This week the “Creating and Deploying a Java Plugin for Notes and Symphony” lab from Lotusphere has been added to the Notes and Domino wiki by Shane Kilmon, an excellent IBMer who was helped me a lot with a plugin development project of my own at the end of last year. Those who have used the Extension Library controls or are aware of the developments coming with 8.5.3 will be aware of the power of plugins to XPages development. Those who have used something like File Navigator will be aware of the power of plugins for the Notes Client. This lab allows you to dip your toes into that world, getting you familiar with the creating widgets and plugins, starting to get you familiar with both with Java and plugin development, two elements that are crucial if you wish to build your own plugins. The added interest for me is that if you combine the two, you have the potential to add plugins to the Notes Client to integrate with an XPages application, adding power to XPiNC that cannot be provided in a browser.
The lab assumes Eclipse is already installed, but the steps are available in the Extension Library documentation to download Eclipse and that works fine for plugin development too. The interface will look quite familiar though.
