An Anatomy of an Adaptive Web Experience – Brad Frost

Responsive web design is becoming more clearly an important specification from our customers. Allthough the customer is mostly already satisfied when we port the same UI to different devices, responsive web design is just the top of the iceberg when we talk about optimizing web enabled Notes applications for different devices.

iceberg

Today I followed a presentation from Brad Frost held at the Smashing conference 2012. You can find the slides also on Slideshare.

After the presentation I checked a couple of our corporate sites that are responsive with Akamai’s Mobitest and yes, they are responsive but the builders seem to have just looked at what’s sticking out of the water.

Reflecting this back to our development templates for Notes client, Web browser and Mobile device I can conclude we made some basic mistakes. Yes, the application layout control from the extension library may help you provide quickly a UI for desktop clients but this is not the web.

this-is-the-web

Why did IBM did not come up with a responsive application layout control and added responsive utility classes in OneUI? Or should we dissect the OneUI again like Declan Lynch did and solve it with SSJS?

Back to the drawing board that is for sure…

Presentations from EntwicklerCamp 2012 available

I have experienced that IBM has some problems linking to their material that lies out in the open, but I hope this post does not cause the same kind of trouble. I also know the solution in case needed: contact the content publisher to remove the files…

Nevertheless Entwicklercamp sounds like a excellent technical conference and for those of you who have no problems with reading a bit of German (not all presentations are in German, by the way) here are some interesting presentations:

Track 0 – Session 1 – Eröffnungssession – Rudi Knegt (link)

Track 0 – Session 2 – Opening Session – Phil Riand (link)

Track 0 – Session 3 – Speeddemoing – Diverse (link)

Track 0 – Session 5 – Closing Session: Ein (grausamer Selbstversuch) – 5 Monate ohne Lotus Notes – Werner Motzet

“Ein (Arbeits-)Leben ohne Lotus Notes” / “Ein (grausamer Selbstversuch) – 4 Monate ohne Lotus Notes” (link)


Track 1 – Session 1 – XPages – 1 – Grundlagen – Ulrich Krause (link)

Track 1 – Session 2 – XPages: Practical Ideas for Converting Existing Notes Applications – Matthew Fyleman (link)

Track 1 – Session 3 – XPages – 3 – eXtension Library – Viagra für die XPages – Ulrich Krause (link)

Track 1 – Session 4 – XPages – 4 – IBM oneUI + MyTheme = myUI – Manfred Meise (link)

Track 1 – Session 5 – XPages – 5 – Wie mache ich meine XPages Applikationen ‘social’? – Niklas Heidloff (link)

Track 1 – Session 6 – XPages – 6 – XPages Extensibility API – going deep – René Winkelmeyer (link)

Track 1 – Session 7 – Zähme den Tiger – Java-Entwicklung in Notes und Domino – Bernd Hort (link)

Track 1 – Session 8 – XPages – 8 – Nutzung des Dojo Toolkits zur Optimierung bestehender Notes-Web-Anwendungen – Matthias Bierl (link)


Track 2 – Session 1 – Extending Lotus Notes – Widgets, Livetext, Plugins – Detlev Poettgen (link)

Track 2 – Session 3 – Agile Softwareentwicklung mit LotusNotes – Werner Motzet (link)

Track 2 – Session 4 – Ich weiß was du diesen Sommer tun wirst – Gregory Engels (link)

Track 2 – Session 5 – Erfolgreiches Projektmanagement mit agilen Methoden – Christian Habermueller (link)

Track 2 – Session 6 – Make the impossible possible with XPages – Frank van der Linden (link)

Track 2 – Session 7 – Connect your Lotus Notes app to the Activity Stream with XPages – Frank van der Linden (link)

Track 2 – Session 8 – Keine Angst vor großen Tieren – Peter Klett (link)


Track 3 – Session 1 – Rediscover the Power of LotusScript in Notes/Domino 8.5 – Rocky Oliver (link)

Track 3 – Session 2 – Die besten Open Source Projekte von OpenNTF – Niklas Heidloff (link)

Track 3 – Session 3 – Richtig(er) Kommunizieren! – Wie bringe ich meine Botschaft rüber? – Jürgen Kunert (link)

Track 3 – Session 4 – XPages und Domino App Dev Erweiterungen – Phil Riand und Niklas Heidloff (link)

Track 3 – Session 5 – Turbocharge Development in Notes/Domino 8.5 – with @Formulas! – Rocky Oliver (link)

