With today’s announcement of a release date for Domino 8.5.2, it seems the right time to review some of the features I’ve come to like in the closed beta. Some of them are just usability enhancements, others are functionality enhancements, and many are XPages enhancements. Before continuing, I must include the caveat that this article is based on the 8.5.2 Code Drop 5 beta, and that code is not guaranteed to be included in the Gold release due on August 24th.
Help
The quality of the Help files in 8.5.2, particularly for XPages, has been widely criticised. The Help in 8.5.2 has been improved significantly. But also the Server Side Javascript editor has been enhanced, with a new library, Control Declaration Snippets, available. Other libraries have been enhanced so that, for example, the javascript Error object is listed and its properties and methods visible for the first time. One of the points this raised to me recently is that e.getMessage() to capture an error messahe in a try…catch block, which works in 8.5.1, is not the properly supported way to output the error message. Instead it’s e.message, which works in 8.5.1 as well as 8.5.2. If you have used this in applications, it’s worth changing as soon as possible.
Since the discussions in blogs some weeks ago about the quality of Help materials, those who watch the Lotus Notes & Domino Application Development Wiki will have seen a plethora of 8.5.2 focussed articles, particularly focussed on how to use new functionality. While talking about the wikis, it’s nice to see something I raised on an LTIE call some time ago included in the Designer Client, namely that the links under Help – Lotus Internet Resources allow developers direct access to the wikis.
XPages Editor
Many of the XPages wizards have been enhanced to make attributes more accessible, most notably in the View Panel where the ability to filter on category or column value, with or without exact match, is readily available, as are search and sort column attributes. Other wizards (e.g. those for Panel and Edit Box controls) have a Dojo tab where the Dojo type and attributes can be defined. All these options have been in the past and are still available on the All Properties tab. But by having a specific tab it makes this functionality more visible. And on the All Properties tab, Dojo-related attributes of the relevant controls are categorised under their own category, making them more visible there too. In the beta you still need to know what Dojo types are applicable to what controls and what Dojo attributes can be applied, for which I would recommend the Dojo toolkit reference guide. Bear in mind that you will need to take into account the relevant Dojo version – in the beta this is 1.4.3 but 1.5 is now released. I will be waiting to see which version will be shipped with the Gold release.
Wizard enhancements also extend to the XPage and Custom Control wizards, where the Resources tab allows all resource types to be inserted. These include metadata and linked resources, both new in 8.5.2. Resources can now have a media type defined, allowing specific stylesheets or other resources to be available for e.g. print, projection, handheld or braille.
After working with XPages for over a year now, most of my work is in the Source pane. Some minor frustrations have been resolved there too. Controls can now be dragged and dropped into the Source pane although XML for controls can also be typed. In 8.5.1 if you type the name for a Custom Control in the Source pane, you get a message that the control is not bound. That too has been resolved. While talking of minor annoyances, you no longer need to close and re-open an XPage or Custom Control for the Data Palette to be updated.
The rich text editor used by default is now the CKEditor, although the Dojo rich text editor is still available. CKEditor looks good and offers great usability enhancements. And, in the same way as the Dojo editor can be extended (as I blogged a few months ago), so too the CKEditor can also be extended.
There are also a number of enhancements in XPages code, of which I think two are particularly worthy of mention. Anyone who has tried to use a partial refresh on an XPage which has required fields will know there are challenges: if you do not tick “Do not validate or update data”, the validation is triggered; if you do tick it, you cannot set values through SSJS and use them. (There are ways through it, e.g. validating via Input Validations on your Form and setting the computeWithForm property of your Data to onsave.) But fortunately in 8.5.2 there is a new option for partial refreshes – “Process data without validation”. I can see this being of significant benefit in the future.
The second are new Global Objects – sessionAsSigner and sessionAsSignerWithFullAccess. This ability to run different pieces of code on a single XPage under different authorities I can envisage being invaluable. I am unaware of the technical challenges of this, but it would be nice to have had this functionality extended to LotusScript as well.
Others
There are some additions to the Properties for Domino Designer. Default language types can be set for Script Libraries, Agents, Web Service Providers and Web Service Consumers. This will be useful, whether set once or amended based on current projects being used. There is also the option to enable Eclipse plug-in install.
There have also been significant improvements with Working Sets. For those who use them this will be very welcome. And when opening applications in Designer users will see a very different and, in my opinion, much improved Open Application dialog.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, applications can nw be signed in the Designer Client, a very welcome addition for developers who otherwise only use the Administrator client to sign a database.
Design element properties have also subtly been enhanced, with Forms etc. now showing the Modified In version. XPages elements show a Compiled for version. This will be particularly useful when XPages applications are being delivered to different 8.5.x (or RNext) servers.
There are additional benefits I haven’t mentioned. Some like the Single Copy XPage Design I haven’t used yet. Others like the XPages Extensibility API I don’t feel confident enough to play with yet.
Hi Paul,
any chance for a demo db for this tutorial please?
thanks
bernd