In this show Brad Balassaitis, a wonderful new contributor, comes onto the show to talk to us about how to get complete control of your view columns. He does a great job showing how to do different things with a view column. It’s also a really good demonstration on using client side JavaScript. So even if you’re not a big fan of View Controls, there’s really good content in here and it’s explained extremely well.
I’ve been doing a lot of work creating XPages web applications specifically targeted for iPads but desktop users will be needing it as well. So far I’ve been using mobile controls in 8.5.3 which is based on Dojo 1.6. While there are some interesting things that crop up in developing with mobile controls the users do really like the native look and feel.
What I’m finding is even some desktop users use the app from a browser like chrome or safari. Ok not the end of the world. Whatever floats their boat. There is a need to deliver this to the desktop as well.
So I’m in the process of basically starting over from scratch and rebuilding my application so it’s more based on java beans and is just all over cleaner – since I now know things that I never knew before.
I’m just wondering the best way to build it? At least for the iPad. Our corporate stranded is oneUI based so ill probably need a pure desktop version and a mobile version. If I get most of the logic in java beans that shouldn’t be a really big deal I don’t think.
But what about the mobile app? Do I stick with mobile controls? We’ll be upgrading to domino 9.0 pretty much day 1 and under the covers that brings dojo 1.8 with many new mobile features. These features aren’t exposed via mobile controls yet. Should I use a mix of mobile controls and manually grab anything from dojo 1.8 that I need? Or do I avoid mobile controls all together and try to use dojo mobile manually? I’m not sure what the pros and cons there might be to that.
Or do I avoid mobile controls all together and try something like twitter bootstrap or something else? The users do like the native look and feel but honestly, it’s going to be a big app with lots going on. So a more “normal” website might make somethings easier on me. I guess I’d certainly lose page transitions and need to make sure buttons and targets are big enough for the tablet screen. Deal with viewport and all that…..
I’m not really sold or interested in responsive design for this. This isn’t a blog it’s an inventory application. I’ve not seen an example or a real app using responsive design. There will be lots of fields, tables, buttons etc. When the time comes to put this on a phone I imagine there will be yet a third site needed with scaled back functionality that fits the phone screen.
I don’t think jQuery mobile is a good option but I’m not sure. Certainly I won’t be disabling normal XPages dojo stuff and buildings all that manually. I don’t know if I’ve seen an XPages jQuery mobile demo that didn’t first turn all that good dojo stuff off.
This is going to be a web app right now and not a local app. I’m kinda interested in it as a local app but I don’t want any local data. I want all the data to live on the server so I know it’s always accurate and up to date.
Anyway, that’s my story. I do kinda like mobile controls and have had some good and bad luck with them. But I somewhat feel that maybe using bootstrap or something else can help me make it work nice in iPad while getting away from the whole virtual page thing on what is going to be a big app. Just make building it easier and more flexible. But I really don’t know.
What does anyone think about mobile WEB apps? I’d really be interested to hear any advice or experiences. What have you done? What are your trying? What considerations do you have? Etc…
Thanks for your time and any advice.
P.S. this post was written in my new iPad mini and it rocks!!!!!!
Welcome to the 100th Episode!!! This show is pretty much my actual session from IBM Connect. Unfortunately there were no room monitors and I ended up running a little long.
Here is the original Abstract:
XPages Development: Modernize yourself!
At IBM Connect I presented a Show and Tell session with Kathy Brown called “SHOW 111 – XPages: No Experience Needed”.
The goal of this session was not to through the kitchen sink and a throw a lot of eye candy at the app. The goal was to try and get people familiar with key XPages tools and concepts. The App Layout control, formTables and formRows, Combo Boxes, Scoped Variables, passing properties into Custom Controls, etc…
Here is the download kit for that session.
This contains the slides, some script snippets, the starter application and the more finished application.
It is our intention to do a NotesIn9 video of the bulk of this session. Since I’ve not had 2 voices on a show at the same time we’re working on how to best make that happen. But you should see something pretty soon I hope.
Thanks to those that were in the session and took time to fill out evaluations. The comments were really nice to read. I also want to thank Gab Davis and Paul Mooney for their advice through out the process. And a big thanks to Kathy for coming up with the idea, and being a really great partner to work with!!
Next week I’ll be speaking at IBM Connect. I’m presenting 3 times. When speaking at Lotusphere I’ve always had awesome partners. Long before I worked with him I presented with Declan Lynch in 2010 on CSS and Themes. Then in 2011 I teamed up with Paul Withers and even though he made me wear a Karate headband we had a lot of fun with a Dojo session. Now I’m really excited to present with the wonderful Kathy Brown from PSC. Not only is Kathy an excellent speaker and developer – she also runs more in a week then I drive my car.
