close

NSD running when opening a Word object

chatAlmar Diehl 16 July 2010 09:17:22
One of my customers had a problem after upgrading van Lotus Notes 7.0.2 to Lotus Notes 8.5.1. Whenever they opened an embedded Word document NSD would start and it seemed like Lotus Notes was crashing. Since I assumed that it was a problem with access rights to a directory I yesterday started troubleshooting using SysInternals Process Monitor.

When the NSD screen popped up we started looking at and filtering all the data in Process Monitor. Since we had Process Monitor open on a second screen after a minute I suddenly saw the NSD screen disappear from the primary screen and I saw the Word document opening just fine in WinWord!!! And moreover, Lotus Notes had not crashed....

It turned that the NSD was not starting because of a problem in Lotus Notes but because of a problem with WinWord.

From the NSD log that was generated I was also able to find the cause of the problem. Lotus Notes was started with a parameter =d:\lotus notes\notes.ini but there was also a notes.ini (with only the default first few lines in it) in c:\windows. When starting the OLE object the path is searched for notes.ini and is found in c:\windows.

Deleting the notes.ini from c:\windows solved the issue.

I have Gone Google and returned to Lotus Notes!

chatAlmar Diehl 12 July 2010 19:53:04
The company I work for has not only been (premier) IBM/Lotus businesspartner for the last 20 years with a good track record in both Notes/Domino/Sametime/Quickr/Connections system administration and application development, but is also Microsoft Gold Partner and Google Partner. Within our company we have approximately 60 users using Lotus Notes for mail & calendaring, approximately 40 users using Microsoft Outlook and a handful using Google Mail (i.e Google Apps). Since we see customers moving to Google (and also customers moving to Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook by the way) I wanted to experience myself how the migration to Google Mail would work and if (after using Lotus Notes for almost 20 years) I could get used to mail & calendaring 'in the cloud'.

So, three months ago I got the sticker on my laptop: Image:I have Gone Google and returned to Lotus Notes!

Migrating my mail, calendar entries and contacts to Google Apps was easy. Google supplies a, free, Notes based solution for the migration which in my case worked without a problem. Since I also have a BlackBerry I had my device activated on our Hosted Google BES environment. Working with Google Mail took some getting used to, mainly because you tend to compare it to Lotus Notes. However, in the end it is 'just' mail & calendaring.

There was one thing however that I could not get used to: the way Google Mail handles mail threads. When I replied to and archived a message I would suddenly see it re-appear in my inbox?! (Because someone sent a reply). When I forwarded a message and after then wanted to reply to the same message it was hard to find the message to reply to (since every reply/forward is kept in it's own 'section' and only the last mail in the thread is expanded, being the forwarded one).

What I really like about Google is the way they constantly (try to) improve their products by adding new functionality and especially the ease if implementing functionality (of course possible by being in the cloud).

Mail in offline mode worked just fine, most of the time..... I had two instances where the offline store was corrupt and no synchronization could be performed anymore, also leaving messages in the outbox. Disabling/re-enabling the offline store solved this (although I believe this is hard to explain to an end-user).

So today I decided that I am too much a YellowBleeder and moved myself back to Lotus Notes. So the sticker is gone and will be replaced by: Image:I have Gone Google and returned to Lotus Notes!

Moving back to Lotus Notes has a couple of reasons:
  • My company uses a lot of Notes applications, so I still have my Notes client open all day
  • Testing/experimenting with new Notes functionality (f.i. 8.5.2) is harder when you do not use all functionality in the Notes client
  • I have agents in my Notes mailfile, doing all kind of stuff, that I really missed

So, for the rest of my working life I will stick to Lotus Notes. 'The cloud' is OK, but for my daily work as a IBM Lotus Notes consultant it is just not giving me any extras.

    Notes/Domino 8.5.1 and need for speed?

    chatAlmar Diehl 22 May 2010 14:14:49
    Then you better read this item on Vince Schuurman's weblog.

    New release of the Tree Xpage control (1.0.3), bug fixed and some new features

    chatFrank van der Linden 17 May 2010 10:37:02
    Ferry Kranenburg, who is the the Project chef of the Source Sniffer on OpenNTF, has reported a bug in the Tree Xpage control. So I have fixed it.
    And Ferry has added some new features.

