Month: April 2013

Categories
Mobile XPages

Next jQuery Mobile Hurdle

Ok, so I recently blogged about a problem getting jQuery Mobile working with XPages in Domino 9.0.  There was a lot of good idea’s and comments on that and I appreciated them all very much.  It turns out the best solution was provided by Sven Hasselbach with this post.

Now I already starting going down the Twitter Bootstrap path, which I was really liking, but I decided to take another look at jQuery Mobile.  And when I say “I decided to take another look at jQuery Mobile” what I mean is that Declan Lynch wanted to take a look at jQuery Mobile and drug me back kicking and screaming.  haha

So anyway, in no short order Declan had mobilized an internal app and I was playing with footers which can’t easily be done with XPages Mobile controls and working on a custom control for the header, content, and footer.  Just trying to get a feel for it really.

The first thing I really tried to do was get a feel for how viewScope might work.  Unlike Mobile Controls, where you work with Virtual pages, jQuery Mobile lets you work with real XPages.  I like that so much better!  Anyway, the first thing I tried to do is just put a computed field bound to viewScope and a button to update viewScope with the current time. Now the button is a normal XPages core control and I just wanted to do a partial refresh.

Clicking the button did nothing.  Tried partial refresh, tried full refresh. Nothing worked.  I didn’t even see any traffic from the browser.

I did some poking around for an answer, but not a lot.  So I thought I’d just post out here looking for some overall getting started advice.  I liked what I saw of jQuery Mobile but I want to keep Dojo working so I can use XPages controls.

Anyone have any getting started advice?

Categories
Community Learning XPages XPages

Treasure Map to Learning XPages and a NotesIn9 Episode Guide

A couple days ago, Stephan Wissel, created a “Mind Map” on what might be involved for an XPages Project.  I thought that was pretty cool.

Around the same time I discovered this XPages community on Google+.  I highly recommend checking that out and I’ll be talking about it more on future shows.  One of the moderators of that community is Rob Bontekoe. I’ve talked to him a couple times since joining that community and he’s a really great guy.  He provides a 4 day  XPages training course that can be given remotely or on your location.  As a supplement to that course he’s created some FREE courses on Java, Managed beans and even some neat videos on other topics like the repeat control and JSF LifeCycle.  Just some really amazing content from an original IBM Champion.  I had no idea about this material.

Now I’m not going to link to everything he’s done because for one thing I don’t have that kind of time and for another he’s already done it and more I believe.  Using the Mind Map website, Rob has created this really really cool “Map” of XPages learning resources. It’s been on the Google+ Community for a while, (see what you’re missing!), but I wanted to blog about it in case you missed it.

Rob’s XPages Learning Map

Now, I personally know a good idea when I see one. And one of my biggest problems with Ni9 is a lack of a good index / table of contents.  So I took a little time to try and create a Map for NotesIn9.

NotesIn9 Episode GuideMap

So please check that out.  Let me know what you think and if you like it or not.  If it’s helpful or not.  I think it might be but I’m not sure.  I’m really worried that I won’t be able to keep up with it as new shows come out.  So I thought about not publishing it but then thought, well I already did this much.  So I don’t know if I can keep up with it.  If people think it’s helpful I’ll at least give it a try. If there are any volunteers that would like to keep this updated for me and maybe prettying it up a little bit I would welcome the help.

Thanks!

Categories
Mobile Podcast XPages

NotesIn9: 109 Selecting Multiple Documents with XPages Mobile Controls

This show starts my attempt at a little “XPages Mobile Madness”.  This is a new event for NotesIn9.  All it really means is I’m going to make a concerted effort to get a bunch of Mobile focused shows on.  I only have so many in my back pocket so I’m looking for help!

In today’s show I get another amazing contributor.  Richard Sharpe of Teamstudio comes on and shows us how to select multiple documents from a repeat control inside an XPages Mobile Controls Application.  Great stuff!

Note: I did a similar show to this way way back in NotesIn9 25.  In that show I demo’s how to select items in a repeat for a “Normal” XPages application. So if interested in this for a NON mobile solution then you might want to check that out.  http://notesin9.com/index.php/2011/04/01/notesin9-025-selecting-documents-from-a-repeat-control/

Categories
Mobile XPages

jQuery Mobile Seems incompatible with XPages in Domino 9.0

So it’s no secret that I’m doing a lot of XPages Web Development for iPads and I have a complete love – hate relationship with XPages Mobile controls.  In some ways they’re great.  In some ways they are not so great at all.  Not all of that is XPages fault – though some is – but some of the problem is in the Dojo that drives the mobile controls.

