Nilesh's Weblog

Blargh...... and I thought all this while that the .nsf was a netscape enterprise thingie.. so much for being presemptuos

Enterprise level tools scare me. I'd rather have my PHP, please.

Arnab: my sentiments precisely!

Just discovered your blog due to Jake at Codestore. Beautiful! One of the visually nicest blogs I've seen.

Anyway, I'd like to comment on Domino URLs. I have to partly agree and partly disagree with you about them. Yes, they are very ugly, but there's a purpose to their format, and there is a way around it now. One thing different about domino URLs is they aren't the *only* path to the document. (I'm ignoring the fact that someone *could* use symbolic links on a regular server, since my point will still stand.) In domino, you refer to a document via a view, but a view is a criteria-based selection of documents, rather than a folder where a document *is*. A document can be 'in' (that is reachable through) any number of views. Even if you use folders in a domino database (which are not criteria-based, but which contain only what is actively placed in them, unlike views) the document is not *in* the folder the way we normally think of folders as having contents. The document is just in the database, and the folder is a way of reaching the document. The document could be in a hundred different folders, and there'd still only be one copy of the document in the database.

What you said about URLs is generally true of Notes/Domino: part of the problem is they invented their own wheel before the web was big (or before it *was* at all, I forget which) and did many things first. Internet standards are defintely the ones playing catch-up. Some things Notes did much better, and some things much worse, and somethings just differently, and they now have to adapt. No one can fault them for this. (Unless you blame them for not making the Notes client free, with the hopes that it would become the standard.)

But back to URLS. If you look at Jake's URL, he could make changes to make it more attractive if he wanted to.

The A55692 is the fault of his hosting service, Prominic. The store.nsf could be hidden (although it might require R6, I don't recall). The "unid" is the name of his view, but he could name it anything he wants. and the "EPSD-..." is a unique key he defines for every document. A good system, but ugly. And the "?OpenDocument" can be dropped. It's completely optional, unless you have two urls that are otherwise identical, such as if you have a form and an agent with the same name: you'd want to append "?OpenForm" and "?OpenAgent" to disambiguate the URLs.

Also, using the facility provided by R6 (I think), he could mask or change any part of the URL so that on the back end he can have whatever he wants and on the front end he can have whatever *other* thing he wants.

Yes, maybe a slight pain, but there are lots of advantages to the Domino system of URLs.

The problem with Lotus/IBM changing it now is that things would invariably break. If you upgraded a server and suddenly all your bookmarks and links from other sites or applications broke--that would be mayhem.

I agree, Jake's codestore.net is quite unique and he has a special gift for new and fresh ideas - to common problems. One of the best things about Domino is that it supports Java and when you get into developing Servlets to handle back-end tasks, you really have control.

Developing on the Domino platformm reminds me of the happy days - codeing machine language on my C64.

Nice layout by the way!!!

Wow! Thanks Brandon for the detailed explanation. It has cleared lot of misconceptions.

The problem with Lotus/IBM changing it now is that things would invariably break. If you upgraded a server and suddenly all your bookmarks and links from other sites or applications broke--that would be mayhem.

Agreed, it would break most of the things. But to get something good in return, one has to take the effort. Unless, if Domino users are comfortable with what exists, who I think are not, going by people's opinion in my company. This, after about 6 years of Notes in the company.

Your comments on Domino are nicely put. I work on Intranets and recognise the difficulties you have experienced. As you might expect this is the tip of the iceberg, but you can't say it isn't challenging!

Here's a thought about your login screen : and the white left and top border. If this is intentional, apologies, otherwise in the the HTML Body Attribute (off the Objects Tag in the Design Pane) of the form, place the following code: "leftmargin=\"0\" topmargin=\"0\"" (include ALL double quotes)

Andy, that popup code I have on the link contains only the image and not html. that's why the left and top borders. it is not there on the site. It is only because of the screenshot popup :-)

Ok I have corrected the popup image code now. There should be no more confusion.

Nilesh:

your wrote
Agreed, it would break most of the things. But to get something good in return, one has to take the effort. Unless, if Domino users are comfortable with what exists, who I think are not, going by people's opinion in my company. This, after about 6 years of Notes in the company.

