Disable automatic On Disk Project syncing

I use source control on every single Domino database that I work on. Often because I want a database under formal change control so that I can relate individual change requests to the changes made in the source code. But also mainly to cover my backside. When I make a mistake (and it is when, not if), having my database under source control allows me to recover things quickly.

If you're new to source control in Domino Designer, I have made a video available which walks you through my workflow.

But that's not the point of this post. I have found that when there are 20 or 30 databases each under source control that I spend a lot of my day with Designer hung and displaying this dialog box:

After a cry for help on Twitter, Julian suggested I try turning off automatic sync. I should have known there was a setting for it, but it never occurred to me to look. There are hundreds of configuration settings in Designer preferences, and to be honest I try not to touch them as in my experience they tend to break things more than make them better, but in this case, if you go to Preferences -> Domino Designer -> Source Control and make sure that the "Enable automatic import/export..." options are unchecked then you should find Designer is more usable.

Of course you then have to remember to right click on your database and choose Team Development -> Sync with on disk project to manually force a sync, but that is a habit I can get used to.

Call for Abstracts for ICON UK

Warren announced that ICONUK, the new name for UKLUG, is happening again this year, in Brighton in September. Hopefully you've registered already, but have you thought about presenting?

You'll often hear big conference speakers mention that their first taste of speaking was at a User Group like ICON, indeed it was mine five years ago when I presented with Bruce Elgort and Sean Burgess. A truly terrifying experience, but so worthwhile.

This year, as ever, we have three tracks of sessions; Infrastructure, Management and Development. But what are we looking for? Well the high level response is that we want interesting sessions about anything to do with IBM technologies (Notes, Domino, Connections, Sametime, Websphere, Tivoli etc). Your session will need to last for just under and hour (55 minutes or so) and it can be aimed at any level of audience. The key thing is to write a clear and concise abstract.

The nice thing about User Groups vs IBM Connect is that we have somewhat more leeway in what we can run sessions on. So if your session is tangential to IBM technologies but still relevant then it's worth putting it in. If you have a "real world" session which uses technologies which maybe IBM wouldn't want to highlight on the Connect stage, then maybe the User Group format will suit you better. The key thing is to write the abstract (and title) to attract people to your session. Remember, when you're speaking there will be at least two other sessions going on, you have to sell yourself.

In the new ICON site, once you're logged in, you can go to the sessions page and submit a new session:

Myself and Steve McDonagh are running the Dev track this year, and I just thought it would be useful to run through the process of how we choose the sessions.

Firstly I move all of the session titles and abstracts into a spreadsheet and remove any names from the list to try and avoid falling into the trap of automatically selecting "the old dependables". Just to give an idea, last year we had three times as many abstracts as we had sessions, so this next bit of the process is very hard. We go through the abstracts and we rate each one so that there is a league table. 

Next we add in the speaker names. We try our best to get as many speakers in as possible, so if someone has played a blinder and submitted multiple abstracts which we like, we'll either pick the best one and remove the others, or contact them to see if maybe they could speak with someone else, ideally someone new to the speaking circuit.

After much arguing and horse trading with the other tracks (sometimes we can stretch the definition of Infrastructure or Dev or Management!) we end up with a list and we'll send out the notification emails.

And that's where the real fun starts for you!

So please do have a think about whether you want to try out presenting in a smaller, less terrifying setting than Florida. The Call For Abstracts closes on Sunday 30th June and we'll aim to let people know as soon after that as possible.

Coding the new UKLUG (ICONUK) site

The old UKLUG site had served us well for several years, but with a new name for UKLUG it was a good opportunity to re-write the conference management application from scratch. To be honest I was more than a little embarrassed about the old site as well, design is not my strong point to say the least. So now that there are things like Twitter Bootstrap out there, I can offload that work onto people who are actually good at it.

So what have we created? Well it's an end to end management system for the whole conference. We've got user registration, session submission, approval and scheduling, sponsor management, CRM for the home page and FAQs, built in evaluation system and a few other administration goodies behind the scenes. On the admin side we can use either the web client or the Notes client depending on our preference.

