I used to feel some sort of loss when after participating in forums for quite a time, the community ends up with that mediocre scene which makes the more sensible ones leave the venue. This is especially true when the stay there proved worthwhile for quite sometime that when new members injected into the community, the older ones tend to get irked when a number of the new comers utterly disregard consideration put forth to make the community conducive for everyone. And when such points come across flamewars the exchange just adds up to the divide among the netizens.

As for me, I spend a great deal of time getting to know the ropes of a “cool” community before having it put up with me. To me it seems only fair that an aspirant try to fit in first before actually doing anything there. After all it was those older people who molded the community into that “cool” site that made you want to stay. It’s just sensible to take the time if the group’s for you if bending towards anyone’s not exactly your cup of tea.

It seems apathetic of me but I guess the influx of stupidity doesn’t spare even online communities. Call it one more attribute of the internet that makes it similar to the universe, (where stupidity outweighs sensibility.) So to cap off a trio of Lotus Notes/Domino-related development entries, this post goes on to poke fun at two posts related to the presence of such unsympathetic and inconsiderate newbies from the Notes.Net forums: one from the 4 and 5 forum and the other from the 6 and 7 forum. Non-Notes-adept people may want to proceed to the second subheading though as it doesn’t need you to know about Lotus Notes for you to capture the humor started off by the original poster there.

Anyone There?

That same sort of loss is apparently what Ben Poole had in mind as he featured this Notes.Net post. In a rant post unusually posted in the technical forum, Randy Rhoades aired his frustration on the quality and horrible volume of a lot of posts in Notes.Net recently. Gotta love that title too:

Are there any real Notes developers left? – RANT!

Is it just me or is this forum beginning to become a place for new-bees to learn Lotus Notes? Some of the questions in here lately can all be answered by reading either the notes client or designer help file – gee, there is a novel idea.

It makes me not want to visit this forum anymore since the questions are not really challenging (not tooting my own horn – like I said, a lot of these things are in the help file). Its just getting more difficult to sift through the “give me free lotus notes consulting” questions.

It’s never been ages that I’ve wielded my Lotus Notes/Domino expertise like these guys but I definitely know what they’re talking about. Some people just don’t take the time to think and try out things themselves anymore. I used to take time to help some guys there but the growing number of posts about things that could easily be resolved with the aid of the Help file or a simple forum search suggests that the influx of idiots hasn’t spared that forum.

And talk about an exciting follow-up, this guy really knew how to make a point in that discussion:

Hi
i have i changing question for u ….

please help me how to set session expire in my own web appliction …
i.e if user becomes idel for 30 minute session should expired
and he have to login agin same as our web mail……

LOL…

Another One Bites The Dust!

Of course an extreme form of utter retardedness in the Notes/Domino forums is to disregard forum etiquette and sensibilities altogether and make use of terrible english enough to make even the most patient altruist make a run for their money. Here’s a perfect example not only because of the downright rudeness of the specimen but because it tells of a time when big time experts of the technology knew how to have fun. Excellent title again btw:

OPEN CHALLENGE FOR EVERY LOTUS PROFESSIONALS,CLP’s?

HI EveryBody,

This is an Open Challenge for every one who has cleared CLP or working in Lotus Or who ever so called lotus professionals.

My Problem is i have an combo box and a Embedded View In a form.Now i am displaying documents based on combobox Value selection.For this i am using Single Category(i,e IN a Single Catgeory selection option in a Embedded view i have specified the ComboBox Field Name).This works Fine.But now i need to display 10 documents in one page and another 10 documents in next page and so on.So i have placed Next And previous button to navigate forward and Backward.

So when i select the Combo box value it displays 10 documents fine.But when i click on Next Button it takes to next page and display as No Documents Found though there are documents in a view realting to that value.I can prove this as really bug in Lotus Software .By this it proves that lotus software is of no use to work and it must be thrown to DustBin and not even to recycle bin.

This Bugs the developer a lot.

Now if anyone can prove that this probelm can be solved can u come out with the solution.I think there are many CLP’s & PCLP’s in lotus notes.They are of no use if they don’t solve these problem and its a utterly waste of there certification if they don’t solve these problem.

Good Luck For Everyone if they r trying otherwise better throw this software.

I HOPE THERE ARE MANY SO CALLED CLP”S WHO CAN TRY THIS.AND IF ANYONE FOUND THE SOLN PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

The forum poster makes your average retarded poster look so pro so if you’re having a rough and tough Monday, I suggest you read that one for a good laugh. You don’t even have to be a Notes/Domino developer to get what the “so called CLP’s” are talking about. (Common sense’s a prerequisite though.) :))

Just remedied a recurring eyesore with a Lotus Notes database I’m working on. The culprit: displaying the form left-aligned when it is first displayed. More to the point, contents of the form are aligned 1″ from the left by default. What if the contents are aligned less than 0.75″ from the left, (the left edge of the screen’s orientation when the form is displayed is originally at 0.75″?) This problem is usually encountered when forms are designed to be printer-friendly, just as in my case.

