16-09-2009

Composite Application Editor will not edit Page Properties - you're hosed

Category Domino designer Composite Applications
A colleague and I have within a couple of days both seen this in the Composite Application Editor:
A picture named M2
If you see the same thing in your CAE, you are going to spend some time repairing your Lotus Notes 8 client.

Let me explain what's wrong with this picture.
If you are in the CAE and you right-click a Page and select "Edit Page Properties" and then click the Advanced tab, it is supposed to look like this:
A picture named M3
You see a list of Page properties. You can click Add to add new properties, you can click Edit to edit existing properties.

In the first screen dump, the list is empty and clicking the Add or Edit buttons displays error messages. There must be some kind of corruption in the CAE that has happened when this phenomenon shows up, because if you open up the same Composite Application with a CAE from a different workstation, you are still able to edit the properties.

My fix for the problem was to de-install the complete Notes client, delete my local Notes Data directory and the re-install. Takes hours to do. I will now start doing my Composite Application development in a VmWare image, making sure I have a backup copy of the image to roll back to.

Does anyone know of a quicker way of fixing the problem?

10-09-2009

Designer help sucks - a cure

Category Domino designer Show-n-Tell Thursday SnTT
I have had some time to experiment with 8.5 and Composite Applications. And the help in the Domino Designer sucks. I hate it. Every time I search for something, I have to click at least three results that all have the same subject and description before I find the one I needed.
I have found a cure for that problem. I can see how my quality of life will improve now. And I have an idea that others will be able to Get Things Done with less frustration by using this built-in feature of the Online help in the Domino Designer.

To set my context: I am in the process of creating a small portal for the Notes client. A Composite Application consisting of NSF-based components and a few Managed Browser components. I will be using LotusScript and @Functions and of course Wires and Actions to transfer information from component to component.
I haven't got a lot of hands-on experience with developing Composite Applications. I am learning. I need to be able to use the built-in help, reading examples, going up and down the Classes, methods and properties to learn how they are supposed to be used.

Here is how my search result for "propertybroker" looked before and after the change:
Before After
A picture named M2 A picture named M3


The first search is full of Java- and Xpages-related stuff. A waste of my time in the context I am at the moment.
I did not find anything related to my need for information until I clicked the 7th search result.

The second search is full of good stuff. Actually, the first one was what I was looking for.

And what was the trick?
Have a good look at the top of the screen dumps. It says Search scope. In the first one the search is with the Default search scope. In the second I am using my own, customized search scope called LotusScript+@Functions. I have limited the searching to include only the parts of the help that I want it to search.

And how did I create such a search scope?
Easy. Click on the search scope that is active - that would be "Default" in most people's Designer client.
A picture named M4
I have two such Search scopes. You probably have just one (for now).
Click New... Give your scope a name. And then click Edit... to define what the scope is going to include.
Here is what I ticked off:
A picture named M5

Click OK, highlight your new scope in the list and click OK. Now you're searching in only the part of the help that you have configured it to search.

That's it.

BTW. I will look into the possibilities in that Search Scope configuration some more. Including search on the Composite Applications Wiki for instance is probably something that we could get to work from here,





Translation

Jens vægt-o-meter

12/08-06: 96,9 kg
14/10-06: 90,1 kg
14/08-07: 94,3 kg
07/11-07: 88,9 kg
09/11-08: 96,3 kg
03/02-09: 93,6 kg
09/08-09: 96,7 kg
30/12-09: 89.6 kg
25/01-10: 88.9 kg
09/03-10: 87.3 kg
31/03-10: 86.3 kg
26/08-10: 94.2 kg

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