Lotus Notes on Web 2.0

Application Event Log

2011-10-31T11:25:00.000+08:00

I’m sharing this application. You can download it here.

XPages Checkbox

2011-06-28T13:22:00.000+08:00

I need to create some check box for a XPage application. By default, the Check Box control only show 1 option. Sames goes for the radio button.

Windows 8 Preview

2011-06-03T09:39:00.000+08:00

Microsoft have added a video preview of the upcoming Windows 8. Looking at the interface, you can expect the design elements from Windows Phone 7 brought to desktop PC.

Dropdown Selection – Airlines Websites Example

2011-05-26T13:03:00.000+08:00

I was browsing through some airline sites recently. Most of them are quite similar but one caught my attention. The interface is intuitive and have a user friendly process flow.

Installing Web Experience Factory

2011-05-24T11:08:00.000+08:00

Download IBM Web Experience Factory beta. When installing it, noticed that the application name still maintain as WebSphere Portlet Factory.

Dropdown Top Menu Navigation

2011-05-23T16:40:00.000+08:00

I was working on a new theme on WebSphere Portal. One of the theme improvement is to include dropdown menu on the top menu bar. The requirement is to have a 2 level top menu navigation.

IBM Web Experience Factory

2011-05-16T11:13:00.001+08:00

IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory will be changing the name to IBM Web Experience Factory.

Open Source CMS

2011-05-11T15:04:00.000+08:00

I have implemented a number of corporate Internet and Intranet site using Lotus base content management system (CMS) and WebSphere Content Management System. Lotus and WebSphere Portal provides much more than just CMS. Those CMS solutions fits well for companies that already have Lotus/Websphere infrastructure ready or are looking for an all round solution.

What about company that just need a website? A static website is the easiest type of website to set up, but making changes may require web programming knowledge. If the company have "limited" budget, open source CMS is a solution that they can look at. CMS provides an easier platform for the end users to manage the content on the website.

BWL Technology

2011-05-04T14:13:00.000+08:00

BWL Technology

Body Browser

2010-12-17T12:15:00.003+08:00

Something cool. Google showing of WebGL with Body Browser. It uses the HTML5 Canvas element and does not require Flash, Java or other graphical plugins to run. You'll see a three-dimensional layered model of the human anatomy that you can zoom in on, rotate and search.

WebGL support hasn't hit mainstream browsers, but the beta versions of Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox all support it.

XPages - Line Break Set Visible to Hide

2010-12-15T11:33:00.005+08:00

Building XPages application does post some challenge initially. Thus I will be updating some stuff that I learned along the way.

A good page to start is going through the Tutorial at the Lotus Wiki.

To set a Core Control, for example Label, to be hidden, we can use the property Visible. The image below uses Computed Value:

var rc = rowData.getResponseCount();

return (rc > 0)

If you have a line break and want to hide it, you won't find the property to set visibility. In All Properties, you can set it at Basics -> Rendered. I hide it if the row count is more than 0.

A fellow Lotus Developer, Lai Chin Lun pass away

2010-10-18T08:56:00.002+08:00

A dear friend and fellow Lotus Developer, Lai Chin Lun pass away on 16th Oct 2010.

He was at the last stage of cancer. He did wrote on his journey battling cancer at his blog. Some find it inspiring and hope it will give courage to those fighting cancer.

May he rest in peace.

Notes sleeping, ZZZ

2010-07-15T11:10:00.002+08:00

Anyone notice this. Normal Priority Synchronization (Sleeping) ZZZ

A baby in need of your help

2010-06-09T21:38:00.002+08:00

Please help this baby, they need MYR 45k by this Fri (11th June 2010) for heart operation. The details is as per this link.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

2010-02-11T14:05:00.002+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year to all.
Gong Xi Fa Cai.

恭喜發財，大吉大利

IBM Lotus Foundations

2009-07-15T16:05:00.003+08:00

Yesterday I went for the IBM Lotus Foundations Start technical workshop. The product itself, hardware and software, are interesting. Have tested installing on Lotus Foundation on VM. The setup is very easy. Installing Domino and other packages takes a few extra steps but still very easy.

What impress me the most the the backup. It is not a full scale enterprise backup solution but for Small Medium Business SMB, the backup solution should be good enough. In the workshop, I've tried removing the primary harddisk and adding a new primary harddisk on the VM. Restoring the server to the previous state was relatively easy. It can provide the SMB with a more affordable backup and recovery solution.

Now it's time to actually look at the pricing and how it "affordable" it is here in Malaysia.

WebSphere Portal Sametime chat issue on IE8

2009-06-19T20:46:00.001+08:00

From WebSphere Portal 6.1.0.1, users are using sametime chat through the web browser. After upgrading to Internet Explorer 8, the sametime chat window can be open but the chat functionality is not working. If a person pings you, a chat window opens but the screen remains empty.

To solve this, add in IE8 into the supported client in the portal administration. Go to Admin Page -- Portal Settings -- Supported Clients.

Initially, the lastest version is IE7. Thus make add a new client with IE 8. All the settings can be the same as the IE7 settings except the User Agent and Version.

After restarting the server, the sametime chat is working fine through IE8.

WebSphere Portal.Next Beta - WCM first look

2009-06-10T21:48:00.004+08:00

WebSphere Portal.Next Beta is now available. You can get more infomation from the wiki link here.

I have just install it and have a first look at the WCM. First thing you will notice is the additional navigation available at the top area.

Going into the Edit Shared Setting, in the Rich Text Options, there are three option, Standard Editor, Legacy Editor and Custom Editor. By default Legacy editor is selected. To test out the Ephox editor, the Standard Editor have to be selected.

Below is the sample of the Standard Editor (Ephox)

If you go into the Manage Page in the administrator, there's a new option New Web Content Page. This option is available for portal 6.1.0.2 if you install the new Web Content Management Rendering Portlet. That is available at the Portal Catalog.

For this option you can select which content to be display in the page directly and also what template to be use.

It is just a short brief look. I will spend some more time on that later and look into the features in more details.

Portlet Factory - Web Service Call builder, No trusted certificate found

2009-05-07T17:02:00.002+08:00

I am using the Web Service Call builder and testing a call to a https site. When running the application, it return the error "No trusted certificate found".

From the error message, I suspected that the server does not recognise the SSL certification for the site that I'm accessing. Refering to this document, the SSL cert have to be exported and added into the server. Please take note that WebSphere 6.0 used ikeyman to add in the cert while 6.1 is done through the admin console.

My 308

2009-05-06T19:59:00.005+08:00

Just found myself a new French girlfriend - Peugeot 308. I only manage to spend a few days with her before coming to Denmark for 2 months work.

Here are some upgrade that would be interesting to have, especially the front grille.

HTTP 404 errors when previewing new XPages

2009-04-15T10:24:00.003+08:00

I'm going through a tutorial on XPages. After creating a new XPage and when I save the document, a message prompt me that Automatic Build is not selected. I ignore the message and proceed. I tried to preview the Xpage but got a 404 error.

It seems that after saving the XPage, it have to be build. It can be done through enabling automatically build or right click on the XPage and click build.

Previous experience developing Lotus application, I do not need to compile or build any forms, scripts, etc. The Lotus designer will handle all of those. Now it seems that the designer is moving something similar to Java Eclipse base IDE. I feel that this is a step backwards. The designer should be keep simple and straightforward as the previous version.

Internet Explorer 8 - IE8

2009-03-20T14:20:00.002+08:00

Internet Explorer 8 is officially released. Would be downloading it and test all the web application on it. Wonder how many application will be broken?

WebSphere Portlet Factory Fixpack 6.1.2.1 for Portlet Factory v6.1.2

2009-03-16T13:34:00.000+08:00

WebSphere Portlet Factory Fixpack 6.1.2.1 for Portlet Factory v6.1.2 is out. Get the update at IBM update site here.

Learning XPages By Declan Lynch

2009-03-05T15:33:00.002+08:00

Head over to Learning XPages By Declan Lynch site. Looks like a great place to pick up XPages in Lotus Domino 8.5.

Adding portlet into People Palette or Content Palette page in WebSphere Portal 6.1

2009-03-04T14:55:00.002+08:00

I want to add the Sametime Contact List portlet into the People Palette page in WebSphere Portal 6.1. First thing you will notice is that the page design is lock so you cannot add in any extra portlet. So unlock the portlet area to put additional portlet.

