Here is a simple example of how to easily achieve Ajax-functionality with Domino and Ext.js.
The idea is to, from a page that is opened in a web browser, call a Domino agent asynchronously and in the background to do some work and to provide feedback on it. The page is then updated when the work is done.

1. Download the Ext core (http://www.extjs.com/products/extcore/download.php). This is a JavaScript library that among others contains functionality that can be used to achieve Ajax functionality easily.

2. Copy the contents from the JavaScript file 'ext-core.js'

3. In your Lotus Notes database, create a Javascript library named ext-core.js and paste in the copied content from step 2.

4. Create a page with some Pass-Thru HTML.
- A button which when clicked on runs a JavaScript function 'runAjax();'
- A div-tag in where the result from the Ajax query is displayed

<table> <tr><td><input type="button" value="Run" onclick="runAjax();" /></td></tr> <tr><td><div id="results"></div></td></tr> </table>

5. Add a script tag in the 'HTML Head Content' section of the page to include the JavaScript library to the page.

<script type='text/javascript' src='ext-core.js'></script>

6. Define the Javascript function 'runAjax()' in the 'JS Header' section of the page. This function calls an url, in this case a Domino agent, which is run. If the agent was run successfully and the call and response was successful we can decide what to do. Here we update a div on the page with the response from the agent, i.e. what the agent prints.

function runAjax() { Ext.Ajax.request({ url: 'myController?openagent', method: 'GET', success: function(response, opts) { document.getElementById('results').innerHTML = response.responseText; }, failure: function(response, opts) { alert('server-side failure with status code ' + response.status); } }); }

7. Create the agent 'myController'.
The idea with the agent is to have it run the actual logic and that would be work with Domino data for searching or modifying for example. The agent could just do something with data but also send back information or status to the page that called it. In this example the calling page only runs the agent and the agent only prints a text line as a response or feedback.

Sub Initialize() Print "Foo bar" End Sub

8. Done! Open the page in the web browser and click the button. The text 'Foo bar' should be displayed shortly in the div.

Note: This does not work in the Notes client, only in a web browser.

It’s been snowing like mad here in Stockholm the last week. We have snow everywhere. Just this Saturday there was so much snow and I had to get my boat out of the water before the ice comes. There even was a thin layer – so it was time.

I got it up safe with the help of my father – and a lot of shovelling of snow too.

I thought about snowmen and decided to paint a little one when I got home. Here he is.

It is very beautiful with all the snow – and it really lights up the dark nights.

I had to show this graphic photograph – it has of course nicely designed stairs – but it also has a very nice graphic look. The stairs lead up on to the next floor – and then finally - the very well made ceiling. The picture feels very powerful. Even though the main colours are yellow and black, the iron shapes really stand out and overtake the whole feeling of the picture. It almost looks inspired by Maurits Cornelis Escher’s impossible structures – “Ascending and Descending “.

Inspiring architecture!

SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language) is the language used in salesforce when writing Apex classes for example to retrieve sets of data.

SQL (Structured Query Language) is the language for managing data in relational database systems.

The two query languages are very similar but differ in different distinctive ways. In general SOQL is not as powerful as SQL and don't have all the same functions. Here are three of the more imporant differences as bullet points:

- SOQL is only used to retrieve sets of data while SQL can directly retrieve and modify sets of data.

- SOQL can retrieve data from related Salesforce objects using extended dot notation. However the linking only works for pre-existing relationships. In other words SOQL can't be used to join unrelated sets of data while that is possible with SQL.

- SOQL does not support the full set of SQL syntax. Some examples:
- 'SELECT * FROM Account'
- 'SELECT DISTINCT id FROM Account'.
-SELECT Id, Name FROM Account GROUP BY Name



Please feel welcome to add other differences or more examples of the limitation of syntax in relation to SQL.

When I was drawing ducks the other day I had some different styles of ducks going. The last one I posted had a big beak – this one has a bigger beak.

The beak is very much the whole duck-head. Gives him a little kinder look than the earlier duck I drew.

