Reflections on Domino 8.5.1: It's The Little Things That Count

Anyone who used Domino Desiger 8.5 must have been looking forward to last Monday. There were blog posts teasing about the improvements in 8.5.1 in the build-up and constant tweets across Twitter on Monday and Tuesday about people installing 8.5.1. If you want to know about the many major improvements, a myriad of developers have already eulogised more eloquently than I would dare hope. Although I will echo their praise for the improvements, I don’t want to repeat them. Nor is it the right time or the correct medium to propose a wish list for the future. Instead, a week after its release, I wish to highlight some of the seemingly minor improvements that I’ve come across in Notes & Domino Designer 8.5.1, that show a willingness to improve user experience, consistency and professionalism of the product.

Brands in spell check

As a Business Partner trying to promote Domino, it has been somewhat cringeworthy that the in-built dictionaries didn’t recognise brands such as Sametime as valid words. Finally this has been addressed – not only is Sametime no longer highlighted as an incorrect spelling (providing it’s capitalised, as it should be), we also have an option of Sametime with the registered trademark symbol. This may be a small addition, but it improves the professionalism to reinforce a homogeneous family of products rather than individual products developed in isolation of one another.

Sorting in working sets

Working sets are a must if you work on a large number of applications. But equally, if you have a large number of applications, in 8.5 it was a little difficult to add a new database to a working set. The interface gave a single list which you needed to scroll down slowly to find the database you had recently opened in Designer. With 8.5.1 we are provided with a view of the applications previously opened, with each column sortable. Again, a small improvement that saves only a small amount of time on an infrequent basis, but one that could easily have been ignored and which removes a minor annoyance with Domino Designer.

Create Form – adding alias, comment

When you create a form, you can now add an alias and comment as well as the form name. I haven’t tried other design elements, but I wouldn’t be surprised if similar improvements have been made for them as well. Yet again, a minor improvement that will save only a little bit of time, but it’s a nice touch that improves the professionalism of the product.

By the way, on naming of design elements: historically we just clicked the column and changed the value. This still works in some areas. But what is becoming the standard method is F2. This seems to work in all areas.

Alt+F, T, A – consistent in Notes Client & Domino Designer

I am a man for keyboard shortcuts. I don’t touch-type, but I type quickly with my fingers flying around the keyboard. Alt + Enter to launch properties boxes in the Client. Alt + T + D is the shortcut for Lotusscript debugger in the client, Alt + T, Enter in Designer (because Debug LotusScript is the first option on the menu). Ctrl + F7 with up or down cursors to move to a window panel, Ctrl + F8 with up or down cursor moves to a tab. But one of my annoyances with 8.5 was that to launch the Access Control List for an application in Notes Client was Alt + F, T, A. Once I’d got it in my head to remember T for application instead of D for database, this was easy. But on numerous occasions I went to the same shortcut in Designer only to find after Alt + F, T I had launched Lotus Notes Client. The frustration was palpable. Thankfully in 8.5.1 the shortcut (which I use a lot) is consistent for both Lotus Notes and Domino Designer. It’s now Alt + F, U to launch Lotus Notes (though I doubt I’ll use it, because I use Alt + Tab to switch programs).

LotusScript Editor

I agree the LotusScript editor is a major improvement. But I want to focus on some of the smaller but very welcome improvements in it. The extension of all the usual functionality available in in-built Domino classes to custom classes as well is massively useful. Two parts will help enormously, the typeahead and the validation. And on the topic of validation, a few points to note:

• Ensure you have Build Automatically switched on to activate it.
• There is a Domino Designer preference to recompile affected design elements when a change is made. This is going to be very useful.
• At the moment the Application panel doesn’t automatically update. To get rid of red croses, right-click there and select Refresh. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it automatically refresh in 8.5.2 though.

A number of time in the past week I have already benefitted from the wonderful improvement that hovering on values in the LotusScript editor brings up confirmation of a variables data type or help in-built properties and functions. By a single click I can then bring up the Help or examples. This will become a massive time-saver over the weeks, months and years to come.

One of the annoyances of previous Domino Designer versions was that your error blocks told you the line your error was on, but there was no in-built functionality to jump directly to that line. TeamStudio had the free tool LSGoTo, but this didn’t work when I upraded to Notes & Domino 8. Now at last Ctrl + L jumps to a chosen line (like the best small improvements, I stumbled across this by accident!)

And before we get frustrated by the lack of auto-formatting or the restriction of the new editor to Agents and Script Libraries only, we should remember this is the first release of it. Ctrl + I will format selected lines (personally I would like consistency on how to format a block with XPages source code, where Ctrl + F formats the whole page, not just a selected line). And I have no doubt that the design team are already working on integrating the new editor into other design elements. Patience is the watchword here.

Improvements on XPages

And finally, I couldn’t end my post without saying something about XPages, especially considering that I’ve already delivered two applications that use XPages. I will pass over the massive improvements of XPages in a client (this may seem an anti-climax, but think about integrating an XPages application with other applications in a Composite Application), use of dojo 1.3.2 and others. But the validation has also been improved – Designer now notified me of a type in javascript code within a CDATA block. Yes, its small, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy to implement and is a great comfort blanket.

And lastly, the improved look of some controls when developing your XPages – the script block control, radio group controls, check box controls all look smarter. Yet again, a small improvement, but one which improves the professionalism of the product. And while I’m talking of improved look and feel of controls, a big plug for Steve Castledine’s blog post about providing illustration for your custom controls.

I hope you enjoy Notes & Domino 8.5.1 as much as I already am.