Three Announcements

It’s been a busy couple of weeks at Intec. First there was ILUG, my third LUG of the year and a new session for me. Thanks for the evaluations, the comments were very encouraging. My concern when rehearsing it was echoed by one of the respondents, that there was too much material really for a one-hour presentation. The bad news is I didn’t cover anywhere near all that is available in Dojo. The problem is there is just so much in the Dojo libraries that is useful. Hopefully with the demo application there is enough for people to feel comfortable enough to dive more deeply into the functionality.

A few follow-up points on the session. Firstly, as I mentioned last week, after the session I decided it would be useful to create a version of the demo application that didn’t include the XPages Extension Library elements. That is EnterTheDojoPre.nsf in the zip file (also attached here with a couple of fixes – xsp.properties needs the reference to the Extension Library removing and in 8.5.1 the Theme needs to extend oneui not oneuiv2). This will also work on 8.5.1, although the New Rich Text Editor on dijit_rt_fields.xsp will not be able to use the CKEditor. Secondly, I realised that dojoType and dojoAttributes were not available for a number of elements until 8.5.2. Consequently in EnterTheDojoPre.nsf, the code has been amended to programmatically convert the XPages elements to Dojo. This uses an Output Script control to convert the controls to the relevant Dojo type and add the relevant Dojo attributes. Thirdly, I mentioned that different Dojo versions can be utilised for an application or server-wide by amending the xsp.properties file. With Dojo 1.5 additional functionality is provided for Dojo charting, including support for gradient fills on charts. As a result, I’ve recently implemented using Dojo 1.5 in a feasibility application and it works successfully. There may be implications in a more complete application with other Dojo functionality, but I haven’t got as far as confirming or disproving that.

The second bit of news is that my first OpenNTF project, Audit Comments Custom Control was accepted earlier this week into the Apache catalog. This means that if you have the Import/Export from Domino Designer you can import the relevant design elements directly into your application without needing to manually copy the design elements across. The underlying design elements and demo are also available in my ILUG demo databases.

And today it has been announced on OpenNTF that Intec have joined the OpenNTF alliance. This was driven by an offer from Bruce Elgort a couple of weeks ago. As a developer I’ve been using OpenNTF’s resources for many years and have had the pleasure of meeting some of the contributors to projects I’ve used at various LUGs and Lotusphere. It’s taken a while for me to be confident enough to contribute to OpenNTF, but now that I have I’m already planning the next project, custom controls for Dojo Charts. I first have a personal requirement for extending the CKEditor, but after I complete that, my next extra-curricular task will be to develop a first attempt at a chart, probably a pie chart, as a custom control to get a clearer idea of the challenges and solutions required for extending all applications. Then hopefully I’ll have a way forward for the project team.