After putting in the Sametime Contact List portlet, I tried to view the People Palette but it is not showing. On IBM support page - Theme does not allow the addition of portlets to flyouts. This is a solution for Portal 6.0. The people finder portlet in the page is automatically maximise thus any additional portlet is hidden. If you restore the people finder portlet, you can see the portlet that is added.

In WPS 6.1, you cannot use the fix from the list. The fix can be done at the theme page, flyout.jspf. On the line


<portal-navigation:urlGeneration contentNode='ibm.portal.People Palette' layoutNode='ibm.portal.People Palette Control' newWindow='true' portletWindowState='Maximized'>

You can remove the portletWindowState='Maximized'. This will show the portlets in default state. Thus when open the people palette page it can show multiple portlets immediately.

This also applies to the Content Palette page.


<portal-navigation:urlGeneration contentNode='ibm.portal.Content Palette' layoutNode='ibm.portal.Content Palette Control' newWindow='true' portletWindowState='Maximized'>

The 5 Most Under-Used HTML Tags

2009-03-02T15:56:00.003+08:00

Sitepoint highlighted 5 most underused HTML Tags, <label>, <fieldset> <legend>, <optgroup>, <dl> <dt> <dd> and <q> <cite>.
Personally, I do use <fieldset> <legend> and <optgroup>. Click here to view the full article.

Portlet Factory update design shortcut tips - copy model directly

2009-02-27T16:29:00.004+08:00

When developing in Portlet Factory, I do the testing on my local server because it is faster than deploying onto the development websphere portal server. But somethings we have to develop and test directly in a portal server. What you have to do is to deploy the project onto the portal server. As you know the deployment will take some time. So a faster way is to copy the model directly from your Portlet Factory Eclipse workspace into the Portal deployment path.

From
<workspace path>\<project>\WebContent\WEB-INF\models\helloworld.model

To
<portal wp_profile path>\installedApps\<cell>\<app.ear>\<app.war>\WEB-INF\models\helloworld.model

Once you copy from your workspace to the server. Log out of the portal and log back in. Presto, the model update is there. This is only recommended for development and testing purposes only. For production environment it is better to package the project and update the application deployment.

Portlet Personalization, visibility rules using only lower case

2009-02-18T22:35:00.002+08:00

In Websphere Portal, we want to hide some portlets in certain pages according to the user's group. Personalization function in the portal can be used for this.

I want to show the portlet if the user is in the group MYUsers. The fullname of the group is CN=MYUsers. Thus I've created a new Rule type Visibility.


Show  page or portlet when
  current Portal Users.Groups  includes  CN=MYUsers
Otherwise hide

By applying the rule to the portlet, it should hide the portlet if the login user is not in the MYUsers group. But there are some issue for the above rule. Using an LDAP browser, the group name is CN=MYUsers. But when applying it to the rule, it doesn't seem to be working.

The group name have to be set to lowercase to get it working.


Show  page or portlet when
  current Portal Users.Groups  includes  cn=myusers
Otherwise hide

The documentation does not state that the group name have to be in lowercase. Thanks to my colleague, after much trying around, he found that lowercase group name is working.

Apple's Design Process

2009-02-12T14:22:00.001+08:00

There's an interesting article here from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, who tried to assess how Apple can ‘get’ design when so many other companies try and fail.

10 to 3 to 1
Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, "seven in order to make three look good", which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere. They'll take ten, and give themselves room to design without restriction. Later they whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong decision.

IBM Lotus Web Content Management Rendering Portlet

2009-02-03T14:06:00.002+08:00

IBM have release an update to the Web Content Viewer portlet. You can download it from the portlet catalog.

The IBM® Lotus® Web Content Management Rendering Portlet provided with this package is a solution which updates and improves how the rendering of Web content is performed in IBM WebSphere® Portal. While the existing Web Content Viewer portlet (referred to in the WebSphere Portal documentation as a "rendering portlet") has evolved throughout several versions to implement sophisticated Web content rendering functions, it is still based on the deprecated IBM Portlet API. By contrast, the new JSR 286 Web Content Viewer has been entirely redeveloped based on the Java™ Portlet Specification 2.0 (JSR 286). In addition to the benefits afforded by JSR 286, the JSR 286 Web Content Viewer in this package also enables other features for Web content management, such as a new Web content portal page type and support for the standard search seedlist 1.0 format.

Hiding navigation on web page when printing

2009-01-14T14:15:00.001+08:00

When printing a web page, we want to maximise the content area for printing. To do this, I want to hide the navigation area when user is printing the page.

For example in a page, there are 3 area, header, left navigation and content.


<div id="header">header</div>
<div id="nav">Left navigation</div>
<div id="content">Content area</div>

When user click on print, only the content area is printed. This can be control using a seperate CSS to hide certain area when printing.
The sample is below.

Add the css link in the page. The media type = "print".


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="print.css" />

In print.css


#header{display:none}
#nav{display:none}

This would hide the header and the nav div tag when printing.

Portlet Factory 6.1.2

2009-01-14T10:00:00.003+08:00

Portlet Factory 6.1.2 is out. You can get the 60 days trial version here.
It looks like 6.1.2 is a new version and not an upgrade or fixpack for PF 6.1.

Highlighted Selected Content in Menu - WebSphere Content Management System

2009-01-09T11:07:00.003+08:00

In a WebSphere Portal page, I inserted a few Web Content Viewer portlets. The top portlets shows a menu list the content. The bottom portlet will display the selected content from the list. The issue I had was highlighting the selected content in the menu.

From the forum, there were some suggestions but it didn't work for my case.

I manage to solve it by using the Content ID. The idea is, when the content is loaded, it can find which link in the menu is selected by the Content ID. Thus you can add in code to change the attributes.

In the menu component, I add in a class which is the content ID into the links.


<A HREF="<Placeholder tag="href"/>" class="<Placeholder tag="Idnum"/>"><Element context="autoFill" type="content" key="headline"/></A>

Then in the presentation template I added dojo code to put in another class into the selected content.


<script>
dojo.addOnLoad(function(){
dojo.query(".<IDCmpnt context="current" type="content" field="id"/>")
      .addClass("selectedContent")
});
</script>
<style>
.selectedContent{color:black;font-weight:bold;}
</style>

Thus when the content is loaded, it will search the page for the class <Idnum> and add in the class selectedContent. For the Idnum here, I use a class instead of id because in certain pages, there are more than 1 links to the same content.

Prepend javascript to an action button - Portlet Factory

2008-12-26T11:25:00.003+08:00

I am creating a form, which is submitted and a thank you page is display. Only the Form section is change to Thank You after submission, without refreshing the whole page.

I used a Button builder and set that in the Post-Action Behavior. The issue that I had was when submitting, the button stays active. If the connection is fast, it does not matter but when I was working at a slow connection place, when submitting, it takes a few seconds before the Thank you page shows but the button is still active.

The button calls an action. I want the button to run additional Javascript before running the action. From the forum, I manage to find the solution.

The HTML Event Action can be used. Select the location you want to insert the javascript. Action type, I use "Run a script". Then put in the javascript. In Advance, use Prepend new value.

This is very useful to add in more actions before the button action is triggered.

Marking portal pages as hidden under the content root

2008-11-20T02:47:00.004+08:00

In WebSphere Portal, when creating a new page under content root, it will be shown on the quick links navigation.
If you do not want a page that you create to appear in the main menu, you can hide the page. You can use own customize links or navigation to access the page via direct URL mapping.

To hide the page, it can be done through WebSphere Portal XML configuration interface. You do this by setting the hidden flag for the page parameter for the content-node tag in XML. You can use the following XML snippet:


<request xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="PortalConfig_1.4.xsd" type="update" create-oids="true">
<portal action="locate">
<content-node action="update" uniquename="com.mypage" active ="true">
<parameter name="com.ibm.portal.Hidden" type="string" update="set"><![CDATA[true]]></parameter>
</content-node>
</portal>
</request>

Make sure the uniquename is correct. You can get further details here.

This is a lot of work to achieve a simple thing. Wouldn't it be great if there's an option at the page property to hide or show it in the navigation.