Track 3 – Session 6 – Mobiler Zugriff auf Notes Daten – Matthias Schneider (link)

Track 3 – Session 7 – Es gibt keine Ausreden mehr – eGit im DDE : Versionskontrolle leicht gemacht – Holger Chudek (link)

Track 3 – Session 8 – Using the XPages Mobile Controls… and looking at alternatives – Rich Sharpe (link)


Track 4 – Session 1 – Security in Notes – Manfred Meise (link)

Track 4 – Session 2 – Workflow – Richtig analysieren, dokumentieren und schlüssig hinterfragen – Christian Habermueller (link)

Track 4 – Session 3 – Lotus Protector programmieren – Matthias Schneider (link)

Track 4 – Session 4 – WebServices unter Notes/Domino – Tim Pistor (link)

Track 4 – Session 5 – Hilfe, ich habe geerbt! – Bernhard Köhler (link)

Track 4 – Session 6 – NoSQL-Datenbanken – ein Überblick – Karsten Lehmann (link)

Track 4 – Session 7 – Notes und die Zeit – Bernhard Köhler (link)

Track 4 – Session 8 – Schnittstellendesign mit dem Tivoli Directory Integrator – Am Beispiel SAP – Andreas Artner (link)


In case you are a bit lazy or dont care about bandwidth: <here> you can find the presentations archived together by track…

There are also some hands-on sessions available:

Hands-On 1 – Javascript – die ersten Schritten – Manuel Nientit (link)

Hands-On 3 – XPages – the first Steps 1 – Howard Greenberg (link)

Hands-On 4 – XPages – the second steps 2 – Howard Greenberg (link)

Hands-On 5 – Signierung und Verteilung von Plugins für den Notes Client – Detlev Poettgen (link)

Hands-On 6 – LotusScript – so einfach geht es los – Peter Klett (link)

Hands-On 7 – Mobiler Zugriff auf Notes Daten – Matthias Schneider (link)

Hands-On 8 – XPages Extensibility API – first steps – René Winkelmeyer (link)

Btw, all links were collected from this source.

CardScanR available on OpenNTF

I finalized an initial (and presumably final) release on OpenNTF, available here.

The application is a simple contact registration application and ofcourse XPages based. I think the application can be a great start to extend it as an inquiry application…

Personally I learned a bit more on combining LS agents with XPages, navigation rules and ofcourse the OneUI user interface definition (still a puzzle sometimes).

Work in progress – CardScanR

Yesterday I registered a new project on OpenNTF, called CardScanR.

Since this project mainly re-uses code from an old article here on this blog the work progresses pretty well.

Here is what I have come up with so far.

Administration panel:

Adding a new event:

And the scan form:

When pressing the ‘Scan’ button the card scanner will be activated and the values read from a business card are sent to the screen.

All very nice! Especially XPages makes the development now much more a piece of cake. Also the OneUI theme makes it more easy to present a more consistent interface.

Hopefully I can upload the first release before a short trip to the Netherlands…

Section type in XPages

I noticed for a section you can specify the type. However when I select the different options in the browser I do not notice so many differences except some padding/margin differences.

However in Designer I notice that the section tries to take form the section types known in traditional Notes.

Is this a XPages in Notec Client only thing or is it just not supported in the web?

Section type = tab looks similar to a tabbed panel to me:

New release of Bildr

Today I have launched a new release for Bildr, an application to distribute images on the web. I have started this project mainly to have an on-going learning experience with web development and XPages in general.

For this release I focused a lot on improving the user-interface, so I watched closely at the oneUI specifications. I find the oneUI user interface contributing to deliver more consistent and professional applications, although I do not agree with all the specifications and sometimes experience conflicts when developing.

What I find lacking in the examples pages are for example Form design. But for this release of Bildr it has been a good experience working more closely with the oneUI theme.

Under the hood I removed the view data tables and changed them for repeat controls. The views in Notes are now also much more light-weighted.

I also added some new features like filter options and user profiles. This user profile will also be used for future web-enabling the upload of pictures. For now you can at least delete documents from your profile.

 

Help wanted

An application is never finished I guess but for now I will monitor the application and see what support questions come in. Next release will probably be in December.

I also posted some help wanted requests on OpenNTF, feel free to take a look at them and see if you can help me.

So download the app and install it or open it in Designer if you want to learn XPages. See ya!