The amount of similar posts in Notes.Net and the amount of time it took me to get something working for me just shows how much something seemingly simple can get so seemingly hopeless and absolutely frustrating in Notes development.

Nevertheless I found the workaround for me. Thanks to Larry E. Gearing for taking the time to post something comprehensive for all other developers lost at Notes.Net, I got around the hassle and was able to proceed elsewhere. His proposed workaround is to make use of keybd_event native to MS.

Here’s the content of Larry’s response:

(Revised 2004/03/09, still learning)
There are many ways to open a document. Most of the suggestions under this topic worked in some but not all cases. Most failed when a document in a view is right mouse clicked and “edit” is selected from the drop down.

My biggest obstacle was the I had a field with the “Give field initial (default) focus” option checked. When I opened my form in edit mode, Ctrl+Home would not move focus off that field. I guess this is a reason to avoid the initial focus option!

What I am using now is

(1) first line of form is a blank line with text property set to left margin 0″ absolute and “hide when printed”. This will force the form to the left when opened in read mode and not cause a problem when the form is printed.

(2) to force the form to the left when opened in edit mode I added

– to Global declarations: Declare Sub keybd_event Lib “user32.dll” (Byval bVk As Integer, Byval bScan As Integer, Byval dwFlags As Integer, Byval dwExtraInfo As Integer)

– to Post Open

‘force to left
Source.HorzScrollBar=True
Source.HorzScrollBar=False
Source.HorzScrollBar=True ‘leave it on
‘keybd_event declared in Globals
‘Ctrl&Home
keybd_event &H11,0,0,0 ‘ Ctrl on
keybd_event &H24,0,0,0 ‘ Home
keybd_event &H24,0,2,0 ‘ Home off
keybd_event &H11,0,2,0 ‘ Ctrl off

This seems to be working, 2004/03/09

Same here man! Way to go!

One common suck-up Notes developers experience early on in their careers is the loss of documents because of erroneous Readers fields. Readers and Authors fields in particular are very tricky and a lot of new developers experience hassles in addition to the one above.

Good thing Andre Guirard took time to come up with The Complete Reader and Author Field Troubleshooter Guide in the Notes 4 and 5 developerWorks forum. The same useful and comprehensive guide can be found in the forum’s FAQ so it wouldn’t be hard to get to the material when you’re already starting to pull your hair because of Readers and Authors field gripes.

I’ve been working with Notes and Domino for more than 4 years now. I’ve worked with R5, 6, 6.5 and 7 and in the course of going around with the Lotus technology, I’ve encountered some things from different Notes and Domino experts elsewhere.

One common limitation in starting out with Domino web development is the lack of the Calendar control functionality for date fields. Sure this has been done by the Domino Web Development lot long ago but it still pays to maintain a link of pertinent resources for it. I encountered the need for the said solution and I just realized how much of a waste looking for something I have implemented more than 2 times already has become because more and more people are not bothering to take their time searching the Notes/Domino 4.5 and 5 Forum.

So half an hour into the search, (including the 6 and 7 Notes and Domino forum that is,) I encountered this forum post to which Notes-legend Stan Rogers’ response included this Projectdx resource. Another big name in the Notes/Domino arena, Jack Ratcliff, had this to say but the resource he linked to seems unavailable already.

Speaking of the quality of Notes and Domino forum posts, Ben Poole has this recent post he calls the Best Forum Post in Ages.

The Lotus Developer Domain discussion boards are pretty much best avoided nowadays. But every now and again a real gem pops up

Well, I have yet to encounter a forum where its hayday spans more than a few years, (I know of one where older members complain of the downward-spiral of content prevalent after nearly just 4 years.) I guess its pretty much a part of the evolution of online forums, (or just a question of how long it will take before idiocy creeps up.) Whatever it is, it’s just one good reason why I’m constantly on the run towards some other direction from time to time.

Matt sums it up in his comment when he says:

I think the senior developers have developed their own ecosystem on the various blogs and also private IM conversations these days. Not a good thing but the noise to usefulness ratio on the ND6 forum is just too high these days.

The image was taken from Jake Howlett’s site, Codestore btw.

I’ve been mentioning Jake’s site, Codestore, in at least two previous posts so I thought I would just as well feature him for the third Blog of the Day. This and the fact that I’ve ripped off taken two cool Lotus Notes icons from his previous blog posts actually, (including the one shown here.)