You're quire right. Most Domino users are *not* happy with how things are, but many domino developers are lazy or don't care to make things better. There aren't enough developers like Jake around --don't get a big head, Jake! 8^) -- who care about making things useable and elegant. (Even if he hasn't done much to beautify his URLs yet. We can forgive him for that.) So I put the blame on developers.

I'm working on making changes to an existing application for one of the big three (here in Motown that means Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler)--I won't mention which one--and it is absolutely horrible. If I had my choice, I'd trash it and start from scratch, but I don't have that choice. And if big wealthy companies like the big3 will put up with such garbage, so will, I assume, lots of other companies. I couldn't maintain any self-respect as a developer if I had built something so ugly and unusable. But obviously people do.

P.S.
Nilesh: when I posted the last comment (with e-amil address as
brandondrew at hotmail
the form validation came up (as you know) but the CSS was missing, so it was ugly.

What a great reminder of how beautiful you can make a site with CSS. I'm all the more impressed.

Another note: this <textarea> spills over into the dark gray border of the page, which looks great when the scroll bar appears, but is a problem before then, because the text is written over top of the dark gray, and there's very little contrast.

Whoops! Another note. where I wrote <textarea> above, I originally didn't use the HTML entities for the angled brackets, and when I previewed the page, it created a textarea in the page. I don't know if you want to allow that or not.

4 things: example, reality check, Domino evangelism, and bottom line.

Try http://www.telex.com/computeraudio

Without going through URL translations or resorting to cookies, this is pretty much the best you can get regarding URLs. As brandon said, the format is /DbIdOrPath.nsf/ViewNameOrID/ DocKeyOrID?OptionalAction.

BUT, URLs aren't all that important. To make an overly broad (and therefore incorrect but still useful) statement: Anyone who substitutes good looking URLs for good navigation is a web geek who (thinks he) has web geeks as his audience. Everyone drawn to this page has probably tried to hack the URL to navigate, but most people use their mouse.

A downside to Domino is that yes, it's an enterprise tool, but the really REALLY great thing about Domino is that it is an enterprise tool. Telex's end users have the ability to enter their own links, files, products, etc, and they automatically appear in the navigation, usually without any need to know HTML nor any interference by Telex's IT staff or consultants.

Plus, Domino is possibly the fastest RAD environment there is because its concept of a database is so document-centric, fast, and loose that it gives relational-db developers fits. No need to make tables. Want to add a field to a form or change a field type? Go ahead, you don't even need to change the existing data! Need to mirror it on internal servers, external servers, and 5,000 laptops? It's built in. Need security? The CIA was one of the first users. Companies really can't get a better rapid application development platform for a multi-user application without spending a lot more cash, IMO.

What does this mean to people who want to set up a blog? Not much. If you're simply a user who wants to set up a blog and personal web site, either you already know Domino and have the server, or you really should think about using technology like PHP that is free, easier to learn, and doesn't (yet) have the type of inconsistencies that comes with success and adaptation. But, if you already know Domino, it's probably your fastest route.

Brandon said:
the form validation came up (as you know) but the CSS was missing, so it was ugly.
Thanks for pointing that out. I have fixed it. Almost forgot about changing the CSS for the preview section. :-)

where I wrote <textarea> above, I originally didn't use the HTML entities for the angled brackets, and when I previewed the page, it created a textarea in the page. I don't know if you want to allow that or not.
Thanks Brandon for another reminder. Fixed that too. Now only few HTML entities are allowed.

John said:
Domino is possibly the fastest RAD environment there is because its concept of a database is so document-centric, fast, and loose that it gives relational-db developers fits. No need to make tables. Want to add a field to a form or change a field type? Go ahead, you don't even need to change the existing data! Need to mirror it on internal servers, external servers, and 5,000 laptops? It's built in. Need security?

That's why Domino is so good, that is why Domino is popular among corporates. And that is why it is badly implemented. Because they think, we have it, why do anything more?

What does this mean to people who want to set up a blog? ...

It means nothing to a normal guy, as you must have seen by the first 3 posts.

You can easily use the 'by key' feature of Domino to avoid these ugly URLs. Eg all of my contributions and sections on my HP are easily accessible (and bookmarkable) this way. Well, except the navigation commands but that doesn't bother me as long as the navigation itself uses self-explanatory URLs.