Happy Deepavali

2008-10-26T06:15:00.001+08:00

Happy Deepavali to all Indians.

My Wife blog

2008-10-20T23:00:00.001+08:00

My wife, Trista started blogging. And also complaining that I'm away from her for a few months. Currently in Denmark working on WebSphere Portal project. Will be back Malaysia soon.

Her blog is here.

WebSphere Portal V6.1.0.1 Beta

2008-10-03T00:57:00.001+08:00

Here's a simple way to get people started to test / pilot WebSphere Portal.
IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1 Beta, Its the NEW beta 1, release of WebSphere Portal V6.1.0.1 Beta. It is available on VM Suse image. Just load the VM image and start the server. As simple as that.

Configuring WebSphere Portal for site analysis logging

2008-10-02T01:23:00.004+08:00

I have been missing in action for quite a while. My connection was limited because my previous company block most of the blogging sites. I have just join a new company and partial of my time will be located in Denmark. What suppose to be a Lotus Domino job turns out to be more working on WebSphere Portal. Luckily I have previous experience to let me carry out my task.

The portal implementation here is still on going. Thus one thing I can for see is that they will need statistic on the number of logons and pages access. By default WebSphere site analysis logging is not enable. Thus I took the initiative to enable the logging.

1) Open WebSphere admin console
2) In the navigation open the Resources section
3) Click Resource Environment Providers.
4) In the Resource Environment Providers frame make the following selection, depending on your environment:
* If running standalone, select Browse nodes and select the node.
* If installed in a cluster, select Browse Clusters and select the cluster.
5) Select the service to which you want to make changes. In this case select "WP SiteAnalyzerLogService"
6) Click Custom Properties. More info can be found here.

7) Restart the server to make the changes become effective.

Awstats can be use to present the generated logs in more friendly manner. There is an article here describing the steps.
Alternate to this, you can use third party tools. If your company policy allows, free site tracker can be used too. I have been using Google Analytics for some sites, it is easy to setup and it does provide detail informations.

Gong Xi Fat Chai

2008-02-05T22:30:00.000+08:00

It's the time of the year again. Chinese New Year is around the corner (7th Feb). This year will be different, as I just got married. I have to give Ang Pow (red packet) instead of receiving. To all Chinese around the world Gong Xi Fat Chai.

My wedding reception

2007-10-18T09:05:00.000+08:00

It's almost time for my big day on 20th October 2007. Really looking forward for my wedding reception. A big thank you for those who are helping me to organised this event. It will be a poolside wedding thus praying hard that it won't rain on that day.
Here are some of my wedding bridal photos.

Idea Jam

2007-10-16T09:01:00.000+08:00

Bruce Elgort has just send out the press release for the launch of the Idea Jam. Idea Jam is a site where users of IBM’s Lotus software products can exchange ideas on how to improve Lotus products. Others can help promote and/or demote ideas, as well as, providing feedback through comments. Popular ideas will rise to the top. It was developed by Elguji Software in conjunction with Matt White, and Sean Burgess. It has a nice, simple interface and runs on IBM Lotus Domino 8.0.

Site registration will open to the public on November 20th, 2007. So head on there to contribute your ideas.

Simplifying Evaluate

2007-10-11T09:18:00.000+08:00

I came across this tips from Tommy Valand site. Used it and loved it. I have even roll out on production application. He show a way to simplify getting the return value from evaluate function


Dim commonUsername As String
commonUsername = Implode( Evaluate( |@Name( [CN] ; @UserName )| ) )

Just becareful that you know the Evaluate return single value and not multiple value.

Quick Tip: Firebug CSS editor

2007-10-09T15:15:00.000+08:00

I'm sure most of you who use Firebug, make use of the CSS editor directly in Firebug to view UI changes. Just found out that it support to up and down arrow button also. Thus for example, you want to increase the border size, just need to click on the CSS element and press the up key. This will scroll the value up and you can see the UI changes take effect. It is faster than typing the value especially when you need to test different values. Neat. Another thumbs up for Firebug.

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

IBM Lotus Symphony - Memory resources

2007-10-01T10:29:00.000+08:00

IBM Lotus Symphony is built on Lotus Expeditor (Eclipse) platform. It is quite a memory resource intensive platform. For comparison, it needs 66,648K to open Lotus Symphony Spreadsheet compare to 9,660K to open MS Excel.

This would definitely be one deterrent for some people to use Symphony. In my current company, there are still people with just 256 MB RAM on their old PC. 512 MB is the usual. Only the newer pc have 1 GB & above. So with Windows, Lotus Notes Client, etc opened, for majority, Symphony will be consider a very resource intensive application and may be consider slow. It would be a major boost if the resource utilisation can be trim down.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

2007-09-25T14:49:00.000+08:00

To all the Chinese, wish you all a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. Enjoy eating the mooncake.

Image from The Baker's Cottage

IBM Lotus Symphony

2007-09-18T15:46:00.000+08:00

IBM just announced the released of IBM Lotus Symphony. It is a suite of free software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. I'm downloading it now and will try out the features soon. This offers an alternative solution for MS Office or the free version of Open Office. Personally, I have recommended people to use Open Office if they just need most basic function of office suite. For most day to day use, Open Office is more than sufficient. The best feature on Open Office that's missing in MS Office is PDF conversion. Lotus Symphony also providing that feature and supporting Open Document Format (ODF). So can Lotus Symphony live up to the expectation, download it and test it out. Check out Ed's for more info.

Portletize Lotus Notes Application - Part 2 (Multi-value separator)

2007-09-12T09:29:00.000+08:00

Lotus Notes field allow us to set it to mutiple values. It can be set to take one or more separator values (space, comma, semicolon, new line and or blank line).

What happen when a field on the portal is map to a multiple value field in Notes? If we set comma is separator, even if the value in the portal contains a comma, it will be stored as a single value (eg "one, two") and not multi value (eg "one", "two").

Portlet Factory by default uses "|" as the separator which Notes does not support. After a few failed attempt to convert the separator, I manage to use an agent to do the job. In the Domino View & Form builder, there is an option "Run agent on save". This would call the agent to process the field before saving.

I know this is just a work around and there is a more efficient way to do it. At the Portlet Factory - Lotus Collaboration Forum, Sam have helped to answer the questions.

An Event Handler builder can be used. In the Event Name, select System:OnWebAppLoad. Then in the Actions, select the method setItemValueSeparator from your view. Set it to comma. This should automatically convert the field into a comma separated multi-value. At the moment, it does not support multiple separator (according to Sam in the forum). It would be useful if in the future version to support that and also as like in Notes, we can set which separator to use for display. Hoping to see the features in the future release.

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

Malaysia International Fireworks Competition - Grand Finale

2007-09-03T01:26:00.000+08:00

For those who miss out the MIFC grand finale, click here for some pictures. It was indeed a colourful and beautiful extravaganza display of fireworks. I haven't seen so many design at such a hugh magnitude fireworks. It was definitely a good experience.

Malaysia International Fireworks Competition

2007-08-31T02:30:00.000+08:00

Today mark Malaysia's 50th anniversary of our independence day. There's a Fireworks competition (MIFC) held at Putrajaya. Click here for some fireworks pictures.

Malaysia 50 Years of Independence - Merdeka

2007-08-30T16:14:00.000+08:00

31st August 2007, Malaysia will celebrate our 50th Years of Independence, Merdeka. Come join the celebration.

APRRC 2007 Malaysia

2007-08-30T15:40:00.000+08:00

After 18 months of preparation, Asia Pacific Regional Rotaract Conference 2007 have been pulled through successfully. It was organised by Rotaract clubs in district 3300 (Malaysia). It is a first time I help to organise & participate in a Rotaract conference this size. There were delegates from Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Macau, Australia, Hungary, Korea, etc. It was fill with lots of fun and excitement.

It started of with the opening ceremony follow by Rotaract Festival where showcase of food and other stuff from participating countries. Then the night follow with a colourful cultural night. Some country is very creative with mixture of original culture and modern performance. It got everyone up and dancing.

The next day was follow by workshop sessions. The night is at a cowboy town filled with performance. On the last day it was was another plenary session follow by the closing ceremony. Then everyone couldn't wait to go to the water park for the farewell beach party. It was such a fun and wild party. Although the wave pool was cold it didn't stop us from partying in the pool.