In the world of Lotus Notes/Domino development Jake Howlett has oftentimes been lumped among those big names in the foray such as Stan Rogers. Here’s Codestore in his own words:

CodeStore started in the late ’90s as a place to store bits of code (hence the name) on my hard drive. Access was soon requested by colleagues, both in and out of the office. That is when I decided to make it accessible via the web. The initial plan was not to make it public but then I thought “Why not?!”. After all if it wasn’t for people sharing with me when I was a novice I would have been lost. So, in a way, it’s payback for all those generous members of the Notes community and to those in a similar position as I was all those years ago.

CodeStore has had many looks over its lifetime and in certain ways reflects my ideals of what a site should be like – simple and functional..

The site’s popularity has never ceased to amaze me. There’s an average of about 5,000 visitors a day. What really makes it worth it though is when I receive mail that takes time to thank me.

I owe a lot of what I know in terms of Domino development to the site. It was a great relief given a technology that’s scarcely documented unlike those from MS. As an added bonus, Jake makes it a point to answer all emails to him, (well my stat’s 2 of 2 and I’m taking it, since I can’t imagine the volume of emails the guy gets daily.)

While I was finding a “cool” icon for a database I was working with, I encountered an online article from Breaking Par Consulting. It was basically about changing the database icon of a Notes database programmatically and the method applies to either a scheduled or user-triggered approach. Both are also implemented in the sample there.

When asked if “this is stupid?” The article proceeds:

I can tell you from experience that implementing this makes users want to go into the database. They want to see what the “icon of the day” is, and then they end up reading information in the database.

So in the true spirit of one successful design criterion in Web 2.0, (the design should make users want to pay attention to content,) which I’ve seen defended so many times by other web designers, I’m getting this done soon. I’m also looking forward to reading the other interesting-looking articles too.

The image here is from Jake Howlett’s blog entry, Fancy Notes Icons, btw.

I’ve been a Notes/Domino Developer for almost 4 years now yet there are still some things in the hodgepodge of Notes/Domino development that makes me sit down and take a closer look at the situation. Sure there’s notes.net but just the same I’d still nudge the old cliché in saying I’m still not perfect.

Take for instance the recent requirement for something I was working on. Given a Notes UNID of a source document, I was to copy attachments to a destination document. It seemed pretty much a straightforward coding strain for the fingers but somehow after a couple of hours tweaking the code I was able to come up with so far, I knew I had to look elsewhere so that I can enjoy the rest of the day like the typical yuppie does.

What made it somewhat difficult was that changes to the rich text field don’t show up in Notes until after it was saved, (or at least what I was made to believe in.) This and the number of times I’ve had to wrestle with that “Do you want to save” Notes prompt and getting the attachment to appear on the RTF itself got me looking at the forum. My initial search at IBM’s developer forum yielded stuff which threaded the path to where my initial output went through: copy from the destination RTF, save the document, re-open the document. What if after successfully getting the attachment in the RTF, the user doesn’t wish to actually save the document?

Thank God for Andre Guirard post after looking further subsequently long enough, (and for Stan Rogers (who if I remember it right, linked to that post somewhere in the same forum,) I came across a code that not only performs what I needed but also works from version 5.0.2 up and doesn’t require the saving of the destination document.

So from the said post:

Dim wksp As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument, uidocNew As NotesUIDocument
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim rti As NotesRichTextItem
Dim strFieldname As String

Set uidoc = wksp.CurrentDocument
uidoc.Refresh True ‘ do this if the rich text field is editable, to get the current contents in case user has modified them.
Set doc = uidoc.Document ‘ get the back-end document for the document open on screen.
strFieldname = uidoc.CurrentField ‘ remember the current field if any
Set rti = doc.GetFirstItem(“fieldname”) ‘ insert your fieldname here, generally “Body”

‘ Make your rich text changes here, for instance:
Call rti.AddNewLine(1, True)
Call rti.AppendText(Now & “: log entry.”)

If session.NotesBuildVersion >= 190 Then
    rti.Update ‘ ND6 only
Else
    ‘ caution, as this may erase some field values if you have @Db functions in formulas.
    Call doc.ComputeWithForm(True, False)
End If

‘ make it possible to close the document without a “do you want to save” prompt. If this is a mail-in doc you may need to set MailOptions=”0″ also to avoid being prompted.
doc.SaveOptions = “0”
Call uidoc.Close(True)
Set uidocNew = wksp.EditDocument(True, doc, , , , True)
Delete uidoc
uidocNew.Document.RemoveItem(“SaveOptions”)

‘ return focus to field that was current before.
If strFieldname <> “” Then
    uidocNew.GotoField(strFieldname)

Do remember to check the important points there however.

Btw, the image was taken from wikipedia.org.