In other words it's a fairly bog standard application created with XPages!

We're not ones to hold onto this sort of thing, so if you want to make use of the code (or even log or fix a bug and help me out) then head on over to the Github page for the site.

If you're new to Github then I have also made a video available which walks you through the workflow which I use for my source control when working with XPages.

So have a dig around the site at http://iconuk.org and hopefully we'll see you in Brighton later in the year.

Google Now

I've heard many mentions of Google Now over the last few weeks, not sure why, it's been around for a while now, but anyway I was curious to find out more.

First problem is "what is Google Now?". Well it's not really an application, more of a feature of the Google app in Android (I'm not an iOS user at the moment).

The larger issue happens if you're a Google Apps For Business as I am, then it's surprisingly difficult to enable at all. The whole process is documented nicely here:

1) Launch your Google Apps control panel by going to http://google.com/a/<your custom domain>.
2) Click Organization & Users.
3) Click Services.
4) Scroll all the way down until you reach Google+.
5) Click on the Configure premium features link.
6) In the left pane select Mobile.
7) Scroll all the way down to Android settings.
8) Check the boxes for Enable Google Now and the optional Enable Lock Screen Widgets.
9) Do not forget to hit Save.

Now you can enable Google Now inside the search application on your phone or tablet. Out of the box it displays little, but very quickly you start to see 'cards' which are gathered from various sources; your GMail, calendar, and search history. So because I am travelling to St Louis this weekend I can already see a card which is tracking my first flight...

Initial impressions are rather good. Because I use Google services a lot it should be able to see everything I need. But if you're not as heavily invested in Google as me then your milage may vary.

Dojo lesson learned in upgrading from 8.5.3 to 9.0

It's becoming increasingly the case that you can't assume that what once worked in a previous version of XPages will continue to work in future versions. Today I have come across a case in point.

In my life at Elguji, we do a lot of hosting IdeaJam sites. To make this an easier process to manage we created a provisioning application called Jampot. It allows us to create and manage instances of IdeaJam from a central location very quickly. 

One of the features it offers is a bulk registration of users tool which runs inside a Dojo dialog box. For various reasons the contents of the dialog box are in an iFrame. In 8.5.3 this all worked very smoothly, I used the technique which Jeremy Hodge wrote about ages ago. What I found when I was re-testing on my 9.0 dev server is that when the dialog box appeared I couldn't get the focus of the cursor to stay in a field. I could click the field (you could see it highlighting for a fraction of a second) but it would immediately blur. There was no code that I could see causing it, no CSS, nothing.

Step in StackOverflow, as ever. There's a new switch in Dojo 1.8 which allows you to control the autofocus of fields when a dialog opens. In this case of having an iFrame inside the dialog I want to disable the autofocus for the dialog. So I can simply change my HTML in the XPage to be something like:

The point here is not my specific issue (though hopefully this will save someone the couple of hours buggering about I had to fix the problem), but that if you're upgrading from 8.5.3 to 9.0 or, indeed, from any version to any version you can not assume that your code will continue to work.

Do you have a testing / re-testing plan in place?

Pebble smart watch first thoughts

Months and months ago (May 2012 to be precise) I signed up for my second Kickstarter project called "Pebble" which as most of the world knows by now was aiming to create a smart watch which integrates with your phone for alerts and apps. First thing to say is that I really enjoyed the process of watching the watch be developed and certainly wasn't one of those people moaning about how long the thing took to create. It went viral so delays, even large ones were to be expected.

That being said when the package arrived yesterday it did feel more like a gift than something I had paid for because the gap between the two events was over eight months.

The Pebble package which awaited me

So the unboxing. A really nice package with very little in it, the watch, the charging cable and a message to visit a web site. At the moment I'm running an Android phone so I went to the Google Play store and downloaded the app and tried to set up the syncing. I assume I did things in slightly the wrong order as there was a fairly unintuitive process which required me to go into the main settings for the phone then drill down into Accessibility and enable the Pebble option under Services. This is where a little user manual might have been useful but it really only took 30 seconds to work out.

