RSS Feed
Blog Categories
Recent Work
Saturday, October 1, 2011
JQuery Mobile version of You're a Wino app
First look at JQuery Mobile version of the You're a Wino application.
You can comment and rate wines from the mobile with a very simple interface.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Ruby on rails project
Time to do some web development on another platform. So here's the first LavaTech Ruby on Rails project. It has a couple of goals for the first version.
(1) Users can send a text to a phone # with the title of a wine from the label and get back the avg price and low price in a text message. When they login to the site they can see those wines in their "Wino Cellar".
(2) Users can rate and comment on wines.
The goal will be for people who are not aficionado's to determine what wines are a good value and by rating them, they can start to determine the best value for the taste.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Automatically put rounded corners on images
I am working on a new Struturo website and wanted to put rounded borders around the images. But with the existing square images, it didn't look right. So initially I was going to write a Photoshop action to do the rounded borders in bulk but then that seemed like it would be a pain for the customer to have to do later.
So I did a little research and found some examples of people putting divs around their images so they could style them using CSS. Again, I don't want to bother the customer to put divs around the images so just wrote a little JQuery script to wrap the images. I wrote mine custom to let customer decide to float theirs right or left. The approach is like a stack of pancakes where there is an outer div around the image. Then the image is the bottom of the stack and you stack the corner and side images on top. The corner images are basically a gray line with white inside and transparency. So what you see at the end is the image under the corners. It's not perfect but it looks pretty nice.
If the user doesn't have JavaScript enabled, it just falls back on showing the original square image. Always unobtrusive.
Without JavaScript
by Jim Knight (Mar 25, 2010)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Displaying Lotus Notes person document info on a Google Map
Using a simple unstyled view and then reading it into JavaScript as XML using JQuery and the Google Map API, we were able to show a couple of hundred users on a really nice google map. When you click on a marker, you see the image of the person along with biographical information, a send email link and even a get directions link.
There is even some smarts when the map loads for someone new to compute their longitude/latitude based on their address, write that information back into the Notes database using Ajax (again with JQuery), and then run an agent to update the person document with that information so it's speedier to display the next time.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Making your Lotus Notes apps pretty
I for one am tired of looking at boring, ugly, hard to use Notes applications. I believe a big part of why Lotus Notes gets a bad rap in user experience is because developers build complex and ugly applications.
I encourage people to use alternative buttons (images) and push the envelope with what can be done with action bars. And use alternative action bar icons to the ones that come out of the box with Notes.
LavaTech's expertise is in user experience along with high-end workflow applications. If you need an application facelift or a new application that's well written and tight with a beautiful user interface, contact us today.
Click on the images to see them in full size
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Share Folders and Files with RainbowSyncTM
LOTUSPHERE, ORLANDO, FL. January 18, 2010 – SGA Business Systems, Inc. and LavaTech, Inc. today announced RainbowSync version 1.1 and the introduction of a partner program for IBM Business Partners with IBM Lotus Notes and DominoTM expertise.
RainbowSync (rainbowsync.com) quickly and easily imports file shares into a database for shared and secure access using any Lotus Notes or web client, only for those whom you grant access. It is a 100% pure Lotus Notes and Domino database, no additional software is required.
Version 1.1 includes polling, the ability to manually or automatically synchronize a file share on an ongoing basis. For example, if a file share is continuously updated, RainbowSync can poll that file share for changes and automatically import only the changes. Business users love it because they don’t have to change how they work.
RainbowSync partners ensure it’s the right fit for their clients needs:
Jerome Deniau, of [In://ForM], a RainbowSync partner based in France said, "The polling feature of RainbowSync sold my client. They needed a very secure and reliable method to backup, compress and share files beyond what a file share offers. RainbowSync provided that capability and more, it has that certain je ne sais quoi."
“RainbowSync is a killer application that provides a secure mechanism to organize and store files,” says Kim Greene of Kim Greene Consulting. “Our clients love being able to search to find specific files and the contents of those files. RainbowSync is cross platform and can be accessed from both the Notes client and the web, making it indispensable.”
About SGA Business Systems, Inc.: SGA Business Systems, Inc. is an IBM Premier Business Partner since 1994 and specializes in Lotus Notes and Domino. LavaTech, Inc., an IBM Business Partner, is the developer of StruturoTM, a simple and powerful tool for creating Lotus Domino websites and managing content.
###
IBM, Lotus, Notes, Domino and Lotusphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. RainbowSync is a trademark or SGA Business Systems, Inc. and LavaTech, Inc.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Exploding Section Demo
Some really nice effects make for a smooth user experience using JQuery.
Exploding Section Demo from LavaTech on Vimeo.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Text replacement using Cufon in a Domino website
Have you ever wanted to use a graphical font but you were limited by the browsers? Well now you can use this simple technique to do a dynamic text replacement. This demonstration video shows step-by-step how to use the technique in your Struturo database.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Slick Domino Login Screen
Logging into Domino web applications doesn't have to be so boring. With a little thought, you can make them look like a truly professional polished web application login. This login form was just the first part of an overall web application project.
Added a new form to the domcfg.nsf and enabled for this application's URL only. The critical key is to make every element that needs to show on the screen be available for public access. All the images and css need to be marked as available for public access users.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Quick guide to analyze client side NSD's
Yesterday, we had a customer who was experiencing the red box of death when replying to certain mime e-mail. Gathered up the NSD files and sent them over to IBM support. They quickly diagnosed the problem as an outstanding SPR to be fixed in the next release (of 7 - it's already fixed in 8.5). While I had IBM on the phone, I asked the tech the quick approach to NSD file analysis. He told me the first three most common thing to check on a client side NSD file.