Here is some pictures during the event:
1) Rotaractors pictures
2) Opening day
3) Cultural night
4) Workshops
5) final day closing ceremony

Lotus Notes 8 - The hype

2007-08-20T14:13:00.000+08:00

There are so much hype around Lotus community on Lotus Notes 8. I remember the hassle of migrating from Domino 5 to 6. We had more than 100 applications to test and to make sure all the functions are working properly. Now for 6 to 8, I wonder how much work it will take. I've yet to actually test existing application on Domino 8. How will current application fair on the new Eclipse based client? Looking forward to see what other people's experience of upgrading to Domino 8. But not looking forward for the hassle to test all the applications before upgrading.

Portletize Lotus Notes Application - Part 1 (Profile Sets)

2007-08-17T17:14:00.000+08:00

From the existing samples in Portlet Factory (PF), you can get a simple Lotus Notes (LN) application up and running in no time. I will skip the most details covered in the sample.

By using just a Domino View & Form builder, you can get the most simple function of viewing, creating, editing and deleting documents. When setting up the builder, you have to put in the property file for the Domino connection, Database Name, etc. Development and production server should have different settings.

In LN, I normally use profile document. The profile document would contain settings that is needed for the application to run. Same for PF, we can use Profile Set also. Profile Sets contains one or more profiles entries. There's a sample on PF samples page on how to use the profiles feature.

An example that we can use here is to set a profile for the Database name. In my environment, production path and development path is different. Thus for the application to run, it have to point to the correct database path. First, create a Profile Input for the Database name. If a profile set does not exist, you can create a new profile set. Then create a new Profile Entry name DatabaseName type text. I give it a default value to the development server database path.

Next is to set the entries configurable on the portal. Add in a Portlet Adapter builder to create the portlet. Then scroll down to Portlet Sets section. There should be a list of Profile Sets that is created. For those that you want to be configurable, it can be set to "Show individual profile values in Configure". You may want to check on "Require Configuration". This would force the portlet to be configured during deployed before it can be used.

I received a portlet application from a team and it needs code changes everytime it is deploy in development and production. This cause a lot of issue when they forget to make the changes. Thus using the Profile Set example above, it provides a more flexible way to deploy application to different environments.

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

YSlow - 13 Simple Rules for Speeding Up Your Web Site

2007-08-07T11:10:00.000+08:00

Yahoo! Developer Network provides a list of 13 rules for speeding up website. To check if a website follow the simple rules, Yahoo! have provide a nice tool, YSlow. It is a plugin on Firebug. YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on the 13 rules.

Ironically, I've check the Yahoo Performance article page. It have a rating of "F"

www.yahoo.com get a better rating of "B". Some of the rule they get B, C and worst F. I would expect them to have mostly A.

I'm working on a web portal now. Before tuning, I have some issue for expire header and gzip component. I manage to tweak things a bit and get the rating improved. The only luxury that I don't have is Content Delivery Network.

Guess who get the "A" rating below. It's one of Yahoo's biggest competitor.

Websphere Portal Server implementation

2007-07-27T11:01:00.000+08:00

I have not been updating my blog lately. So now I'm trying to put together what I have been learning for the past 2 month. Been busy setting up the new Websphere Portal (WP) infrastructure for my company. It have been quite a long process. WP is like 1000 pieces puzzle compare to Lotus Domino 100 pieces puzzle. There are so many things to do to get a proper WP environment up and running. And there are still fine tuning to be done. Maybe we lack in experience for WP but definitely it is not a simple system to setup.

Next is the development of some portlet applications. I have familiarize myself with Portlet Factory and managed to portletize some Lotus application. In my previous job, I have created portlet using Websphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD). Definitely Portlet Factory has made it much easier to than WSAD. Almost every now and then I find some cool feature in Portlet Factory. I will share more of this in the next few writeup of how I've portletize an Lotus Application.

Through so many Lotus blogs, I have learn so much. Lotus community have been very willing to share their experience and that is great. I'm hoping to learn from Websphere Portal/Portlet Factory blogs. I did a quick search on Google for Webpshere Portal Blog and Portlet Factory Blog. What a let down. I manage to find only a handful of blogs and not all of them are updated. If you know any good Guru out there, appreciate you could leave the URL on the comments. I did a search on Lotus Notes Blog and can definitely see the big different in numbers of blogs. Hmm... do Lotus community have more time to blog? Maybe Lotus tools have make things simpler thus we have more time to blog.

Pottermania

2007-07-24T09:27:00.000+08:00

The hype is on for Harry Potter final book. Things here in Malaysia is slightly more calm. Yes, there are some bookstore/hypermarket where queue started as early as 5:00am to wait for the store to open at around 7:00am. You don't normally see people queue to get into a bookstore. Better still Harry Potter book sold here is not cheap. In fact it is damn expensive. The recommended retail price is going for MYR 109.90. I would not pay that sum for a story book. Some hypermarket are selling it for MYR 69.90. That's slightly more reasonable. But it is still expensive. Three major bookstore are boycotting selling Harry Potter books because hypermarket is selling them for much cheaper. I think that is their lost. Other bookstore selling at retail price but are giving some discount and some them sold out the books.

Anyway I was at a hypermarket to shop for groceries and saw the book. Nope there we no queue. I grab a copy at MYR 69.90 but sorry to say that I'm not a big fan of Harry Potter. It's been 4 days since I got the book but I have not even started the first chapter. Trying to finish another book I'm reading now. Looking at some positive review on the web, I think I will start on the book soon and hope it doesn't disappoint.

Export text file with Chinese character encoding

2007-07-04T16:07:00.000+08:00

I use an Lotus Script agent to create a text file which get data from documents. Things are working fine until some user starts to key in Chinese characters.

Initially the partial code is as below


Dim fileNum As Integer
Dim filePath
fileNum% = Freefile()
filePath = 
Open filePath For Output As fileNum%

The Chinese characters will be shown as boxes in the file. This definitely have to do with the encoding. After some searching I found an easy way to add in the encoding in the the file. Charset = "UTF-8" need to be added to enable proper exporting.

Sample code as below


Dim fileNum As Integer
Dim filePath
fileNum% = Freefile()
filePath = 
Open filePath For Output As fileNum% Charset = "UTF-8"

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

Category View Builder - Expand All (Portlet Factory)

2007-06-08T19:23:00.000+08:00

Things have been so crazy the pass month. Been spending so much time picking up new skill but at the same time have to rush for the project. So I have been neglecting my post here. Almost coming to the completion of my project. Phase 1 anyway. Portlet Factory does give a good impression during these learning period.

I start to build a sample application using db2 as datastore. After playing around, I understand better the concept of separating data access & UI front end. This can be easily be done by creating separate model for service provider and consumer. For the first model, I prepare the SQL statements and the service provider & service operation builder. Then for the UI front end, service consumer builder is used. That way, the back end provider can be changed without changing the UI model. Of course the data schema have to be same.

I won't go into the detail of how that is done. The Portlet Factory samples covers a lot of those. I have gotten used to having categorized view from Lotus Domino/Notes. Thankfully, Portlet Factory provides category view builder. It is just a simple as selecting your table and specifying which column need to be categorized.

My only problem is getting it to expand all during load. Thanks to mtr on the forum, I have some idea on how to get it done. I use view & form builder to display the categorized view. So instead of setting the "View & Form" builder as main, create an "Action List" builder as the main. First I user the DataService to set the result for the table. Then I use the Category View function to expandAll. At last display the view page.

Hope the will help those looking for a expand all during load. The more I use Portlet Factory, the more I find it as a user friendly tool. Quite a lot of things can be done without going down into coding. That is a very good news for beginner.

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server

2007-05-14T08:47:00.000+08:00

I have just change a new notebook. After a day of transferring data onto it, I started to use it. Everything seems to work fine until I was browsing on Firefox. A few sites I get the error "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at websitename.com". I search through the web & forum but did not managed to get a solution. My proxy setting seems to be alright. I can go to those sites using IE and they is not an IE only sites. At the end of the day I gave up. I have a look at it again the next day and found the culprit. I have set the proxy for http but not for other protocol. So a simple checked on "Use this proxy server for all protocols" solved the problem. Come to think of it, the sites that I had problem accessing are https site which use SSL. How could I miss that? Sad to hear that a person (from a forum) gave up using Firefox because couldn't get this tiny issue fixed. Hope this help those who face the same problem out there.

