Dec's Dom Blog

Tags : Beta Domino 8
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While my machine slowly chuggs away downloading the beta code I have been reading the release notes to see what I can find of interest to those thinking of evaluating it and I'm distilling what I think are important points here.

Widgets and Live Text support on the Linux and Mac OS platforms is introduced with this release; previously, Widgets and Live text was available on supported Windows platforms only.

Notes 8.5 adds support for Notes standard configuration installation and use from a USB drive. ( otherwise known as NOMAD in previous releases it used to only support the basic client in 8.0x )

Add Google Calendar entries, another Notes user's calendar, or an iCal feed.

Forward contacts as a vCard from Contacts. Select the contact(s) you want to forward as a vCard and choose "Forward vCard".

New Notebook (formerly Personal Journal template). The Personal Journal template has a new name, and a new look. When you install or upgrade to Notes 8.5, any new Notebook you create will use the new template (Notebook8.ntf).

The Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) reduces the total cost of ownership of maintaining any participating Notes database by storing all file attachments in a separate repository on the server and retrieving them by reference.

The auto-populated groups feature uses pre-defined criteria to automatically determine and update group membership. Use the auto-populated groups feature to apply policies to users and groups based on their home servers.

A Notes ID vault is an optional, server-based database that holds protected copies of Notes user IDs. An ID vault allows administrators and users to easily manage Notes user IDs. When IDs are lost, new copies are easily recovered from the ID vault. When users forget their Notes passwords, administrators can provide help instructions that are displayed when users click the new Forgotten Password button in the Notes login window. Authorized personnel can reset (change) the passwords, without requiring access to the ID files or the vault.

The Domino Web server can serve files compressed by gzip (GNU zip); this feature is enabled by default.

Domino Designer moves to the Eclipse platform for Notes 8.5

A new Ultralite mode provides mail, contacts, and a day-at-a-glance calendar on the Apple iPhone or iPod touch.

The full mode of Domino Web Access is on a new tabbed framework for documents and views. This new framework has the look and feel of the lite mode that was introduced in 8.0.1. It provides more parity with the Notes client, and is more efficient.

Before installing or upgrading to Notes 8.5 beta, you should first uninstall your existing Notes client.

Domino version 8.5 public beta 1 introduces new ODS level 50. Domino databases are not upgraded to the new ODS level by default, and no conversion is required as part of the upgrade. Use Create_R8_Databases=1 to upgrade to the latest ODS. ( note this may be in your notes.ini if you added it there to upgrade to ODS48 in the 8.0x server )

The Notes Client on Macintosh now runs Java agents. Locally scheduled background Java agents, foreground Java agents (actions), and Java agents running in a background client thread are all supported. Background agents that use LS2J do not yet work

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 10:13 AM From | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : Development
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I don't know about anybody else but when I'm writing a new Domino application that will have a nice web based UI I will probably add the javascript library and resources that I decide on using into the NSF so that the application will be portable between servers.

If I was working in a fixed environment I could just place the required files directly on the server and I'd know they were there but for something like BlogSphere that anybody can download that's just impossible to do.

But now there is a new option thanks to Google. They have started hosting a selection of different JavaScript libraries on their servers that anybody can freely reference from within their own applications. They are hosting different versions of the scripts and have vowed to never remove a hosted script from their servers so that it is always available.

One nice thing about hosted script libraries this is that if multiple applications, even if on different servers, are using the libraries then they will be cached in the end users browser, making them load faster for the end user and, of course, taking the traffic hit away from your server.

And it couldn't be easier to use. Lets say I want to use MooTools V1.1.1 then all I do is add

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi" />
<script>
    google.load("mootools", "1.1.1");
</script>

If I always want the latest version of the library I can just leave out the version number and the loader will know which one to provide and if I always want the latest in the version 1 codestream I just put a '1' in the version field and it will load in the latest V1.x release.

For more information check out the Google AJAX Libraries API site.

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 1:50 PM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : Domino 8 IBM Lotus Lotus Domino Lotus Notes Mac Windows
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Jan Kenney has just announced that a PUBLIC beta of the next release of Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino is coming soon.