The thing which took slightly longer to resolve was that as soon as I turned on the Accessibility options for Pebble my phone speaking everything I did even though the Talkback was disabled. Apparently this is a bug with Samsung phones and there is a workaround here which solved the issue for me.

So at this point I have a watch which can tell the time and will send me notifications whenever I receive an SMS, email or phone call. The vibrate functions really well, it's impossible to miss it and even now I am finding that I am digging my phone out of my pocket less often and I can even imagine that in meetings being able to glance at the watch to see what the incoming item is will be far less intrusive and rude than checking my phone or tablet.

When I posted a photo of it on my wrist, Carl Tyler commented that it looked like I had a Palm Pilot strapped to my wrist. Well I contend that I have very delicate wrists and that really it looks a lot larger in photos than it looks or feels like in real life. We'll pause at this point for you to write your own joke. 

And of course there has to be a but doesn't there. At the moment beyond the alerts and telling the time that is it. There is the promise of third party applications but we haven't seen them as yet. 

As things stand from my point of view it's a good watch but I am hopeful that it will become much more over time. For the moment however it is an expensive toy. 

Most of our gadgets are that anyway so I'm happy. 

Is that a palm pilot on my wrist?

My IBM Connectosphere Presentations

It's always huge fun (and just a little stressful) presenting at Lotusphere and this year, despite the name change that was no different. You can find all of my presentations going back to 2008 on my presentations page and of course feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

A return to Android

I do a lot of mobile Web development so I try and keep on top of the two major device streams, Apple's iOS and Google Android. I over the years I have alternated between the two with my day to day devices and at the moment I'm firmly in the Android camp with, Galaxy S3 as my phone and Nexus 7 as my tablet. It's been a while since I properly used Android and it's really come on as a platform. So I though I'd go through some of my key apps.

For Twitter I use Falcon Pro. In reality this is the worst bit of Android, in the Apple world there is Tweetbot and I've yet to find anything as good on Android but Falcon Pro comes closest.

The Facebook app is very good, as is the native Squarespace app which I'm writing the post on.

For RSS reading (I know, who uses RSS any more but it suits me for keeping up with the news) Press is really very good.

The other apps that I use regularly are...
- BBC iPlayer
- Netflix
- Evernote
- Dropbox
- Teamstudio Unplugged
- Amazon Kindle
- Podkicker (for podcasts)
- Co pilot GPS
- Google Play Music

The thing which is most interesting now is that it's possible to switch backwards and forwards between the two platforms without any issue. The majority of applications have either a direct or very close equivalent so it becomes a matter of personal taste over functionality.

I'm sure I'll switch again in time but for the moment I'm quite happy with my two Android devices.

The home page of my Nexus 7

What's new in Domino 9.0 for XPages Developers?

It's just a week before the XPages community heads en masse towards Florida and IBM Connect. So I thought I would publish a quick ten minute overview of what's new in Notes and Domino for those of us who work with XPages. It's by no means a complete list, but my highlights.

If you're interested in the other XPages videos that I publish then visit XPages101.net and you can use the coupon code "ls13" or "connect13" for a 33% discount off a new account!

Lotusphere Speaking and Sponsoring Schedule

It's getting to that point in the year where the (formerly) Lotus masses head to Florida for a week of great learning, networking and maybe a little fun.

It does seem that every year gets busier, and this year is no exception. So below are the things that I'll definitely be doing so far...

XPages Blast - BP208 (with Tim Clark)

Monday 11:00-12:00 Dolphin S. Hemisphere IV-V
Tuesday 08:15-09:15 Swan SW 5-6

This session will take you on a roller-coaster ride through the "best of the best" ideas and time- saving techniques for creating world-class XPages applications. Thirty all new top tips in just sixty minutes is going to be fast-paced and packed with loads of information you will refer to time and time again! Everything from introductory tips to getting started with XPages, all the way through to complex tips - such as making use of Java. And back this year is the support app showing all of the tips and tricks. Please fasten your seat belts and keep your hands in the car at all times!

