Monday, January 28, 2008

a few thousand words....

or a few pictures... I was so happy to be able to show not only the work to put Designer in Eclipse at Lotusphere, but also to reveal the new XPage design element that we've also been working on. In a way similar to how reworking the Designer UI lets us address longstanding issues in the Designer client, the XPage design element gives us the freedom to create a new way to render Domino data in a modern way, taking into account all that we've learned along the way...

And I said pictures not words, so here are some screenshots from Lotusphere for the curious...





9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is so great and so overdue. If the Notes client can render it with full fidelity as well, I guess you give huge power to a new breed of Notes and web apps. Just think about the power of UI in those apps compared to what we're limited to now. It'll be great. Congrats!


...Neil

Unknown said...

I cannot express in words how great this is and I'm looking very forward to get my hands on this.

Please keep in mind that we want to use SVN/CVS version control systems to store LotusScript, Java, JavaScript, HTML etc. pp. code in it.

I asked you for some time if this will be possible and you said "yes". Is this still true?

Daniele Vistalli said...

Hmm... I love this thing since the day I've seen it in Component Designer.

During my study I learned it's based on a JSF framework (XSP) that describe interface in XML.

In my understanding you're pushing it for web apps but I can't see why you can't provide a JSF renderer to make XPages multi-client (Web AND Notes client) using eclipse forms or similar capabilities.

I expect this to become reality at some point (and it would also make the client capabilities evolve a lot).

Can you comment on my guess ? Is there anything that you haven't told us at LS2008 ?

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm wrong, but xPages is a technology from Lotus Component Designer used for build portlet.
'Cause don't seem that LCD will have a future, with Designer 8.5 I'll be able to develop portlets too?

Maureen said...

For source control, many of the file types are easy and will just work (style sheets, images, xpages, etc). Other resources (forms, views) will likely need to present themselves as binary by default to the Eclipse VFS to ensure that svn/cvs/any embedded source control get data that can be returned with fidelity. The problem there is that binary doesn't diff/merge well. But I will give up merging in the blink of an eye to avoid losing data.

As for rich client, yes, xpages are designed for this, and it is in our plans to do, the only reason we are not yet screaming it from the rooftops is that we are not yet sure of a timeframe. Clearly, true write once, run everywhere, is one of the great values of xpages. We will do it as soon as we can, that's as much as I can say (other than I agree completely!)

All resources are stored in an nsf, so any portal projection would need a Domino server in the mix. We'll do some thinking round portal, but for now, we're focusing on Domino/Notes.

Daniele Vistalli said...

Great, this confirms my "hopes".

About portal... I'm sure you already looked into it but ...

with Lotus Mashups / Portal 6.1 coming why not going for CSA (client side aggregation) ?

Just have the XPages renderer take advantage of CSA hooks and client portal library. This would mean you can easily bring notes xpages apps to:

- Connections r2
- Portal 6.1
- Lotus Mashups
- Portal & Rich client composite applications
- Any other container impelmentation of the "widget" thing IBM is proposing to the market. (think Domino apps in iGoogle)

Finally ... is the XPages renderer going to be an open API for customization on the domino server ?

Finally 2: I don't have details of how it's going to work on the server but I'd like to understand if I can think at some point of decoupliong the xpages/http engine from domino for scalability.

Think of it as :

- Layer 0: Domino server/NRPC services
- Layer 1: (local or remote to Domino) HTTP Server with XPages+Classic web renderer.

This could help to gain scalability and performance.

What do you think ?

Anonymous said...

any chance of getting screen shots of a notes form / view and properties exposed?

Unknown said...

Wonderful, I have no words to describe my satisfaction to see the result of the work of IBM invested in Domino Designer.

This only increased my curiosity when we opportunity to give a demo of this new IDLE?

... And when we have access to screen shots of other templates (http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/domino-8.5-web-applications) receiving updated with the new features of the new Domino Designer?

In blog Kevin Pettitt (http://www.lotusguru.com/lotusguru/LGBlog.nsf/d6plinks/20071003-77MQWX) was raised some interesting issues related to the development of workflows to the domino there will be some action back toward improving the development of workflow?

Life long the new applications that views of the new domino designer

Anonymous said...

Wooooowwww!

I can't wait to have it!

When the simple mortals can programm with this little jewel?

Thanks in advance,

Josep Alemany