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Community XPages

XPages: The Best of Times,The Worst of Times

If you’re reading this you probably already know that I like working with XPages. It’s a great tool that lets me provide business solutions to my company in a timely manner. There’s also a really really good community behind it. A lot of great people sharing wonderful information these days and I’m happy to try and contribute a little bit to it.

But I think the XPages community has suffered a big  loss lately and I thought it was worth mentioning. Recently, at least 3 KEY IBMers have moved on or out of the XPages realm.

We lost Paul Hannan a little bit ago as he moved onto new challenges in IBM. Notes in the cloud or something. Honestly I forget what it was. So he’s still close, but out of the XPages App Dev world.

A couple of days ago Phil Riand announced he was leaving IBM for something new. As far as I know Phil has been the driving force behind not only XPages itself, but the Extension Library, the very recent XPages4Bootstrap project with Mark Leusink, and I’m sure a whole lot more. Heck it was pretty much a single tweet from Phil that got the XPages Extension Library book on it’s path. And who was the key IBMer with that book? Paul Hannan!

Then today Simon O’Doherty announced he was moving to the Watson team. Don’t know who Simon is? He’s a level 2 support engineer at IBM for Notes/Domino App Dev issues. But even more then that Simon went out of his way to answer questions to the community. A quick check on Stack OverFlow shows him answering 166 questions! Wow! He does not get enough credit for his contributions to Notes/Domino App Dev.

I want to personally thank Paul, Phil and Simon for their contributions to the community.  I know they will succeed in whatever they do.

But with 3 very engaged and high profile IBMers leaving the XPages world that just seems concerning to me.

Clearly the Worst of times?

Or maybe not.

We also got out a brand new book this week. Mastering XPages 2nd Edition! Written by the App Dev team itself. There’s a TON of new content in it and I’m looking forward to digging into it. Maybe now I’ll finally understand the JSF Lifecycle. haha

In other news Mark Leusink recently updated the very important XPages Bootstrap project. Oliver Busse released a helper project for that – a template that I’m interested to check out. http://mardou.dyndns.org/hp.nsf/blogpost.xsp?documentId=C0E

Over on OpenNTF there’s been recent releases of the Unplugged XPages Mobile Controls, XPages Extension Library, XPages OpenLog Logger and more.

In my little corner of the world people still watch NotesIn9. The recent Java/JavaScript throwdown show was very well received, I have a show from Tim Tripcony to process and tons of my own show ideas that I just need to get time for. It astounds me that my Introduction to XPages show from way back in 2010 is still typically in the top 5 show downloads for the month. I have to believe that this is an indication of new people trying to get up to speed on XPages. I would like to revisit and update that show some point soon.

Clearly the Best of Times?

Which is it? The Best or the Worst of Times?

Ok so some key IBM’ers left. That in itself is not the end of the world.  I guess my biggest concern there is these three were EXTREMELY outgoing to the community. I really hope additional IBMer’s step up and take their place otherwise it’s a huge loss.

I hope IBM realizes that with their official XPages documentation “lacking”, and their plan of Documentation by “Community wiki” somewhat, shall I say, “misguided”, that the best thing they can do is encourage their key experts to engage in the community so we can get questions answered and information published. IBM preaches Social. I hope they know it’s not just about budgets, and spreadsheets. It’s not just about writing Social software but its also important for IBMers to interact with customers and business partners to share knowledge and mutually work together to make something that’s better then the sum of it’s parts.

I’m hopeful that what is happening is that XPages is just catching its breath. Some people want new challenges and others are hopefully waiting in the wings. If any IBMer wants to share something and needs help in publishing via a blog post, NotesIn9 or something else then please just let me know. I’m happy to assist with that. Just reach out. I’m pretty easy to find.

For me, I’m hopefully just catching my breath as well.  I have the best job in the world but man am I busy.  Home life isn’t any slower as the kids school year starts the final stretch.  But I’m trying to gear up for a push to at least get to 150 shows and maybe another surprise or two as well.

I’m going to call it the Best of Times.

Categories
Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 142: Adding a Please Wait to XPages

In this show it’s back to XPages and demos!  I will do a quick recap on the last show as 141 seemed REALLY popular but then it’s back to work.  In this show I demo a quick tip on how you can use CLIENT SIDE JavaScript to show the user the server is processing.

UPDATE:

Fredrik Norling (@XPageDeveloper)  tweeted me a link to an OpenNTF Snippet designed to handle Partial Refreshes:

http://openntf.org/XSnippets.nsf/snippet.xsp?id=standby-dialog-custom-control

Also, Eric Tomenga sent me a nice email with even another solution.  This one looks like it uses the Ext. Library.

http://xpagesera.blogspot.com/2012/05/add-ajax-loading-control-in-xpages-for.html

I actually did look for a jQuery version as well since I’m using this inside the Bootstrap project.  I couldn’t find one but I’m sure there’s something out there.

I do love having options.

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Community Notes In 9

Wow! Show 141 Recap/

I’ll admit I was a little nervous about the last show.  It’s been a long time since I got a little “Rowdy” on the show.  Maybe too long.

