dojomino far from optimal.

Is there a way I can solve this problem using dojo 1.1.1? Or this problem been resolved with a later version of dojo? Or is there a way I can just load the one Dojomino widget I need?

Domino apps on the iPhone

Mike Sobczak — Wed, 8 Apr 2009 17:49:20 -0400

I had a good day helping a client iPhone-enable the custom Domino login form, as well as their Home page.

Interestingly enough, displaying a frameset in the iPhone overrides whatever you do in terms of controlling the display width of an initial form or page. Fortunately, I remembered the old trick of using $$NavigatorTemplate to display an initial form in a Domino application without using a frameset.

One thing I tried to do is find a good emulator for the iPhone. Apple offers an iPhone SDK, a 1.5 gig beast of a download, but its only for Mac OS. (It's a .SMI file). Anyone out there know of a good iPhone emulator?

Dual DominoFests!

Mike Sobczak — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:50:55 -0400

Yes, the Detroit Notes Professionals are insane!

There will be two DominoFests in April:

April 7, Teamstudio webinar: Web-Enabling Lotus Notes Applications
April 21, Lotus Notes / Domino 8.5 Deep Dive (to be held at the IBM Building in Southfield, MI)

To register, simply go to the Detroit Notes Professionals website.

See you there!

The case of the missing Search toolbar button

Mike Sobczak — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

One client I'm working with currently has a few users who are road-testing the Notes 8 Standard client before it is rolled-out throughout the company. One of the users mentioned to me that the Search button is missing from the View toolbar. This button is still there in the Notes 6 and Notes 7 clients:

However, the same button is not available in the Notes 8 Standard client:

Even more interesting is that the button is still visible in the Toolbar Preferences dialog:

Well, it turns out that the user now needs to enable the new Search toolbar for Notes 8 Standard:

I'm guessing that the Search toolbar button is still in the preferences for Notes 8 Basic users.

Another change the user mentioned is how unread mail messages now appear in black bold typeface instead of being "red".

Since Notes 8 has been available since August 2007 (over 1 & 1/2 years), I'm sure that these items are common knowledge to everyone reading this. I guess my reason for bringing this up is that the user in question (and the company he works for) has been using Notes since version 4.0. I can see a lot of initial confusion when people are migrated to the new client. In Notes' defense, this UI confusion won't be any different than switching to the new Vista interface or the Office 2007 "ribbon".

Just out of curiosity, has anyone seen a document that compares the Notes 7 (and prior) UI with the Notes 8 (and 8.5) UI? I'm thinking of something that has screen shots akin to before and after photos...

View InViewEdit event still essentially worthless

Mike Sobczak — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I've been working on a view that allows in view editing of one column that displays the Subject field. I added validation to the InViewEdit event to ensure that the Subject column value entered isn't blank (or empty) before the change is saved to the document. My code prompts the user to enter the missing value:

After which the view displays the following error:

There is a work around on LDD that does prevent the "Error validating" message from appearing, but the column being edited loses focus. I just tested this in 8.0.2 and the client still works this way. Sigh. I guess some things never change. At least I remembered why I never bother with in view editing.