There are many more ducks to come – stay posted. Or send me an e-mail if you are eager to see more sooner.

Me and my kids went for a trip to a bathing place last summer and while we went to buy some ice cream a nosy (and hungry) mallard came to us hoping for something to eat. If you look closely you can see some waffle on his neb that we gave him.

Although I really appreciate the snow that falls down now for christmas, it feels nice to think about the warm summer.

Hope he is ok now and not too cold (the mallard that is)...

If you develop in Eclipse you change it in the meta data part of the class.



If you develop directly in the web browser, you change it in the version settings tab.



Each new version of Salesforce consists of a new version of the API which includes richer features and greater efficiency as it says in the help. So to be able to use new functionality you much specify a more recent API version. However, the API versions are backwards compatible.

I have had a great day out in the archipelago. Really nice weather and I was getting a Christmas-tree for the living-room. Found a super nice one!

Here is a little cartoon duck I did last evening when I got home. He is looking really surprised when he sees the enormous tree…

I have done it in water-colour and ink. The water-colour gives nice shadings and extra life to the character.

My mother was in Glasgow, Scotland, the other day. There she took this picture of a beautiful mineral called Hematite (a valuable ore of iron) – very creative I must say. Hematite has really nice colours and also shapes that absolutely inspire. This was displayed in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University.

I might use this in a nice background for a cool invitation or something like that - maybe for a coming new-year’s eve party or something similar!

I wanted to create a simple XPages application for a specific purpose but since I haven't learned that yet and didn't have the extra time to do so either I had to go for the old style version. So I created a web form with some JavaScript and CSS. What I explain below is probably old news for most of you but I wasn't aware of this so I'm sure there are others.

I created a form with passthru HTML and added combo boxes to be able to select values from. The values were taken from a DbLookup from a keywords view. This looked fine and also worked fine in Firefox and Google Chrome. But for Internet Explorer (7) the values wasn't passed when clicking save and calling the submit function.

So I checked the source code and saw that the options lacked values. For Internet explorer the select box was built like this:

<select> <option>Value 1 <option>Value 2 <option>Value 3 </select>

And hence no values were passed.

For Firefox and Chrome however the select box was by default built this way:

<select> <option value="value1">Value 1</option> <option value="value2">Value 2</option> <option value="value3">Value 3</option> </select>

The workaround:
Since I didn't need to save the values chosen but only needed them to save to other fields I could instead print HTML in a computed text that allowed the select box to print correctly also for IE.

Here's the formula code for that:

tmp := @DbLookup(Notes:Recache;"":"";"LookupKeywords";"Keyword";"Values"); str := "<select id='someId' class='comboboxCssClass'>"; str := str + @Implode("<option value='" + tmp + "'>" + tmp + "</option>"); str := str + "</select>"; str

The other day I got a question if I could design a logotype for the little ceramic-shop in Stockholm, Östermalm. The potter is Jean Easdale and she produces lots of beautiful ceramics and pots. She needed a symbol and logotype for bags for clients, business-cards and maybe even a website in the future.

So I have made “P” twice - as in Pottery Presents. They are stylish and sober to give the right feeling to the logo that is representing the shop or boutique.

If you are in Stockholm some time you should check out the little boutique – and who knows you might fall for something that you like. I can assure you that you will get a lot of inspiration and enjoy the beautiful artwork!

Enjoy!

I am currently learning Salesforce. I have attended the two developer trainings available, DEV-401 and DEV-501 and in my current daily work there are both easier and more complex assignments for me to take care of which gives me a good chance to learn more.

So please bare with me if you find some tips and entries a bit basic in the beginning. But since I had questions I am sure someone else do to.

Now to the point of today's entry.
I recently blogged about how to prevent a delete button from delete under special circumstances. I tested this and some others did too. What I didn't think of was that all of us that tested were system administrators so we didn't see what I had missed.

If you have created a visualforce page and use that to for example override a button, all users will not be able to access this page. This is because you will have to add this to the profile(s). This is true for both Apex classes and for Visualforce pages.