Deploying and Managing IBM Lotus Domino XPages Applications - BP201 (with Warren Elsmore)

Wednesday 15:00-16:00 Swan SW 9-10

If you're a developer wanting to release your IBM Lotus Domino XPages application and you need to think about the “real world” of servers and admins...or if you're an admin and you have developers chasing you to get their shiny new XPages applications released -- then this session is for you. We'll take you through the things to think about from both sides of the fence. We'll share tips and tricks, issues which trip you up, and the best practices for releasing your applications.

Gurupalooza

Thursday 10:00-11:00 Swan Ballrooms

All of the BP speakers will be up on stage to answer your questions. Most of us at that point will be trying to hide and avoid speaking :-)

UKNight (Sponsored Event)

Monday 20:00-22:00 Shulas Bar

The format is simple. The nation best known for running bars (ie, us, the British), take over Shulas bar for one evening. The bar tab is covered but entry is by INVITATION ONLY so look out for myself or one of the other LDC-ers (in the form of Mark Myers, Ben Poole or Julian Woodward) for a ticket.

Oh and don't forget to practice your British accents, as there are bouncers on the door and they won't let you in unless you sound genuine!

Great Geek Challenge (Sponsored Event)

Tuesday 20:00-22:00 Dolphin Ice Cream Bar

The Nerd Girls organise a geeky quiz event every year, and we're sponsoring so we'll definitely be there. Last year the questions were properly hard, and they're promising to make them even tougher this year.

As ever the LDC will also be bringing along some great giveaways, this year we're doing something a little different, but you'll just have to wait until we get there to see what we (well Mark) brought over. Do make sure to stop us and say hi anyway.

End of year wrap-up

Normally in these posts I just wrap up what I've done in the last year with work stuff and then maybe mention something in my real life in passing. This year has been different, work has very much taken a back seat as I've got married, celebrated the birth of our first child and, in the last couple of weeks, moved house. I'm not sure it was entirely sensible to try and do three of the most stressful things in life all within the same year, but we did it, and it's been great fun!

In February, post Lotusphere, we were lucky enough that nearly a hundred friends and family made it to south London on a freezing cold, snowy Saturday afternoon to see Alison and I get married. The day really was pretty much perfect.

But we didn't get much of a chance for recovery post wedding. In April, Miranda was born, a little late but perfectly healthy and, as you may imagine, our lives changed dramatically right away. We've been really lucky on the sleep front but even so the old days of being lazy in the evenings and weekends have pretty much gone. But the changes are all for the better, having Miranda in our lives is a wonderful thing.

Boy I am just a walking cliché aren't I?

In between the feeding and nappy changing there was actually quite a lot of work to get done. The London Developer Co-op continues to go from strength to strength. We've completed several large projects this year, some of which are public, some not so much (yet). The common theme for the projects I work on continues to be XPages. But increasingly it's also with a view to mobile, so that's mobile first or at the least a responsive design that handles all screens. 

The main issue I faced for the year was that we ran out of space at home so I ended up renting office space and having to commute. There simply weren't enough hours in the day to get all the work done and still see my new family enough. Which is what pushed us to move house. We've stayed very close to where we were, in West Norwood but even after only two weeks we already feel very settled in the new place.

So what awaits for next year? Well on the family front I think it's time to slow down a little and recover, maybe take some holiday (which got rather neglected this year with everything else going on). And we have plenty of projects to get on with in the new house, so lots of painting and decorating ahead there!

The better news (given that I'm terrible at DIY) is that work projects continue to show up, we've got things booked up into March at the moment, which, if you're a freelancer you'll know, is a nice situation to be in. But the LDC can always handle more (or we can put you in touch with people we trust and work with).

And then of course there's IBM Connect (formerly known as Lotusphere). I'm lucky enough to be speaking again with Tim Clark and Warren Elsmore. It looks at the moment as though I'm going to be on stage every day of the conference, plus there's the usual meetings and parties. Hopefully I've become a little better at doing without sleep.

I suppose I should also commit to blog more, but I think we'll just see how I do there.

Anyway, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and enjoy a fruitful New Year.

</2012><2013>

New Unplugged Templates released

Over the last few months I've been working with Teamstudio to create several templates to be used with their Unplugged product. The aim was to take some of the most commonly used Notes/Domino application templates and make them available and looking nice for mobile devices.