The GREAT news is that a PUBLIC BETA for Notes/Domino 8.5 will begin shortly (within a couple of weeks, late May or early June), where we will unveil the latest beta versions of the Notes 8.5 client for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Citrix, as well as, Domino 8.5 server for Windows (32 & 64bit), AIX (32 & 64bit), Linux, Solaris, and System i (newly renamed to just i).

I'm really looking forward to this new beta as there are a lot of things that were announced at Lotusphere 2008 that I can't wait to get my hands on, like Xpages, DAOS, ID Vault and most importantly an updated Mac client beta.

I would be interested to see if this beta build will include the Lotus Designer client based on Eclipse or not. No date or release number has been announced for that but it sure would be nice surprise to see it in 8.5.

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 9:55 AM From | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : Spam
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Yes, apparently I was at Admin 2008 because I just got spammed by a company called Relavis thanking me for dropping by their booth there, an amazing feat when you think about it as I have never been to any of the 'Admin' conferences or even been to Boston in about 5 years.

Companies should really learn that sending spam to people who's livelihood is related to stopping spam is the quickest way of losing a potential customers business. I know I certainly wouldn't recommend any company that has spammed me.

Maybe I'll get another spam from them this week thanking me for visiting them at WES2008 in Orlando. I'm sure the weather down there is pretty nice so I wouldn't mind being there also :-)

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 10:39 AM From | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : IdeaJam
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Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 2:21 PM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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Everything seems to be getting on the eclipse bandwagon, Lotus Notes, Domino Designer and now even the moon.

I've taken a load of pictures and had them uploaded to flickr automatically thanks to my Eye-Fi card but if you really want to find out what happened tonight head on over to Terri's blog for the full writeup.

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 10:28 PM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : ForumFriday
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First off a big thank you to those who participated in the first Forum Friday. It was a slow start but it looks like the name 'Forum Friday' has stuck in the same way that 'Domino' was just a code name for the HTML task in the Notes server.

In addition to the name and tag 'ForumFriday' I was also thinking that an image might be nice so you can visually associate a blog posting with Forum Friday.

Martin Vereecken over at BusyBee's BizzyThoughts has come up with a few designs and is currently running a poll to see what people prefer.

Maybe by next Friday a few more people will take part. It's a great way to expand blog readership while being helpful in the notes.net forums all at the same time.

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 4:51 PM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : ForumFriday
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Janbarnes Taylor asks :

I have received an email that the attachments are showing as pictures in the text bar, in outlook these pictures could be saved in their original format , eg bmp or jpeg, can this be done in Lotus Notes?

If your Lotus Domino server has been setup to preserve the MIME in an incoming email and you receive and email with embedded images then you will see the images when you open the email in your client as opposed to seeing icons for attachments. This is particularly useful when reading HTML emails.

If you need to get at the images and save them then you can turn on a special preference. Go to your user preferences in your Notes Client and in the 'Additional Options' box scroll down the list till you see the 'Show Inline MIME Images As Attachments' and enable the option. You may need to restart your Lotus Notes client for the setting to take effect.

Now when you open your email you will see the attachments icons listed at the bottom of the email.

I hope this helps and don't forget there are loads more Lotus Notes/Domino related blogs out there. Check out Planet Lotus for more links to Lotus related blogs.

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 2:31 PM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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So what happens to all the Super Bowl hats and t-shirts that were printed with the Patriots as the winning team? Well they all arrived at a warehouse just outside Pittsburgh on Tuesday and soon they will be shipped off to third-world countries as clothes for needy kids.

Nice to see that they aren't just trashed and actually put to some good use.

Source : WTAE Pittsburgh

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 4:11 PM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags : Lotusphere2008
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Here is something I have not seen mentioned on any blogs yet that I noticed while reading through the Lotusphere PDF's.

In the Lotus Notes 8.5 client there will be support for iCal Subscriptions and Federation. While it is only mentioned on a single page in the PDF (INV106) the screenshot looks quite interesting. It looks like you can turn on and off calendars just like in Apple OS X's iCal application. The different calendars can be assigned different colors and I believe that you can 'subscribe' to an iCal file on the web and receive updates from it.

This is an interesting feature that I'll be keeping as eye out for more details on.

Posted by Declan Sciolla-Lynch At 9:48 AM From Pittsburgh, PA | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)