Step 1: Search for 'Fatal'
The first thing he does is do a search for the word 'fatal' in the NSD file. That takes you to a section called 'Fatal Thread'. After that he takes a piece of the first line in that section and copies it to the clipboard. In this example he copied "nnotes.Panic@4+417" (see screenshot). He then pasted the text into a search of the Lotus Software Knowledge Base. He said that technical support pastes the entire section into the technote so it's a good way of searching and finding matches. If you don't have access to the Knowledge Base database, you can do this search on the web at the IBM support site.
Step 2: Look above to the 'Call Stack' section
Look right above the 'Fatal Thread' section for the "Call Stack for Process" section. Here he looks for the word 'spool'. He said a large majority of crashes are actually due to printer drivers.
Step 3: Search for 'Open Databases' section
Finally, he searches for 'open databases' section. Here you can typically find corrupt database pointers etc. At least you can tell which databases were open at the time of the crash which gives you a potential database to go after if you suspect corruption.
If all else fails, call IBM
At 800-IBM-SERV with your customer number ready. They have trouble with the really tough issues that are rare but they are great at reading NSD's. Here we are just talking about client side NSD's but servers are the biggest reason you would call IBM. There have been a couple articles written recently with a lot of depth about NSD analysis so you could google those but this is a shortcut to analyzing client side NSD's quickly.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Recovering (hacking) Notes ID Passwords
Password recovery
If you are an administrator, you should be taking advantage of the Domino password recovery which will allow you to recover passwords for users who forget theirs.
Software to recover passwords
Lotus Notes Key will test various passwords against an id in an attempt to discover the password. The product states that it works on version 4.1 - 6.5 id's. The really important take-away from this is to add some complexity to your passwords. If your password is a dictionary word and your id was available to a hacker, it's very easy to discover that password. Also, if your password is still 'password', you basically do not care about security in your organization.
Add complexity to your password
Alan Lepofsky is one of the top evangelists of Lotus Notes Hints, Tips and Tricks. If you can catch his Lotusphere presentation, it's really eye-opening, even for seasoned developers/admins. He wrote a quick note yesterday with some simple but good ideas for passwords. The simple point was to use phrases rather than simply a single alpha-numeric password.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Fix your outbound email addresses in Domino
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Steps to enable Domino to receive smtp mail for a new domain name
Assumptions
- You already setup the mx record and registered the domain so that smtp for that domain is coming to your Domino server(s)
- You are using internet site documents
- You read the Domino administration help and don't rely only on this article for your knowledge about this topic.
- You are using Domino v6+
Edit your global domain document
In the conversions tab, add the new domain to the 'Alternate Internet domain aliases:'.
Add a new foreign smtp domain document
Go to the 'Domains' view in Domino directory. Click the 'Add Domain' button in the action bar. Set the Domain type to 'Foreign SMTP Domain'.
Set the Internet Domain to the new website domain address (e.g. yournewsite.com). Set the 'Should be Routed to: Domain name:' to the Lotus Notes domain name.
Add a new smtp inbound internet site document
Again, assuming you are using internet site documents (if not, start using them!), create one for this new internet domain. Enter the new internet domain in the 'Host names or addresses mapped to this site'. In the screenshot, I left the Domino servers field to * but you can put the server names in there that will receive the SMTP inbound requests.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Renaming a person's OU to another
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Call a Java class from a LotusScript agent
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Building a better Domino name picker for the web
Requirement
The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business needed us to build a custom name picker to allow users to easily find their 'buddies' from a list of 40,000+ names in their Alumni Portal. The name picker was required to have an easy interface to find people by last name, to search by name, and a search by company. We couldn't use the Domino name picker for the web that comes with the Public Directory because it didn't fit our requirements for name fields retrieved and wasn't a match for the look/feel of the website.
Screenshots
Click to view larger images
Technology Used
- Javascript
- CSS
- IFrame
- Domino embedded view
- Show single category
Approach
The button to launch the name picker is a simple Domino button with a class defined in the HTML attributes. This way, we could use our style sheet to define the look of the button, including the graphic.
An IFRAME is used as the container for the view. It loads the 'A' view initially.
The list of tabs in the name picker is simply a list of hotspots A-Z. Each one sets the IFRAME source to the name view with "&Category=x" where x is A-Z. The view is an embedded view using show single category. The embedded view is set to show 5000 entries so they will all show without the need for next/previous buttons. The max under any particular letter is actually only a couple of thousand.
The search results also get pushed into the IFRAME. Using the IFRAME allows the rest of the dialog interface to stay static while the view is updated based on the tab selections and searches.
Once the names are selected, they are written to an editable field that sets the focus to blur() to keep anyone from editing the list directly. Then, using CSS to set the editable field to look like a static field so the user doesn't realize it's an editable field. This way, it can be written to easily using javascript.
When the user is done selecting the list of names, they are written down to the opening document. It actually writes 2 fields. One is the common name display field. The other is hidden from the user via "type=hidden". This is the full name field (CN=xxxx/O=xxxx).
More information
Need help with your Domino web applications?
Just contact sales@lavatech.com for more info.