AirAsia

2007-04-25T22:51:00.000+08:00

Thanks to AirAsia, my recent trip to Langkawi just cost below RM 100 (USD 30) for two way flight (Kuala Lumpur - Langkawi), including airport tax, fuel surcharge and travel insurance. Last year I managed to get free ticket to Cambodia on AirAsia (just have to pay for tax and fuel surcharge). AirAsia motto "now everyone can fly" stay true, providing budget traveler like me with affordable flights. If you are in or coming to ASEAN countries, do check out AirAsia for budget flights.

This is not a promotion for them (maybe yes in a way) and I'm not affiliated to them. Just sharing information for good flight deal. But bear in mind, it's a budget airline. Always hear of delay. My experience was delay for around 1/2 - 1 hours, so still acceptable. Once the plane was early and we arrive early too. Food is served seperately. I tried Nasi Lemak (local Malaysia food) and it does taste good although serve cold. On newer planes (Airbus), the seat space was good. But on the older planes, they are quite cramp. But for a 1 to 2 hours flight, it is bearable.

Check out some of the pictures I took in Langkawi here.

Visit Malaysia 2007

Websphere Portlet Factory

2007-04-19T17:33:00.000+08:00

Just installed Websphere Portlet Factory (WPF) and test it out a bit. My previous experience of developing portlet is using Websphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), now called Rational Application Developer (RAD). Definitely WPF is much simpler to get started with, for developing portlets than WSAD.

I manage to built a simple portlet to display a Domino application view and document in a few minutes. Basically a few builders in a portlet factory model would do the job. But this just create the WPF provided standard view and display all the fields in the document. It would take more work to customized to the way we may want it to be. But still so far, no Java coding yet. Good new ya.

Will spend more time learning up WPF. Definitely it is much easier to learn than building portlet in WSAD. This hold true especially for those who are still going to learn Java :) Let just see how far we can built portlet application using WPF without JAVA codings. Will update my findings soon.

Websphere Portal iFrame portlet on IE 7

2007-04-10T12:17:00.000+08:00

I was testing an Websphere Portal v6.0 iFrame portlet. It was working on IE 6.0 and Firefox. But on IE 7, I get the error message below.


The portlet cannot be displayed because your browser does not support iframes.

My first impression was that IE7 support for iframe was disable. So I check the IE settings and it seems alright. After some searching around, I found the problem is not with IE7. It's a known issue but can be easily solved. Go to the Portal Administration -> Portal Settings -> Supported Clients. The list of supported client is listed there. IE 7 is missing. Just "Add new client" and filled up the information as per MSIE 6.0. Only the information below needs to be changed


User Agent:
.*MSIE 7.0.*

Version:
7.0

It would be much easier if we could make a copy of the IE 6.0 client setting and make the necessary changes only. Any portlet guru who can modify the Supported Client setting portlets to have additional copy function?

Looking forward to play around more with Portal Server.

Document Navigation From View - HTTP_Referer

2007-04-03T15:57:00.000+08:00

On Lotus client, when opening a document from a view, normally will be open on a new tab. Thus closing it may bring you back to the view.

On web, people try to avoid opening a new window. When opening a document from a view, users will expect to go back to the view that they come from. Users can access the same document from different views. Thus application have to be built to handle this.

One way to do this is passing the view name through the anchor link when opening the doc from the view. A simple way is to look through the view table DOM anchor and append the required query strings. I usually put the a div tag ("viewtable") around the embedded view in the $$ViewTemplate. This code below will look through the anchor link and append in the view name.


var anchor = 
document.getElementById("viewtable").getElementsByTagName("a");
for(var i=0; i<=anchor.length; i++){
if(anchor[i] !== undefined){
anchor[i].href = anchor[i].href + "&view=" +
document.getElementById("viewname").value;}
}

This is a simple solution but when you have a large view, you have to take into consideration of the script performance. There should be a simpler way to do this. I just thought of using CGI values.

So I tried using HTTP_Referer. It returns the url of where you come from, thus it can be used to retrieve the view name. I store the view name in a hidden field for easy reference. The formula below can be used in the field to retrieve the view name from the HTTP_Referer. If it cannot find the view name in the HTTP_Referer, it will put in a default view name.


a:=@Left(@Right(HTTP_Referer; ".nsf/"); "?OpenView");
@If(a=""; "vMyAction"; a)

The "Close" button in the document can use the field to navigate back to the view.
When going from read to edit mode, the referer will be the read mode thus losing the view name info. A simple way around this is to pass the view name along in the URL when opening the document in edit mode or going back to read mode. It can easily be retrieve using @UrlQueryString.

There are many ways to do the document navigation from the view. You can use the methods above, cookies, etc. If you know a better or simpler way to do it, feel free to drop in your comments.

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

Javascript String Performance

2007-03-20T16:39:00.000+08:00

Followup previous article on innerHTML performance, I now take a look at what is the better way to built the HTML string for the innerHTML.

I use 2 for loop to built a table with 1000 rows and 5 columns. 4 different ways of building the string is tested. The test is done on Firefox 2.

1) str += ...
2) str = str + ...
3) str = str.concat(... , ...)
4) str.push(... , ...)

Below is the javascript sample for the 4th test cases


function init(){
 console.time("String")
 var newStr = new Array("<table>");
 for(var i=0; i<1000; i++){
  newStr.push("<tr>");
  for (var j=0; j<5; j++){
    newStr.push("<td>row ", i, " col ", j, "</td>");
  }
  newStr.push("</tr>");
 }
 newStr.push("</table>");
 document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = newStr.join("");
 console.timeEnd("String");
}

I did sample of 20 time and get the average result.

	Test Type	Average Time (ms)
1	str += ...	317.5
2	str = str + ...	285.4
3	str = str.concat(... , ...)	287.2
4	str.push(... , ...)	298.4

The results is quite close. The 1st Case is the slowest among all. The other 3 time is almost silimar considering their performance variation is about the same. Thus for most case (small functions), either way should be fine. But to squeeze every ms out, try using case 2-4.

The only thing to avoid is building the string like the example below.
newStr = newStr + "row ";
newStr = newStr + i;
newStr = newStr + " col ";
newStr = newStr + j;
newStr = newStr + "";

Use this instead:
newStr = newStr + "row " + i + " col " + j + "";

Any String that can be build in one line, should be done so.

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

DOM innerHTML vs appendChild

2007-03-15T13:16:00.000+08:00

There's a lot of debate on whether to use innerHTML or to add in HTML elements using DOM methods. Personally I prefer to use innerHTML because it is easier to use. innerHTML is said to be faster as well.

For comparison, I have develop 2 functions to create a table with 100 rows and 5 columns.

1) An array is use to built the Table HTML string. Then it is appended into innerHTML of a div "content".


function init(){
var ihtml = "<table id='mytable'>";
for(var i=1; i<=100; i++){
 ihtml += "<tr id='row" + i + "'>";
 for(var j=1; j<=5; j++){
  ihtml += "<td id='col" + i + "_" + j + "'>" + i +

"_" + j + "</td>";
 }
 ihtml += "</tr>";
}
ihtml += "</html>";
document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = ihtml;
}

2) A DOM table is built and append into the div "content".


function init(){
var table=document.createElement("table");
table.setAttribute("id", "mytable");
for(var i=1; i<=100; i++){
 var tr = document.createElement("tr");
 tr.setAttribute("id", "row" + i);
 for(var j=1; j<=5; j++){
  var td = document.createElement("td");
  td.setAttribute("id", "col" + i + "_" + j);
  td.appendChild(document.createTextNode(i + "_" + j))
  tr.appendChild(td);
 }
 table.appendChild(tr);
}
document.getElementById("content").appendChild(table)
}

I use Firebug profile to time the function. So what the performance result difference should I expect?

	function 1(innerHTML)	function 2
Average Time	60 ms	130 ms

Both function manage to execute in miliseconds. But, function 1 (innerHTML) is two time faster the DOM methods. I have increase it to 1000 rows and the result is the same, innerHTML is twice as fast. As a conclusion, innerHTML is much faster for more complex/larger DOM manipulation.