So we created a bunch of design elements which handle the layout of applications and shared those across the Teamroom, Document Library and Notebook (formerly known as Journal). And today Teamstudio have released them so that you can use them with your existing databases or, if you're a developer, you can dig into the code and see how we put things together.

It's all covered in a lot more detail over on the Teamstudio site, but if you're interested in mobile development in the Domino world then this is a very good place to start.

New XPages Mobile CRM Application Released

Over the last few months I've been helping out Vigilus with a new XPages Mobile Web CRM application. ACT! For Notes is a long standing Notes client based application and what we've added in VMobile is a fairly significant subset of the features in the full client application designed to work in iPad, iPhone, Android phone and Blackberry. 

Given the size of the application it's taken a while and there have been some challenges, but overall I'd say it's a very capable CRM application that will now work on every device you work with day to day.

Well worth a look if your company is wanting a CRM application.

Here is the press release.

UKLUG 2012 - Call for abstracts

Warren announced that UKLUG is happening again this year, in Cardiff in September. Hopefully you've registered already, but have you thought about presenting?

You'll often hear Lotusphere speakers mention that their first taste of speaking was at a User Group like UKLUG, indeed it was mine four years ago when I presented with Bruce Elgort and Sean Burgess. A truly terrifying experience, but so worthwhile.

This year, as ever, we have three tracks of sessions; Admin, Management and Development. But what are we looking for? Well the high level response is that we want interesting sessions about anything to do with Lotus technologies (Notes, Domino, Connections, Sametime etc). Your session will need to last for just under and hour (55 minutes or so) and it can be aimed at any level of audience. The key thing is to write a clear and concise abstract.

The nice thing about LUGs vs Lotusphere is that we have somewhat more leeway in what we can run sessions on. So if your session is tangential to Lotus technologies but still relevant then it's worth putting it in. If you have a "real world" session which uses technologies which maybe IBM wouldn't want to highlight on the Lotusphere stage, then maybe the LUG format will suit you better. The key thing is to write the abstract (and title) to attract people to your session. Remember, when you're speaking there will be at least two other sessions going on, you have to sell yourself.

Myself and Steve McDonagh are running the Dev track this year, and I just thought it would be useful to run through the process of how we choose the sessions.

Firstly I move all of the session titles and abstracts into a spreadsheet and remove any names from the list to try and avoid falling into the trap of automatically selecting "the old dependables". Just to give an idea, last year we had three times as many abstracts as we had sessions, so this next bit of the process is very hard. We go through the abstracts and we rate each one so that there is a league table. 

Next we add in the speaker names. We try our best to get as many speakers in as possible, so if someone has played a blinder and submitted multiple abstracts which we like we'll either pick the best one and remove the others, or contact them to see if maybe they could speak with someone else, ideally someone new to the speaking circuit.

After much arguing and horse trading with the other tracks (sometimes we can stretch the definition of Admin or Dev or Management!) we end up with a list and we'll send out the notification emails.

And that's where the real fun starts for you!

So please do have a think about whether you want to try out presenting in a smaller, less terrifying setting than Lotusphere. The Call For Abstracts closes on Friday 29th June and we'll aim to let people know as soon after that as possible.

Dojo 1.7.2 in XPages

I had need to make use of some of the more advanced Dojo Mobile controls for a project last week which ship with Dojo 1.7.2. For various reasons I needed the Dojo files inside the nsf rather than on the file system, and if you've had to do that before you'll know what a massive pain it is to get the files loaded. So I thought I'd share a simple nsf with the files loaded.

You can either clone the database from Github here: https://github.com/whitemx/Dojo172XPages

Or you can download the nsf here: Dojo172.nsf.zip 

The other changes I've made to the database are to disable the standard Dojo libraries (1.6.1 in 8.5.3) in the xsp.properties file and also turned off the default theme settings as well so no CSS will be downloaded unless you manually specify it in the resources.