So I really want to abandon Mobile Controls, if nothing else the whole single page App is just really really hard to debug.  If you navigate to a page you can’t EASILY view source for instance.  You need to catch it with a tool like firebug.

Anyway, so I found this project that I really wanted to use.  https://github.com/commadelimited/jQuery-Mobile-Bootstrap-Theme

In theory it’s a marriage of Twitter Bootstrap and a css “theme” that makes some elements look like you would on a mobile device.  Ideally I’d love to have the mobile look and feel since I think it’s easier for the users then a glorified web page, but I’m desperate to get to normal XPages and away from these virtual pages.  Even if the fancy transitions are lost I don’t really care any more.

So it seems it’s not just a CSS framework like I thought but it does require jQuery Mobile.  Ok – I gave it a try and guess what.  It didn’t work.  not at all.  The mobile goodies would NOT render!

Until I completely disabled Dojo!

Disabling Dojo is not an option for me.  I just can’t hand code all that stuff.  It’s not going to happen.  I’m going to be using XPages I want to USE XPages.  But why didn’t it work?  Well I had to turn to the jQuery Master himself – Mark Roden.  He took a look at it for me which I greatly appreaciated!

We’re not sure, but we think there’s a conflict between Dojo and jQuery Mobile with the “data-role” attribute.  I guess both frameworks make use of that and Dojo 1.8 grabs it first and shuts jQuery out. If I downgraded Dojo I BELIEVE it would work but that’s not an option for me.=

Apparantly I’m not the only one with this problem.

That’s what I think I know at least.  If anyone knows something else please chime in!

Personally I’m not sure what to do.  XPages Mobile controls are difficult and missing things like a bottom TabBar, though I believe the redPill company has solved that problem.  I believe Kendo UI uses virtual pages as well.  JQuery Mobile seems like you need to drop Dojo.

I think I might try the Twitter Bootstrap 3 Release Candidate.  Not really sure though.

Kinda annoying actually…

Categories
Mobile Notes In 9 XPages

NotesIn9 108: XPages Mobile Controls Problem and Solution

This is a rush show.  I didn’t mean to make this show at this time, but it looks like I solved a problem that has been frustrating me for a while so I had to take a quick break and document it and get this out.

The problem is with trying to do a refresh in the onChange event of an edit control in the confines of XPages Mobile Controls.  I’ve done this before in a production app, but recently I tried making a new version of that app, starting from scratch, and I couldn’t get the same behavior.

Really really frustrating stuff.

Hopefully, if you’re working with Mobile controls this will help you.

Categories
Uncategorized

Getting the most out of XPages Performance

Nathan T. Freeman just posted a very interesting article on XPages Performance.

Highly recommend you check it out.

http://nathantfreeman.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/xpages-performance-pro-tips/

Categories
Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 107: Launch Attachments from a View Control

In this show Steve Zavocki, a new contributor and a CUSTOMER, comes on the show to give a demo on using the view controller to launch attachments.

He blogs at http://notesspeak.blogspot.com.  Don’t miss his about page with details how he got started with XPages.  Great story there.

In this show he and I mention Stephan Wissel’s blog post on working with Attachments.  That link is here:

http://www.wissel.net/blog/d6plinks/SHWL-86QKNM

Thanks!

UPDATE:  Don’t miss Steve’s blog post about this technique.

http://notesspeak.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-launch-attachment-from-view.html

Categories
Java Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 106: Intro to Java Controller Classes

In this show Jesse Gallagher, a great new contribitor, comes on to give us an over view of using Java Controller Classes to help seperate your business logic from your XPage.  By moving your logic outside of the XPage you get much cleaner XML source for your XPage.

If you’re new to the thought of using Java inside XPages, I’d suggest don’t focus on the actual syntax that Jesse’s using here but the overall concepts.  This is very similar to using Lotusscript custom classes to hold your business logic so you have cleaner agents and view buttons.

Hope you like it.

Categories
Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 105: Introduction to SSJS Debugger

In this show an Fredrik Norling, and IBM Champion and awesome develolper, comes on NotesIn9 for the very FIRST time!

Frederik, is going to give us a really good and indepth demo on using the new SSJS debugger of Designer 9.0.  This isn’t just a getting started, but an indepth guide on using it.  Not to be missed!

I also announce my next “event” in the show.  It’s called “XPages Mobile Madness”. Basically I want to get a bunch of mobile related shows on.  I’ll talk about this more in a seperate blog post.

Thanks for watching!

Dave