We’ll be presenting a Show and Tell on Monday at 4:30 – 6:15 in Swan Osprey 1-2.
This is a very beginner session. We’re going to try and show you how to build an app with XPages. Rather then throwing the kitchen sink at it, we’re going to try and focus on the “meat and potatoes” aspect. Using App Layout control and form tables. Working in the Source pane, creating reusable custom controls, and more. I hope you like it. My goal is to try and introduce the new XPage developer to the toolset and try and establish a comfort zone of what the pieces are and how to use them.
Then for the first time ever I’ll be presenting a solo session. This session is on Tuesday and <GASP> repeats! The first one is at 10:00 in Swan Mockingbird 1-2 and the other is at 5:30 in Swan Pelican 1-2
This session is also geared for the newish XPages Developer but hopefully will be good for the Intermediate Dev who might have plateaued. I’m going to talk about why you want to learn XPages and methods and resources you can use. XPages is not the Notes Client and if you don’t adjust your approach a bit, you might run into problems. We’re going to look at what tools and languages are available and how it’s not that difficult to move from one to another. And finally we’re going to look at some example code in Java Beans that I think is a pretty modern approach to building a report.
Public Service Announcement:
Just to help anyone who might be on the fence with planning their schedules. I’d say that there’s a REALLY REALLY GOOD chance these sessions will hit NotesIn9 in some shape or form. So I’d love to see you there, but if you do have a conflict with another XPages session and are torn as to which one to go to, keep that in the back of your mind. Just don’t skip out for some dumb Admin session! 🙂
Thanks. I do hope you like the presentations.
I just don’t know what all sites to use to maximize this conference. There’s the one we always had: http://www.socialbizonline.com and now there this new vivastream push for some reason. I think there’s a 3rd site that I’m forgetting about at the moment – maybe it’s sponline.info… I don’t know.
On top of that VivaStream is currently showing speedgeeking at 5:00 and the conference pocket guide is showing it at 6:30. So who do you trust?
There’s checkin sites, photo sites I assume, unofficial scheduling apps… not sure what else there is. For twitter I know they want the “official” hashtag to be #IBMConnect and personally I think it’s too long so I might end up using #IC13. I just think #IBMConnect takes up too much space of the message.
I’m not trying to be snarky, and there’s no hidden gripe or message. I’m a speaker who is also just a dumb customer and I have no idea what to use, why to use it and when we might want to use something. It’s like we need a cheatsheet of all these conference tools which you would think in theory is supposed to make the conference easier.
If someone could just tell me what is and is not important I’d sure appreciate it.
P.S. As for being “social” – I’m looking forward to meeting people face to face. If people have questions for me on any of my sessions my email and twitter (@DavidLeedy) will be on the slides and is also on every single NotesIn9.
IBM Connect, the conference formerly known as Lotusphere, is closing in. Once again I’ll dusting off “NotesIn9 Live” and will be actually presenting during the show. I’m doing 2 sessions this year. The first is a Show and Tell called “SHOW 111 XPages: No Experience Needed”. I’m presenting that with the awesome Kathy Brown. I’m also presenting “BP202 XPages Development: Modernize Yourself!” But I’ll talk more about these sessions in a future post.
Today I wanted to release my internal “NotesIn9 Contributor, Sponsor, Advertising Cheatsheet”. This is a document that I typically send to the great people who contribute to the show. Since they take time out to do something for the community I like to try and make it as easy for them as possible.
NotesIn9 Contributor Cheatsheet
I’m getting more and more people asking me either, how to contribute to the show, or what tips do I have for their own screencasting projects. So I wanted to put this out for any one who’s interested. Even if you don’t want to contribute to the show, but are interested in screencasting – hopefully this will be helpful to you.
I’m looking forward to Connect and meeting people. Please don’t be afraid to just come up and say hi! I do like talking to and meeting new people!!
I also wanted to post this ahead of time to get YOU thinking about the possibility of contributing to the show. My hope is that maybe YOU will read it and realize that it’s not that difficult to record YOUR screen. So I’d also be interested in talking to YOU about being on the show, or in helping YOU come up with a means of sharing information that works for YOU.
Often people will say to me:
To each of those excuses I call BUNK!