Creating a new XPages application in 8.5.3 UP1

I suppose most of you know about XPages101 now, the first eight videos on the site walk you through creating a new XPages application. I recorded them two years ago now and they are still useful when you're starting with XPages. But since 8.5.3 and more specifically UP1 (or the Extension Library) became main stream my eight videos can make things seem a little like too much work.

So over the next few weeks at XPages101 I will walk you through creating roughly the same application using the more up to date tools available to us. What's interesting is that I have recorded three videos already (the first one was released yesterday here) and have already reached the point of having a functional application with navigation and UI. It's obviously not a scientific measure, but the extra controls which are provided for us out the box with UP1 (or ExtLib) really make a difference in development time.

Anyway, if you're a subscriber then go ahead and check out the new video which I uploaded yesterday, if you're not a subscriber... well, I shall say nothing!

Get your LDC t-shirts here

Well Lotusphere has been over for a week now and people are just about recovering from the post LS flu and getting back into the swing of things. But did you miss out on getting an LDC shirt. Julian, Mark and I were only able to physically carry over a 150 or so shirts this year and we had to apologise to so many people for not having the design or size they wanted.

So we thought we'd try and rectify that by adding all of this year's designs, along with previous t-shirts that we've given out at other conferences and allow you to buy your own. The most important thing to note is that this is not a money making exercise, anything which we make will be donated to the Children's Cancer Association who we have previously donated money raised by the Lotus community to.

The store we use is called Zazzle and the link to the latest shirts is: http://www.zazzle.co.uk/londevcoop/?qs=&dp=0&pg=3#homeProducts 

Please feel to buy as many shirts or other products as you like, hopefully we can raise even more money for the CCA.

Lotusphere 2012 OGS Liveblog

Along with Paul, Gab, Stuart and Bill I will be liveblogging the Lotusphere 2012 OGS, you can see the transcript below...

XPages101 Lotusphere Discount

I'm not sure if it can be a tradition after two years but it's a good deal either way.

If you enter the coupon code "LS12" at checkout at XPages101.net then you will receive a 33% discount on the cost. So if your new years resolution is to learn XPages then this should help you along.

There are currently 68 videos on the site which total up to almost 13 hours of back to back content or well over 3.5gb of video!

Review of 2011

In many ways this year has been much the same as previous years, well on the work front anyway. 

In late January we had the annual trip to Florida for Lotusphere, Tim Clark and I presented a couple of sessions which I always enjoy. The Lotus world is lucky that Tim has stuck around now that he's left IBM, and I am lucky that he agreed to present with me again in a couple of weeks when we head back to Florida for Lotusphere 2012. This year I will also be doing a session with Warren Elsmore, something we've been trying to do for a couple of years but only this year have we managed to get around to putting something together, it should be a fun session.

But this is meant to be a review of 2011, not a sales pitch for my sessions in Florida!

The other events of the year were UKLUG and IamLUG. I had to do slightly fewer LUGs this year due to work pressure elsewhere, on which more later. But the two I did go to were, as ever, well attended, informative and well organised. Despite all of the other things going on with the world economy, or maybe because of that the LUGs seem to be flourishing and long may that last.

The other travel I've done this year has been related to speaking, after a fashion. 2011 seems to be the year that XPages reached the tipping point, lots of new people want to start creating XPages applications so my two offerings of video training at XPages101.net and classroom based training have become increasingly popular over the year. So in the last few months I've flown all over Europe giving classes and meeting some interesting new people along the way.

We had a great summer holiday in Canada exploring Montreal and Newfoundland and were lucky enough to see icebergs and many whales along the Atlantic coast.

My year has been dramatically different for other reasons though. From silly things like finally going to Glastonbury for the first time right through to some of the best things which have ever happened to me. In just 5 weeks I will be getting married with many family and friends attending what we hope will be a wonderful weekend here in London. And then in April, our first child is due to be born. As you can imagine the first half of 2012 promises to be a fairly busy time so I expect to be doing a lot less travelling and a lot less sleeping!

Times are so exciting right now that I can hardly wait for the next year to begin, but I will try and reflect for a while on a great year which is just finishing. 2011 was so amazing I can but hope that 2012 matches it.

</2011><2012>