Theory into Practice: Layers and Embedded Editors

I saw many good presentations at Lotusphere 2007, but one that was among the most stimulating to my imagination was the one produced by Nathan Freeman and Chris Blatnick.  Since then, they’ve both done some great work on their blogs using UI features I hadn’t used before, particularly layers and embedded editors (Chris’s blog is down right now, so I can’t link to more of his interesting work).

Anyway, one of the challenges I face after a conference is taking the ideas that get sparked during sessions and implementing them in the work I do.  Often it’s easier just to slip back into my standard design toolbag.  But when I saw these things in action, I immediately knew I had a use for them that wouldn’t just be showing off some new skill for the sake of trying it out.

Here’s the situation.  I am designing a database to track diversity requests and related workflow.  Requests can come from a variety of different sources which we generically call “companies.”  The design specifications called for the diversity administrator to enter a new company document with some basic information, then create a new request document, select the company, and then begin the workflow.  This is a classic example of the design needs driving the business process.  We need the company information so that the users don’t have to enter the same data multiple times (as the same company asks for different data, for example).  However, the users aren’t particularly interested in the “company” document; they are interested in the request.

Domino and dojo

IBM is a member of the dojo Foundation and supporter of the dojo toolkit. More than that, at Lotusphere they showed some demos of leveraging the dojo framework to make some impressive web 2.0 interfaces. The new DWA will rely on dojo, and perhaps other templates will use it as well.

All this means that as Domino developers, we need to start learning dojo too. The documentation for dojo is notoriously lacking, and I’m not aware of very much out there specifically for Domino and dojo. Over at Codestore you can download an NSF with the dojo toolkit (or yui) built in. Of course, if you are going to be using dojo extensively, you’ll want it on the server rather than in every database. If anyone knows of anything else, I’d love to hear about it. Maybe someone will host a Domino-Dojo Wiki for specifically using these two tools together!

Conversation with Mike Rhodin

This morning, I came across this interview with Mike Rhodin.  If you were at Lotusphere, there is nothing new here, but it is nice to know that Lotus is trying to maintain momentum by making the rounds of the press.  They have some work to do.  This article at Information Week seems to think that Quickplace and Quickr are separate products rather than a rebranding of the product line.  Of course the product line seems confusing when you don’t bother to figure out what is an upgrade and what is a new product!

Back from Lotusphere 2007

I’m just back from Lotusphere 2007, and I’m as excited as I can be about the future of Notes and Domino (and especially Quickr). I’m so excited, in fact, that I decided to take the plunge and join the blogging community. It will take me a few days to get going, put up a blogroll and generally start looking like a “real” blog, but I hope in some small way I can help contribute to the use and future of Lotus Notes and Domino!