What you do to make this work is:
- Goto setup -> Manage Users -> Profiles and do the following for all profiles that need to see the visualforce page or apex class.
- Scroll down to the sections 'Enabled Apex Class Access' or 'Enabled Visualforce Page Access'.
- Edit either of them and add from the available list to the enabled list and save.

The System Administrator Profile automatically has access.

Here I have been sketching different types of skulls to get a tattoo feeling for a skate print. I guess to make it have the right feeling it must be the same “look” as a tattoo would give. This will make the t-shirt print stand out.

I’ll see if I develop this a bit further and will, in that case, post some more sketches later.

The winter is coming slowly now – getting darker much earlier and much quicker too. So I thought I should post this beautiful summer-picture of the jetty out at Outer Sillö (Ytter Sillö), where we have a little cabin. A very old jetty, that has been through a few winters, and looks like it has been weathered a lot by the wind. A relaxing feeling I must say!

I recently had a case where I needed to remove the possibility to delete a Product (child to the Opportunity).

1. The first obvious solution would be to remove the delete access for the users. However since we are using a third-party product configurator to integrate with Salesforce this was not possible since they used the user rights to remove products from their system.

2. Second I though of creating a Visualforce page to mimic the Opportunity, i.e. using the Opportunity as standard controller and then overriding the related list which is the place where you can delete using the 'Del' link. However, there seems to be limitations on what you can do here when working with custom related lists.

3. Third to keep the 'Del' link but prevent the system from deleting by overriding the delete links och delete buttons for the Product object. Currently this is my best option.

3.1 Create a Visualforce page which says something like "You are not allowed to delete Opportunity products" and provide a link to the previous page.

3.2 Override the delete link on the Opportunity Product object with this VF-page.

At first It still seems as if the user can delete but when he clicks on the delete link the confirmation window first pops up and after that this new Visualforce page opens up and no deletetion has occurred (which is the most important).

Here is the Visualforce code. I have used static resources as you can see:

<apex:page standardController="OpportunityLineItem"> <apex:stylesheet value="{!$Resource.customStyle1}"/> <apex:includeScript value="{!$Resource.curvyCorners}"/> <apex:includeScript value="{!$Resource.curvyCornersSrc}"/> <apex:includeScript value="{!$Resource.customJavascript1}"/> <div style="width:100%;" align="center"> <br /><br /> <div id="userRoundedCornersBox"> <h1>FORBIDDEN!</h1> <br/><br/> You are not allowed to delete Opportunity products from Salesforce. This can only be done from the product configurator. <br /><br/> <a class="vfdp" onclick="goBack();">Click here to go back to the previous page!</a> </div> </div> </apex:page>

And this is how it looks like:


Do you have a better suggestion? Please leave a note in the comments.

I have been sketching different skull-sketches and designs for a future project. So I made this version too and added some letters above. It says “Wohill” as you can see. I am also designing a few font-styles for a logotype - or testing a few different styles. The style I was looking for is similar to an “Old English” font. I will get back more on this subject later on when I get it finished.

This is a closeup of the beach in the morning as the flood-tide is turning to ebb-tide.

Would you have guessed that if you didn't know? I guess it could have been mistaken for a very long distance photo as well of some delta or so.

Anyway, this is magic and peaceful to me

One of my friends has a taxi-boat company (SeaCab). The transports are mainly passengers out into the Swedish archipelago. He also takes school children from the different islands and brings them to the island of Möja – where the school is situated.

In the winters there is usually ice everywhere and boats can’t get through. So then they use hovercrafts. There are several hovercrafts and hovercraft-pilots that drive around in the archipelago.

This year there were a few new drivers or pilots – the original pilots wanted to welcome them into the group of existing pilots by giving them a “first year” diploma each. They are called new comers or baby-pilots. I made this illustration to put on the diplomas - to get the feeling of that they were baby hovercrafts – or rather baby hovercraft-pilots!

Good luck to the new hovercraft-pilots!