    Catergory filtering
    above you will get a dropdown box with the categories. After selecting a category, the Tree will be rebuild with only the entries who are matching the selected category

    Image:New release of the Tree Xpage control (1.0.3), bug fixed and some new features

    Right click menu
    When you right click on a tree entr you will have menu.
    Image:New release of the Tree Xpage control (1.0.3), bug fixed and some new features

    Here you can download a new version.


    How to parse CData in Lotusscript

    chatFrank van der Linden 22 April 2010 16:16:51
    Today I was busy with parsing RSS XML to a website. For this purpose I made use of a Lotusscript agent.

    The lotusscript function to fetch the XML
    Image:How to parse CData in Lotusscript

    The problem I encouter is a parsererror. When I tracked down the location of the error, it's caused by a CData
    See below
    Image:How to parse CData in Lotusscript

    Does someone know a way to manipulate with lotusscript the XML, so I don't get any parsererrors anymore?

    Extending location object in javascript

    chatFrank van der Linden 15 April 2010 20:01:02
    For a project I needed some specific query string parameter.
    So I wrote some generic javascript code to extend the window.location object.

    code
    window.location.querystring = (function() {
     
        // by Chris O'Brien, prettycode.org
     
        var collection = {};
     
        // Gets the query string, starts with '?'
     
        var querystring = window.location.search;

        // Empty if no query string
     
        if (!querystring) {
            return { toString: function() { return ""; } };
        }
     
        // Decode query string and remove '?'
     
        querystring = decodeURI(querystring.substring(1));
        querystring = querystring.replace('&','&')
       // Load the key/values of the return collection
     
        var pairs = querystring.split("&");
     
        for (var i = 0; i < pairs.length; i++) {
     
            // Empty pair (e.g. ?key=val&&key2=val2)
     
            if (!pairs[i]) {
                continue;
            }
     
            // Don't use split("=") in case value has "=" in it
     
            var seperatorPosition = pairs[i].indexOf("=");
     
            if (seperatorPosition == -1) {
                collection[pairs[i]] = "";
            }
            else {
                collection[pairs[i].substring(0, seperatorPosition)]
                    = pairs[i].substr(seperatorPosition + 1);
            }
        }
     
        // toString() returns the key/value pairs concatenated
     
        collection.toString function() {
            return "?" + querystring;
        };
     
        return collection;
    })();

    to use this code
    var param = window.location.querystring['url'];


    Lotus Traveler on the iPad

    chatAlmar Diehl 12 April 2010 16:13:38
    Today my bosses got their iPads and I must say 'I WANT ONE!!!!'. But of course there was one single test I had to do to really convince me (read: hoping that the test failed so I would have a reason for myself not to want one): install/configure Lotus Traveler on it. Two minutes later the iPad had passed the test, works like a champ!

    Just point the iPad browser to the Traveler url. Traveler will not recognize the iPad (duh!)

    Image:Lotus Traveler on the iPad

    But, no worries, just click on 'client configuration file', select 'Apple' and click on 'Generate'

    Image:Lotus Traveler on the iPad


    RSS custom control - new release (1.0.2)

    chatFrank van der Linden 8 April 2010 10:41:31
    Guus Disselkoen  is using the RSS custom control on his website, but has made some enhancement to the RSS control. His blog (Dutch) about the enhancements.
    So I have asked him if I may use these enhancements in the RSS control.

    What is new:

    • 2 new parameters


      • isIntro: to display the information of the rssfeed

      • maxItems:amount of rss items to be displayed


    • isSingle parameters has been removed



    Download the new version here.




    Rating control contributed to OpenNTF

    chatFrank van der Linden 30 March 2010 13:36:31
    This morning I have posted a blog about a Rating Control, My question was if there is any need to contribute this to OpenNTF.
    The comments shows me that there is a need.

    So I collected all files in a Demo database and made a small Read me.
    And contributed to OpenNTF.


    Rating control

    chatFrank van der Linden 30 March 2010 09:19:47
    I have developed a Digital Image Gallery with Xpages.One of the requirements was the possibillity to rate a image.
    So below an image you can hover over the stars to select your rating.
    Image:Rating control
    To display to ratings in Image Gallery I have developed a Rating control.
    Image:Rating control

    I was thinking to contribute this Xpage control to OpenNTF, but first I need to know if there is any need of such control.