First I want to thank everyone for all the feedback via comments, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  I think this is the first NotesIn9 that someone (Russ Maher) actually live tweeted while watching. Thanks for the kind feedback to my kids as well.  We all had a good time making the show.  Though I am worried they might actually want to Unionize!

I also want to thank Mark Roden for the original post (See it at:  http://XPag.es/?WTF )  There’s a lot of great comments there and it’s a good topic for the community. He was such a good sport with me having some fun at his expense.  Don’t miss his followup post and awesome VIDEO here:  http://xomino.com/2014/04/02/an-open-letter-to-mr-notesin9/  

Wonderful stuff!!

While I always wanted NotesIn9 to be about the content and never about “me”.  The response to the show makes me wonder if over the years it’s gotten too “sterile”.  I used to add a little more fun here and there in the early episodes.  I’ll be pondering that for a bit.

I don’t have great stats overall, but I know that this show hit 500 views/downloads in about 24 hours.  I’m pretty sure that’s a record for me.  That tells me something very important.  That you all like my kids more then you do me! hahaha

So in order to give you a little kid “encore”, I’m posting the links to a couple of videos I made with them a while back.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/notesin9/Ad-Dodgeball.mp4  – XPages.Info Commercial

http://traffic.libsyn.com/notesin9/Ad-Baseball.mp4 – Sharepoint vs Domino  (Matt is playing “the Cousin from Texas”)

 

Thanks for watching!

 

 

Categories
Java Learning XPages Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 141: Java vs JavaScript Throwdown

This is a VERY DIFFERENT NotesIn9.  It’s less of a normal show and more if a response to a recent blog post regarding one persons opinion on the value of Java in XPages and the Value of the UI vs the backend. Actually this show is more of a really long “rant”.

This show could absolutely suck.  I pretty much broke all my rules and tried to have fun with it.  I do give my thoughts on things so maybe there’s at least a little value there.

There’s no Demo.  There is only the trainwreck.

I would say that if you do give it a shot.  Stick around for the end. That’s when I get my most immature.  For the first time ever there’s even a few bloopers at the very end.  No not me, but one of the cast members.

I want to thank Mark Roden for the original post.  Please check out the comments.  There’s a lot of good information in there.  Here’s the shortlink:

http://xpag.es/?WTF

I hope you like it.

 

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Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 140: SourceTree Deep Dive

In this episode Paul Withers comes back on the show for a deeper look at using SourceTree and Git Flow. This comes from the session he did with Declan Lynch at IBM Connect.  In that session they ran out of time so this should fill in some of the missing pieces that they didn’t get to cover.

I use SourceTree and HG Flow which is the Mercurial version of Git Flow in my Day Job all the time.  While there are some quirks due to Designer and you do need to be careful and understand what’s going on, it is a really nice Source Control solution and I recommend it to any Developer.

Information on the original SNT session which included slides on setting up local servers if you don’t want to use something like BitBucket or GitHub can be found here:

http://www.intec.co.uk/show-103-source-control-an-end-to-end-solution/

P.S. I’m sitting at the Philly airport and uploaded this show from my iPhone.  Don’t ya just love technology sometimes?  haha

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Notes In 9 Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 139: XPages Single Copy Design

In this show, Andrew Barickman, a great new contributor comes on to talk to use about the performance benefits of the “Single Copy Design”.  He focuses on the performance benefits, not only for a web application but also for XPages In the Notes Client – XPiNC.

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Java Notes In 9 XPages

NotesIn9 138: XPages Combobox ImprovementsJ

In this show I take a look at using a Combobox inside XPages.  I’m going to demo how to use Java – but it’s NOT scary Java – I show you everything.

We’re going to show the user a pretty value in the combobox but get a hold of and store the key value for our use.

I’m also going to show how you can create categories inside the combobox. That’s kinda cool I think depending on your situation.

Update:

Oliver Busse – @zeromancer1972 – has another example of this on his blog.  http://mardou.dyndns.org/Privat/osnippets.nsf/id/OBUE-9C5KDN

In that post he’s reading the data in from a view.  Cool!

 

Update 2:

Ove Stoerholt just did a blog post on comboboxes.  He discusses one “Gotcha” that you need to avoid.  A really good post!

 

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Notes In 9 XPages

NotesIn9 137: XPages and Web Services

In this show, new contributor, Fredrik Norling comes on to give a neat demo on how to use Web Services with XPages.

 

The demo database and code will be available on his website as well as OpenNTF.org.

Update:  Here’s a link to Fredrik’s blog post with the links.  http://www.xpagedeveloper.com/2014/calling-web-services-from-xpages

Categories
Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 136: Using XPages with Bootstrap 3 and FontAwesome

Ok enough Java.  We need something that even Marky Roden might like!

In this show Tim Tripcony returns to end out “Tim Tripcony week” on NotesIn9.  He’ll give a demo on how you can start using Bootstrap 3 and Font Awesome with your XPages applications.  He’ll do so by using themes and a content delivery network.

Really good stuff!!

Categories
Java Podcast XPages

NotesIn9 135: Using Java in XPages Part4

Tim Tripcony returns again for another great show in his Java series.  Today he’ll be introducing the concept of a “MimeBean”.  A “MimeBean” gives the ability to save Java Objects inside a notes field.  It opens up many new possibilities for storing data in your applications.

Not to be missed!