Here is a nice piece of art from Brussels. This photo was taken by my mother, who just happened to pass by this art-piece. She very often works and lives in Brussels – and she often sends a picture or two to show me some things she sees – like this for instance.

I think it was a really inspiring-looking work of art – so had to post it to show you too. Nice combination with the blue painted steel construction and the orange people hanging or walking within it.

It is good for your inspiration to see other people and what they are creating – even if it is not in your field or imagination just right now - but it could be a great boost for new ideas and getting something completely different going – activate your brain – activate your imagination.

Todays blog entry will be an open question to any XSL-developer.

Is there a way to use the HTML equivalent 'rowspan' in XSL-FO? I want to display a text with a bigger font in the leftmost column. The colums to the right however should consist of a couple of rows with smaller text.

In HTML this would be written something like this:

<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td rowspan="3" style="font-weight:bold;font-size:14pt">New Text</td> <td>Value 1</td> <td>Value 2</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td>{someAttribute}</td> <td>{someOtherAttribute}</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Value 3</td> <td>Value 4</td> <td>Value 5</td> </tr> </table>

and look like this:

Here is the code for XSL-FO without the new leftmost column.

<xsl:template name="printAddress"> <xsl:param name="subDocument"/> <fo:table table-layout="fixed" background-color="#e0e0e0" keep-with-next.within-page="always"> <fo:table-column column-width="7.0cm"/> <fo:table-column column-width="7.0cm"/> <fo:table-column column-width="2.0cm"/> <fo:table-body> <!-- Begin Row 1 --> <fo:table-row keep-with-previous="always"> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block>Value 1</fo:block> </fo:table-cell> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block>Value 2</fo:block> </fo:table-cell> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block/> </fo:table-cell> </fo:table-row> <!-- Begin Row 2 --> <fo:table-row keep-with-previous="always"> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block> <xsl:value-of select="$subDocument/someAttribute"/> </fo:block> </fo:table-cell> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block> <xsl:value-of select="$subDocument/someOtherAttribute"/> </fo:block> </fo:table-cell> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block/> </fo:table-cell> </fo:table-row> <!-- Begin Row 3 --> <fo:table-row keep-with-previous="always"> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block>value 3</fo:block> </fo:table-cell> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block>Value 4</fo:block> </fo:table-cell> <fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm"> <fo:block>Value 5</fo:block> </fo:table-cell> </fo:table-row> </fo:table-body> </fo:table> </xsl:template>

The HTML-equivalent for the above code would be to only remove this row from the provided HTML code at the top:

<td rowspan="3" style="font-weight:bold;font-size:14pt">New Text</td>

How would the XSL-FO code look like to provide the same look as the figure at the top?

Here is a sketch from the black-book again. I was sketching away on a spray-can dude standing and looking at his art-piece. It has a floating feeling and he has written the word “Super”. He got the floating part, but his dilemma is that it is crumbling to pieces. Is it as super as it should be? Is there always something extra he wants to add? Is it the problem of not adding too much, otherwise it would then make the piece crumble into something that wasn’t intended from the beginning? – So what are we learning? – Never to add more if you already feel satisfied. It can make your whole masterpiece crumble and fail.

Go with your gut feeling – enjoy art.
Get a nice wallpaper for your screen.

Do you see the human standing in the water saluting the sun and a new day to come?

I took this picture an early morning and tried to focus not on the sun as the center but instead the almighty blue sky and the beach which gives me a feeling of something bigger.

Not much to say. I'll let it speak for itself.

Boxes or divs with rounded corners can be nice to present content in, but how to do it?
Well, there are several ways using both CSS and JavaScript and here are just a few of them.

My impression when looking into this is that the javascript frameworks/toolkits don't have these functions built-in easy to use but instead you will have to use one of the below methods yourself.

- RoundedCornr (it is done for you)
- CurvyCorners (A free JavaScript library)
- SpiffyCorners (done for you)
- Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way
- CSS rounded corners
- Advanced CSS rounder corners
- Rounded corners reference (CSS and JavaScript)

Please feel free to complement with any info or links. I was looking into this for a specific purpose and wanted to know of the best solution to go for.

