LNT 8.5.3 – New Widgets For Android

Domino and Notes 8.5.3 have reached Code Drop 5 and so I (as members of the Domino Design Partner Program) am allowed to blog about all the awesome features and enhancements that will be brought to you when 8.5.3 will be released later this year.

So here are a few notes on whats new in Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.3.

Lotus Notes Traveler on Android has been given new home page widgets for mail and calendar.

Both widgets come as “small” and “large” , which means 4×2 and 3×7. I personally prefer the small 4×2 widgets for mail and calendar.

Tapping on the icon in the upper left will open the mail or calender on the device.

Lotus Notes Traveler on Android now supports multi-line signatures.

Name Lookup requests are executed against the user’s mail server directory

In previous versions, when a mobile device did a search for a user using the Name Lookup application,  that search was executed against the Domino directory on the Traveler server.  This could sometimes lead to different results that a lookup search executed by your Notes client, since the notes client will search the directory on your mail server.

This behavior is configurable if it is not desired by setting the configuration key NTS_TRAVELER_AS_LOOKUP_SERVER=true in notes.ini on the Traveler server.

On Nokia devices, Lotus Notes Traveler  8.5.3 will support Symbian^3 and Symbian^3 device encryption enforcement.

Here are some more things that have been added:

• Lotus Traveler data only remote wipe for Apple iOS devices
• Reply and Forward indicators from Apple devices
• Select which applications are allowed to sync for Apple devices
• New security policy option which requires approval for new devices
• Domino encrypted mail support for Android

 

OpenNTF: XPages ActiveBar Custom Control

Activebar is a crossbrowser information bar, which tries to mimic the look and feel of these bars used by modern browsers. Such bars are commonly used to display important informations to the user. Requests to open a popup window, install some components or to remember some sort of password are prominent examples of what these bars are commonly used for.

Unfortunately modern browsers do not allow any website to access these kind of information bars because of certain understandable security concerns. Activebar is written in pure javascript utilizing the jquery js library for crossbrowser compatibility and ease of development. It simulates the behavior as well as the look and feel of current browser information bars using simple html and css. Therefore it can easily be embedded into your website to display certain information to the user in an unobtrusive way.

OpenNTF: Xpages PagePeel Control

Xpages PagePeel Control is a special control that I created for the Xpages contest on OpenNTF.

You have probably seen these forms of advertisings where you can peel a corner of a website and see a message underneath. It seems most are flash driven, but I decided to try it out using some simple lines of jQuery. There is also a Dojo version of the control.

It depends on your environment, which version you want to use. If your application already includes jQuery, I suggest to use the jQuery custom control.

Domino on Linux: “Could not load de strings from resource”

Today I had the pleasure to consolidate 2 Domino server on Windows into a brand new Linux based Domino 8.5.2 server.

I did not expect any bigger issues. But I was proved wrong. After starting the http task on the new server I saw the following lines on the server console:

Could not load de strings from resource module: nstrings_de
Could not load de strings from resource module: nstrings
Could not load de strings from resource module: nhttprs_de

No big deal, as such error is caused by a wrong setting of the default language in the server document or the default website document.

A quick look into the document and … everything was OK. The server is EN and no language pack is installed. And the default string resource language in the website document was also “English”.

I resaved the document but the server still complained about the missing resources.

I then set the “Load Internet configurations from Server\Internet Sites documents:” to disabled and looked into the Web Engine Settings section of the server document. And there it was

I changed the setting to English, set the “Load Internet configurations from Server\Internet Sites documents:” to enabled again and saved the document. Now the HTTP task starts without an error.

I found the same wrong setting on another Domino running on Windows. On this server the HTTP task starts without any error.

 

OpenNTF: XPages TimeGlider Custom Control

I have released a new custom control on OpenNTF: TimeGlider.

Timeglider is a zooming, panning data-driven timeline — great for history projects, project planning, and much more.

 

The timeline can be zoomed by dragging the vertical slider at right: up for zooming in (less time shown) and down for zooming out (more time shown). The mousewheel also works as a zoom controller. Any white area on the “stage” of the timeline can be dragged left and right, as can the blue “ruler” which marks out different units of time. Clicking on an event brings up a small modal window with a description and links if any are provided in the data.

Timeglider timelines can load directly from data you provide in a view.

It uses jQuery and an open-source timeline component ( http://timeglider.com/jquery/?p=intro )

The control works best in modern browsers like Safari, Chrome and Firefox. It has some problems rendering correctly in IE. No surprise is that.

I have only included the compressed version of zhe javascript components. You can download the uncompressed version from the above link.