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

Quick Tip - Domino File Upload Control element

2007-03-06T10:42:00.000+08:00

For file uploading on the web, File Upload Control element can be used in Domino Design. It will create the file upload file (eg tag below). The name of the File Upload field will start with %%File.


<input id="UserFile" size=50 type="file"
name="%%File.482571b10020b158.e1c9d0d2ceb6a5c5482571b50022e0ab.$Body.0.1F64">

@AttachmentNames will return all the attachment(s) filename of the document. To create anchor link to the file, a <ComputedValue> can be used to built the link.


temp := @AttachmentNames;
ahref := "<a title=\"" + temp + 
"\" target=_blank href=" + DatabasePath + 
"VUncat/" + @Text( @DocumentUniqueID ) + 
"/$FILE/" + temp + ">" + temp + "</a>";
ahref

There is a problem when directly using the attachment name to be set as the anchor link. Files with space in the filename will produce broken link. Some file upload examples that I saw, include a message to inform user not to upload file with space in the filename. This is definitely not user friendly.

To overcome it use @URLEncode. It will handle the space or some other special characters in the filename.


ahref := "<a title=\"" + temp + 
"\" target=_blank href=" + DatabasePath + 
"VUncat/" + @Text( @DocumentUniqueID ) + 
"/$FILE/" + @URLEncode("Domino"; temp) + 
">" + temp + "</a>";

To add in additional function to removed the attachment, use an input checkbox with the name "%%Detach"


ahref := "<INPUT TYPE=checkbox NAME=\"%%Detach\" VALUE=\"" + 
@URLEncode("Domino"; temp) + "\"> <a title=\"" + 
temp + "\" target=_blank href=" + @WebDbName + "VUncat/" + 
@Text( @DocumentUniqueID ) + "/$FILE/" + @URLEncode("Domino"; temp) + 
">" + temp + "</a><br/>";

Checked on the filename that need to be removed. Then save document. The attachment will be removed.

Domino File Upload Control provides an easy way to upload file into the document. And the examples above is to access the attachments and manipulate it (open, delete).

Show-n-Tell Thursday Add to del.icio.us

CNY Lou Sang

2007-03-01T22:33:00.000+08:00

Lou Sang is a Chinese New Year (CNY) dish. It consist of crackers, carrot, assorted colored ginger, pomelo, etc and not forgetting the raw fish. It is mix together with pepper, oil and plum sauce. Family and friends will stand and mix it up together using chopstick. While mixing, everyone will provide good luck wish like getting a promotion, better business, etc.

Lou Sang is only available about 1-2 weeks before CNY and 15th day after CNY (the last day of CNY - Chap Goh Meh). If you happen to be in Malaysia during then, don't forget to try it out at Chinese restaurant.

Lion Dance

2007-02-19T12:03:00.000+08:00

Lion dance is normally perform during Chinese New Year. Troupes performing at the business location to bring good fortune for the business. Wish you all a prosperous new year a head.

Gong Xi Fat Chai

2007-02-15T11:10:00.000+08:00

To all Chinese, Gong Xi Fat Chai (Happy Chinese New Year). Have a prosperous year ahead.

I'll be off for the whole week for Chinese New Year holidays :)

dojo.dom cheatsheet

2007-02-08T09:06:00.000+08:00

I find myself keep searching for the same documentation for some of Dojo function. As I mention before the documentation site is quite slow to load from here. So I decide to compile some locally for my own quick reference. Here to share with you all is the first one, dojo.dom Cheatsheet. The information is accurate according to Dojo documentation site.

Add to del.icio.us

Sortable Column View using Dojo FilteringTable

2007-02-07T09:18:00.000+08:00

In Lotus Notes client, we can set the column in a view to be sortable. I use Dojo FilteringTable to mimic the sortable column. In this example, it only works for flat view or view without categories. I'm using Dojo 0.4.0 here.

First create a $$ViewTemplate. This is needed to attached in the required Dojo libraries and the generation of the FilteringTable. Insert the embedded view and set the Display to "Using HTML". For simplicity, add a div around the embedded view. It is used by the function to pick up the table inside it to be formated. Give it a name, eg. "viewdiv". Make sure only the text is pass through HTML. If the embedded view is also pass through, it won't be displayed.

In the HTML Head Content insert the code below. Change the "dojopath" to where you store your dojo. Import this js file into the database.


"<script type=\"text/javascript\">"+@NewLine+
"    var djConfig = {isDebug: true};"+@NewLine+
"</script>"+@NewLine+
"<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"/" + dojopath + "/dojo-0.4.0/dojo.js\"> </script>"+@NewLine+
"<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"/" + @WebDbName + "/LNFilteringTable.js\"></script>"

Then in the JS Header insert the require dojo Library. When the document load then call the function createFilterTable(ViewDivName).


dojo.require("dojo.widget.FilteringTable");
dojo.hostenv.writeIncludes();

dojo.addOnLoad(init);

function init(){
createFilterTable("viewdiv");
}

Domino by default will generate a HTML table for the view. What the function does is to format the table for the Filtering Table. The first row id moved out of the body to a newly created table head (thead). This is used for sorting the columns. Then each of the row need to have a value. The anchor link href is extracted as the value of the row. The anchor links also need to be removed because they will affect the sorting. To replace the links, double click event is added on each row to open the document. Below is the sample end result.

The generated table is without any formatting. To make it look as the image above, use CSS for the layout. Import the dojo FilteringTable sample images for the column header into the Image Resources (ft-head.gif, ft-headup.gif & ft-headdown.gif). I used a page to create the CSS. Use @WebDbName for the <ComputedValue>.


#viewdiv table {width:100%;border:1px solid #ccc; border-collapse:collapse;}
#viewdiv table td, table th {padding:4px;font-weight:normal;}
#viewdiv table thead td, table thead th {background-image:url(/<ComputedValue>/dojowidget/ft-head.gif);
background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:top right;padding:6px;font-weight:bold;}
#viewdiv table thead td.selectedUp, table thead th.selectedUp {background-image:url(/<ComputedValue>/dojowidget/ft-headup.gif);}
#viewdiv table thead td.selectedDown, table thead th.selectedDown {
background-image:url(/<ComputedValue>/dojowidget/ft-headdown.gif);}
#viewdiv table tbody tr td{border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}
#viewdiv table tbody tr.alt td{background: #e3edfa;}
#viewdiv table tbody tr.selected td {background: yellow;}
#viewdiv table tbody tr:hover td {background: #a6c2e7;}
#viewdiv table tbody tr.selected:hover td {background:#ff9;}

For future enhancement, I will add in the filtering functions. At the mean time, download this js file and tried it out.

Show-n-Tell Thursday del.icio.us

Prototype Documentation

2007-02-06T09:12:00.001+08:00

Go to this site for the full prototype 1.5 documentation. For the downloadable version, Big Medium have posted a PDF copy of the documentation. This is what I call good documentation. Complete API documentation with EXAMPLES.

Dojo API documentation site frustration

2007-01-25T14:42:00.000+08:00

I head out to Dojo API site to check some stuff. It look way so long to load the main page (> 3 minutes). There are more than 50 objects (I stop counting... should be close to 80-90 objects) that is loaded. I already frustrated to be stuck in some Dojo stuff and now I have to wait for so long to look at their API documentation. Not to mention that it is still not completed yet.

With so many different javascript framework out there, Dojo really have to buck up here. A good example is YUI. It have comprehensive documentation. The documentation is also available in the download so you can refer to it locally.

Florathon, Malaysia Flora Fest 2007

2007-01-20T21:48:00.000+08:00

Have you ever seen flowers run? Florathon is a brisk 3-km walk and participants will be judged not by speed but by floral-themed costumes. This is a fun-filled beautiful and colourful event in conjunction to Malaysia Flora Fest 2007. There is a waiter race and children cooking too. Check out the photos here.

Visit Malaysia 2007

Time your javascript

2007-01-19T14:24:00.000+08:00

In web application Javascript performance is important for web application. This is especially with Web 2.0 where javascript usage is increasing. I just found out a good feature in Firebug to measure the performance of your scripts. For those who didn't know, there is a profiling feature in Firebug. I admit I just found out after reading the article AJAX Debugging with Firebug. Jump right into using Firebug without reading what's new there. How could I have miss that feature?