The great fighter, from the Skull-warrior tribe, fights and hunts with his spear and sword - a strong but lean warrior with his dark red cloak - the red coloured by blood. His hair is cut short so no enemy can grab hold of it and pull it when in a fight for life…

So this is some of the history and thinking concerning this warrior – The Skull Warrior.

The church cross is a powerful religious symbol rising towards the sky. This is a picture of Allhelgonakyrkan located at Södermalm in Stockholm. The building of the church started in 1917 and was inspired by churches from the rural area. The original thought was to let it stand for ten years and then replace it with a permanent stone church - but it still stands just as it did back in 1917 and it probably will for many years to come. Regardless if you are religious or not, I think you can enjoy this powerful picture on a dusky day from the heart of Södermalm, Sweden. Until we meet again enjoy the cross and let your mind fly free…

I have been taking it slow with Notes and Domino for the past year because of other obligations. Now I got the opportunity to create a webapp and I decided to do it in Lotus Notes and I thought I should go for Notes 8 and XPages to get a nice feeling for the user. I have to develop it in a pretty short time frame as well.

So I need to search and browse through some material for documentation and examples to get started. Do you recommend any special source on documentation, references or examples regarding XPages that I could use?

Any lessons learned or other info that might be good to know about since its been out for some time now?

I have specified some links below that seemed useful to me when Googling it quickly.
Appreciate any links on this!

- IBM Knowledge Collection: XPages
- The XPages Blog
- Learning XPages By Declan Lynch
- XPages in Lotus Domino Designer Wiki
- Harness the power of XPages in Lotus Domino Designer

I was out walking in the forest the other day – and there I came up with some ideas to draw a wolf. Don’t ask me why – I just felt like it came to me - a little fairy-tale about a fox.

When I got home I grabbed my sketchpad and made a few sketches.

Here are two more wolf heads.

This autumn I have been out sailing to Sandhamn as I have mentioned before. It was a super weekend with lots of good and strong winds. When staying over in Sandhamn for the night, I woke up early the next morning and went for a walk. There I saw the sun rising over the islands and the sun bouncing off the white-water and top of the wave-spray - very beautiful sight to see.

Then I walked by these nice kayaks – the sun is shining on them and really made the colours come out great. I was so caught up in taking some nice pictures that I didn’t notice that my shadow got in the way too.

When I download a file from one of the data tables in BigMachines I want to modify it in some way and then upload it back again.

If there are hundreds or thousands of rows I need this data manipulation to be in Excel. Sometimes there are Swedish characters like å, ä or ö in the file and they need be be preserved this way.

However when opening a csv-file encoded with UTF-8 in Excel these characters are displayed as very odd characters instead. If I replace the odd characters with the correct ones and save it, it is saved as ANSI and uploading it will instead make it look strange and cause errors in the system.

Here is a little workaround to make it work.
1. Open the csv-file in Notepad++ and convert it to ANSI and save.
2. Import to excel and modify and save.
3. Open again in Notepad++ and convert to UTF-8

The other weekend I was out at Sillö walking about in the woods there. I was checking out the little cabin too see if everything was ready for winter - no trees had fallen, nor had there appeared driftwood that had to be moved. The woods are very beautiful and are filled with colours - especially when the autumn is coming slowly. The leaves are changing into lots of different yellows, orange and reds. The pine-trees stay green, but give lots of variety. All this against the blue sky and dark-blue water is very beautiful.

I thought of lots of different characters that could live in the woods. Even though I think the Stockholm archipelago never has had any wolves - this is what I felt like sketching when I got back to the cabin. I gave the wolf a bit of a cartoon look – with a big nose.

I might post some more versions of the wolf again soon.

When you walk on the beach early in the morning you get to see much more than when taking the same walk in the afternoon. Things have been flushed up from the sea and the creatures of the beach are getting ready for some rest after a long night's work.

One of the things you might bump into are crabholes. Here is a larger one which I found on a morning walk on a beach in VIetnam.