So please – if you’re nervous or scared about blogging, posting in the forum, creating videos just talk to me. I have all those things memorized. 🙂 Regardless I’d love to meet you at Connect no matter what. If you want to talk about contributing we can do that also.
The cheatsheet also has a section for potential advertiser’s or sponsors. So if you’re interested in that I’d love to talk to you also.
Finally – It looks like IBM will be re-printing the Original XPages Cheatsheet and the XPages Social tools cheatsheet. So look at for them if interested! Since I’m doing 2 sessions I’m not doing a 3rd cheatsheet this year, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a brand new one at Connect. Paul Withers has created something really cool. I won’t say the topic yet until he does – but I suspect you’re going to want more then one copy of his new cheatsheet!
Thanks for the interest in NotesIn9!
I wanted to make some really long and eloquent post that reviewed the year and especially the end of the “Drive to 99”. But for various reasons (Slide prep for Connect, a failing Drobo FS, a server with problems, family commitments, etc) I think I’ll skip eloquent for “just getting something out there”. 🙂
2012 was a great year for me from a professional standpoint. I’ve learned a tremendous amount. I was named an IBM Champion again and there is no actual hard proof that my code has crashed a server at the day job! 🙂 On a personal level I’ve made some great new friends.
NotesIn9 really exploded this year. I think I previously tweeted that Ni9 produced 60 episodes – but that was incorrect. I forgot that I converted the 12 Extended Editions into the normal show number list.
So the final tally is that Ni9 produced 48 shows for 2012. Still a great number I think. I don’t have a yearly hour count but total show time is up over 27 hours from 23 different contributors. And man the contributors are awesome! They make NotesIn9 what it is and I can’t thank them enough!!
The power of the contributors was very evident when I did my end of year event called “Drive to 99”. In about 90 days, we added over 10 hours of content in 28 shows! That success was made possible by the people in this community willing to take time and share what they know. I believe 8 brand new contributors joined in for that event and it was wonderful to have them on the show. I talked to many others that were interested but just didn’t have time so hopefully we’ll continue to see new names in the future.
The Drive to 99 event ended with a special show from IBM’s Dan O’Connor. That show featured the Domino Designer 9.0 Beta preview. That beta is available now for anyone that’s interested in it. That episode came out in the middle of December and has already been viewed/downloaded more then 1,000 times! Simply amazing!
A couple other stats I like to keep track of and share:
Introduction to XPages has been viewed/downloaded almost 13,000 times now! While obviously people are watching that more then once I continue to see new people coming to XPages and even new to Notes people coming on board.
I see over 161,000 total views/downloads for all the NotesIn9 shows! Not too shabby for this little podcast that’s mostly focused on XPages.
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It’s kinda neat that Ni9 is being mentioned in a series of articles along side other podcasts. Here are links to those articles if anyone is interested.
http://imake.libsyn.com/podcaster-voices-19-podcasters-share-podcasting-lessons-learned-in-2012
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What’s next for NotesIn9 for 2013? I have a couple ideas but at the moment it’s hard to think past IBM Connect. I suspect Ni9 will be on hiatus until after IBM Connect. I’ll be blogging more on my sessions in a little bit. Once the conference is over we’ll see what the future brings and where the next road will go.
Thanks for watching the show! I do really appreciate that and I always appreciate any feedback.
Have a happy and safe New Years!
Here’s a really cool poster that IBM created for the upcoming conference. I’m really happy to see a bunch of friends highlighted here.
Great job IBM!
Full Size: Connect2013_Invitation_Lotusphere Speakers Dec 20
This is it! The end of the road! This show concludes the NotesIn9 “Drive to 99” event. As I mention on the show, a huge thanks to all the contributors! Without them this wouldn’t have happened. I was especially excited to be able to add 8 brand new contributors as part of this event.
Drive to 99 ran about 90 days and it added over 10 hours of new content in 28 shows. It exceeded my goals and hopes in every way.
Special shoutout to Paul Calhoun who won the Most Valuable Contributor award!! Thanks Paul!
In this show Dan O’Connor returns! Dan is the lead for the Domino Designer product and he will demonstrate some of the new features that are in the public beta that should be available for download on Dec 14th.
I thought it was really appropriate to have a Designer 9 preview for the 99th show! I believe this is the first public look at the actual public beta code that will be released on Dec. 14th. Big thanks to Dan and IBM for allowing this to happen.
There’s a lot in here for the XPages developer. The main event though has to be the SSJS Debugger!!!! That’s right. We’re getting a Server Side JavaScript Debbuger!!
This show is not to be missed!