It is really a great tool to time your script. You will get a sample result as below.

Firebug includes a JavaScript profiler that gives you detailed reports on the performance of every function called during a given period. You can start it directly in the toolbar of the Firebug Console tab. The other way is to start it in your code

console.profile();
yourFunctions();
console.profileEnd("Loading function");

This is definitely a tool that will help out Web Developer a lot.

Using List in Simple Form Validation

2007-01-16T13:20:00.000+08:00

In LotusScript, List is a very useful collection data type. I've spoken to quite a few developer and not many of them is taking advantage of List data type. Below is a simple validation example using List.

First example, is a typical simple validation I found in a form

Function ValidateSubmit As Boolean
Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument
Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument

If uidoc.FieldGetText("FirstName") = "" Then
  Msgbox "Please enter your first name"
  ValidateSubmit = False
  Exit Function
Elseif uidoc.FieldGetText("LastName") = "" Then
  Msgbox "Please enter your last name"
  ValidateSubmit = False
  Exit Function
Elseif uidoc.FieldGetText("Gender") = "" Then
  Msgbox "Please select your gender"
  ValidateSubmit = False
  Exit Function
'........ other validation
End If
ValidateSubmit = True
End Function

Second example, fields and messages stored in a List for validation

Function ValidateSubmit As Boolean
Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument
Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument

Dim fieldList List As String
fieldList("FirstName") = "Please enter your first name"
fieldList("LastName") = "Please enter your last name"
fieldList("Gender") = "Please select your gender"
'...fieldList("OtherFields") = "return message"

Forall f In fieldList
  If uidoc.FieldGetText(Listtag(f)) = "" Then
    Msgbox f
    ValidateSubmit = False
    Exit Function
  End If
End Forall
ValidateSubmit = True
End Function

As the number of fields to be validated grows, maintaining the List in the second example is much simple than the first example. This is just a very simple example to showcase the use of List. You can even store objects in the List. Try using List if you haven't done so.

Show-n-Tell Thursday

Debugging Dojo using Firebug and Greasemonkey

2007-01-16T10:52:00.000+08:00

Debugging in Dojo is easier than ever. Shane O’Sullivan posted a great script using Greasemonkey to log the debug using Firebug.

From his blog:

The solution is to use a Greasemonkey script to enable Dojo/Firebug debugging on any page you visit, or only for pages in a given list of domains. The steps to use this script are as follows:

Install Greasemonkey from http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
Install Firebug from http://www.getfirebug.com
Open the file http://www.skynet.ie/~sos/misc/dojo_debug_enable.user.js in Firefox. Greasemonkey should prompt you to install it.

That should be all that’s necessary.

You can always enable or disable the script directly in Greasemonkey.

Five Things You May Not Have Known About Me

2007-01-08T09:25:00.000+08:00

I was tagged by Chris Blatnick and Mac Guidera.

1) Start of with my name (surname) - Beh. It means Horse. It is pronounce in Teochew (Chinese dialect). I don't speak much in Teochew, but will try to practise a much as possible with my grandparents. I normally use Cantonese (another Chinese dialect) with my parents and sisters.

2) I love photography. I pickup a digital SLR end of last year. Been learning a lot about photography. Getting a good picture is not as easy as it looks. Getting the right exposure, composition, etc is important. But.. some things can be corrected in Photoshop :) I like taking portrait pictures. You can check out some selected photos here.

3) I love to travel as well. Currently I can only afford to travel around Asia. For personal holiday I've been to Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Bali (Indonesia), China, Taiwan. For work, Bangkok, Shanghai, Taipei and Furth (Germany - only Europe country I've been). Malaysia currency is not strong so to travelling to Europe or US is out of my reach at the moment. While I'm still dealling in Lotus Notes, anyone willing to sponsor me a trip to LotusSphere, US :) Hehe... just trying out my luck. I've only work in Malaysia only (excluding business travel). If given a chance, still finding opportunity to work in Europe / US. I would like to learn about the working culture in different place.

4) I love rollerblading. I used to rollerblade a lot during my university years. I like roller hockey, but not good in it. I've even tried playing tennis on my blades. During those time, normally I would go for leasure blading after midnight around the campus. Now, my blade is broken :(

5) I'm born in Melaka. Melaka history dating back to the 15th Century, when it was a vital world trading port to Asia country. This year is Visit Malaysia 2007. Take this chance to visit Malaysia and not forgetting the beautiful Melaka city.

To get to know me better, drop me a line at willbeh at gmail.com . Drop me a line if you are coming to Malaysia. I will try to bring you around if I'm free.

I now tag Damien Katz, Mikkel and Radu Cadariu

Visit Malaysia 2007

2007-01-07T22:06:00.001+08:00

Eye On Malaysia
Originally uploaded by William Beh.

Visit Malaysia 2007 was launch yesterday together with the opening of "Eye On Malaysia" at the beautiful Taman Tasik Titiwangsa (Lake Titiwangsa Garden). People around the world should take the opportunity to visit Malaysia this year. Check out the Tourism Malaysia website.

Quick Tips - dojo.dom

2007-01-04T11:56:00.000+08:00

When extracting text from a DOM node (HTML or XML), different browser have different method to do it. In IE node.text() while Firefox node.textContent().

Dojo provide a simple way to extract the text content.
dojo.dom.textContent(node)

So far I've tested it on IE and Firefox and it is working fine. I do not need to check for the browser myself. Try it out.

Upgrade to IE 7 vs Firefox 2

2006-12-22T17:19:00.000+08:00

I was going through this month statistic of my blog. This come a little surprise to me. Both Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 a while ago.

For firefox, users 62% users already upgrade to 2.0 and another 5% is already on 2.0.0.1

For IE, only 19% of the users have upgraded to IE 7.

So what does this means? I myself is still on IE6. One of the reason was proven by the statistics. Most people are still on IE 6 so my development have to support them. And I can't install both IE 7 and IE 6 together on the same machine. Lets just see how fast IE 7 will gain momentum.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2006-12-22T17:06:00.000+08:00

After so many months of hard work, at last I have a break coming up. Going for vacation for the next one week.

So wish all the readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)

Product certification, is it important?

2006-12-21T09:40:00.000+08:00

I have just pass the "IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.0 Network Deployment, Core Administration" exam. Thanks to Websphere User Group (WUG) Malaysia for providing free certification examination. So does this means I'm a certified WAS Administration. To be honest I won't dare to call myself that, at least for the moment until I have more hands-on experience. I do not have much experience on WAS. I use WAS before a few years back and that's just touching the surface. I have not don't real setup of the server, clustering, etc. I have just installed some J2EE application on the server. I just spend a few days going through some materials on WAS. Haven't that little experience helps a bit to understand the new WAS 6 easier. But being certified doesn't mean that I'm an experience guy. The certification does help me to understand the product much better (with or without experience). Anyway, I really appreciate WUG for giving free certification exam to the members. How about Lotus User Group (LUG), would they give free certification exams to the member?

I'm more experience in Lotus Domino/Notes. Does someone without certification means that he/she is not as good as someone with certification? I believe that I'm just as good as most certified Lotus person out there. Surely there are some really really expert in Lotus. Some are certified and some are not. In employment market, I think it does matters as someone with certification have some prove that he/she have the knowledge. But then again, by just reading and without experience, someone could pass the examination. It is not too difficult. So does certification really makes a different? And should I sit for Lotus examination just as a prove that I "know" Lotus?

Burn the bug with Firebug

2006-12-13T08:26:00.000+08:00

If any of web developer who have not install Firebug, download it now. It's a look you will say "How can I live without that". The beta 1.0 have a lot of improvement especially on the javascript debugging. Check it out.

Using Java in Lotus

2006-11-24T16:54:00.000+08:00

I haven't been updating this site as often as I want too but work have been keeping me really busy.
My friend was asking why should he (Domino Developer) learn up Java? Basically for Lotus Notes application, it is quite sufficient to keep to Lotus Script and Formula. There are lots of advise why should we learn up Java but I'm not going to go into that here. I give let him know that the skill may come useful sometime even in Lotus Notes application. It would be good to branch out a little too.

So for the Lotus Notes application example, I gave him the link to a post I had sometime back in my earlier blog. The example show how you can use a Java image library to get property out of attached image files. I couldn't find any way of doing it in LotusScript (drop me a line if you know of a way). Check out the example here. At least he agreed that there are some use of Java in Lotus Notes application development.

Efficient JavaScript

2006-11-09T08:51:00.000+08:00

For anyone who does web development, this article "Efficient JavaScript" is a good read from Dev.Opera.

Client User Interface on Web: Preview pane on web

2006-10-31T18:16:00.001+08:00

I finally get some time to sit down and do an example of a very simple application with dojo. I've created a split vertical pane. The top pane will display the view and the bottom pane (preview) will display the form (edit and saving).

You can download the example here. Remember to sign the database first.

First setup where you store your dojo library. Open the profile document from the menu "Action --> Edit Profile".

Enter the path of the dojo.js. for eg "/WebTool/Dojo.nsf/dojo-0.3.1/dojo.js". Here I store dojo in a nsf template. You can also store it directly at the Domino server HTML directory.

First the view. I used SortableTable. The view (hvPerson) generates the html table body. $$ViewTemplate is use to create the rest of the table for the SortableTable. In each row, the document unique id is inserted in the <td> tag as a value. This will be use to retrieve the selected document from the table.

The "Create" button will retrieve the form (dfPerson). Domino form will create the full HTML source by default. So when it is retrieved, we only need the Form portion to be display in the preview area.

When saving the form, we can directly use the form action for submission. Just pass in the form to dojo.io.bind and it will handle the submission. This is the same when saving a existing form. The best part is, even the WebQuerySave works. So this is really a convenient function to use.

I have just touch the surface of how "Client" like application can be built on the browser. To those dojo guru out there appreciate if you could feedback on the code used here. I put together the this sample application referring to the dojo demo application and responses from this forum.
Download the sample and try it out.

Show-n-Tell Thursday

Happy Deepavali

2006-10-20T11:19:00.000+08:00

For all Indian readers and my friends, wish you all a very happy Deepavali.

Client User Interface on Web

2006-10-18T15:19:00.000+08:00

There are so many different javascript framework available for download. To name a few prototype, dojo, yui.... etc. The list goes on. I've been using prototype for quite a while and like it. The $ function, some of the DOM, event and array functions are quite easy to use.

Now I'm looking for something that can help me build a client like application on browser. Dojo provide a lot of building client like functions, eg. browser windows, menu bar, just to name a few. YUI is gaining a lot of reputation for their set of library. So which is better? Or should I stick to prototype & scriptaculous?

I ended up giving dojo a try. Dojo definitely have quite a lot of build in functions. But it's quite heavy too. The full dojo.js compress is 127 KB. That doesn't take into consideration of the many different library that need to be imported for different functions.

First impression, documentation is needs to be improved. I can't find offline documentation that can be downloaded. The API doc and the manual is all online. But I still gave it a further look.

Going through some of the examples, I found something that I can start with. I like the ContainerPane and the SplitPane. I can build layout without worrying about the CSS of the different panes in a page. The spilt pane provide resizable panel. That's nice.

Then I jump to AJAX calls. Dojo provide an IO library for that. Dojo even provide crossed domain AJAX calls through IFrame I/O. What I like is the form submission. That's what's I was looking for.Lotus Notes form itself have the required submission action url. Using dojo.io, AJAX posting of the form can directly use the existing url. This is convenient.

Using both function above, a view with preview pane can be created similar like in LN Client. user can browse through the view documents without refreshing the page. The document can be set editable and save within the same page. I'll be drafting the steps to create the example describe above. Keep a look out.

Managing Domino File Resources Using WebDAV

2006-10-13T11:28:00.000+08:00

For those of you using external javascript library in Lotus Notes, I guest a lot of you went through the pain of importing the javascripts into the File Resources. This is true for big library like YUI, Dojo and even DHTML editors like TinyMCE. For some, most probably those will be distributed directly into the server HTML folder. But for a worldwide distribution of application, it's easier to distribute it together with the application.

Thank to Jake brilliance again, I learned a new way to import these file almost quite easily into the database using WebDav. Just a few setup on the server and you are ready to go. Check out the article "Managing JavaScript Libraries in Domino".

CouchDb Project Website New Design

2006-10-11T19:13:00.000+08:00

CouchDb Project website have a new look. Thanks for Ken Tango for the design.
It's been some crazy month for me at work. Didn't manage to update my blog recently. I've been working on CouchDb website new look for the pass few days and just manage to implement the new look. Check it out.

Content Feed RSS Part 2 - Datetime

2006-10-02T10:20:00.000+08:00

I've learn something new from a comment from my previous post. All date-times in RSS conform to the Date and Time Specification of RFC 822, with the exception that the year may be expressed with two characters or four characters (four preferred). Must have miss that when browsing through the RSS Specification. I've updated the RSS feed of CouchDb Forum. The change is quite easy in Lotus Notes view. I've just change the column to the required format as shown below. Use "Date/Time" style for the column and display "Custom".

Greetings

2006-09-24T09:11:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since I last post anything here. Just to put up a line that I'm still around (alive and kicking). It's been a crazy month for me. After countless hours put into a project. Now in the phase of rolling out. But still have a lot to do. Even today on Sunday is a working day. Hoping to get a break after this. Then I'll put in some time to share some of the technical experience I gain from this project. So look out of it. Cheers :)

Content Feed RSS Part 1

2006-09-05T19:27:00.000+08:00

There are two major content feed (that I know of) Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (RSS) and Atom. I am working on creating a RSS feed for the CouchDb Project website. On firefox, when a website have a feed, it can be indicated right on top at the URL bar.

You just need to add the following code
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Lotus Notes on Web 2.0 (RSS 2.0)" href="http://notesweb2.blogspot.com/rss.xml" />

The RSS feed for the CouchDb Forum is created using view and $$ViewTemplate. I will be posting the solution in my next writeup. Check out the feed here.

CouchDb project site live

2006-09-01T14:21:00.000+08:00

CouchDb project website is now live. CouchDb 0.2 has just been posted. Head to the project site to download CouchDb.

Export View as MS Excel

2006-08-30T08:33:00.000+08:00

Follow up with the previous posting, I get the idea from Sean Burgess to export view data directly to excel. The idea is basically create a HTML table from a view and display it as application/msexcel.

Create a HTML view. I name the view with alias viewname.xls

In the header add in the required tag for a table <tr> and <td>

Then create a $$ViewTemplate for the view. In the Content Type, set it as application/msexcel

Embed the view into the viewtemplate then add in the opening and closing table tag for the view.

When you call the view (http://server/dbpath/viewname.xls) it should prompt you to save the view. The saved file can be open in Excel. The similar method can be used to export to other format like words, etc.

Show-n-Tell Thursday

How to export web data to MS Excel

2006-08-29T17:37:00.000+08:00

Philippe GAUVIN wrote an good article on how to export web data to MS Excel. Basically the concept is to display the view as Comma Seperated View (CSV). Then use $$Viewtemplate to set the Content-Type as text/csv. Basically when you load the view, it should open in MS Excel (only for those pc which associate csv file with MS Excel). This is an easy and fast way to "export" the data out. Check out the article.

CouchDB

2006-08-25T00:07:00.000+08:00

I have not been updating my blog lately. It's been some crazy weeks. Lots of project is in the queue. In a way it's good.

Recently I've volunteer to help develop a site for CouchDB with Damien Katz. Thanks to Bruce Elgort for hosting the new project site. It should be out soon. I'll announce it here once it's up and running.

So what id CouchDb anyway? CouchDb is a database system meant to simplify the development of certain types of applications, particularly document oriented applications. For more details check out this site.

Damien just launch Alpha 1. You can download and test it out. There are some sample on PHP. Check it out and look out for the project site soon.

5 HTML elements you probably never use (but perhaps should)

2006-08-22T19:32:00.000+08:00

There is an article at SEOmoz.org about 5 HTML elements that's seldom use

<address>
<q>
<optgroup> (personally fell this one is really useful)
<acronym> or <abbr>
<fieldset> and <legend>

Check out the article for details.