thinking out loud - a skinnable hannover?i've had a ton of ideas, many of them based around a community you could create on the web, kinda built around the core ideas, and various tools that the community could build together that would also interact with the core software.
the thing about Notes is, the UI in the client is so heavyweight, so clunky. don't get me wrong, i'm a fan and all ya know, but first time users look at Notes and immediately get confused, scared and hostile. i know i did, to some degree, when i first saw it. even though, i have to admit, i was fascinated at the same time. as amazing as Notes is, so many people really hate it!
so then i got to thinking about Hannover. and the Eclipse thing and so forth.
what if that client enabled me to "skin" it? i wonder if there is enough flexibility there that i could say, get rid of all the toolbars at the top. get rid of and/or change ALL of the menus.
i'm wondering because what i need is what Notes gives me under the hood. encryption. local data, server data, replication. flexible data store, Domino web front end or rich client front end, etc.
but i need a front end for the rich client that is highly configurable. i need all the stuff under the hood that i'm used to, but i need to be able to take 100% control of the interface.
and i'm thinking that in Hannover or post-Hannover timeframe, this might be possible, because the client technology has changed.
man how cool would it be to have a piece of software that looks like any other piece of software (completely branded in other words, with only the UI you intend), but under the hood you have everything that Notes normally gives you.
btw the domain-centric thing doesn't bother me at all. in fact it's a plus. i want the software to interact with my servers, and only my servers. i can build the web 2.0 kind of stuff, if i need to, on the web.
anyone know enough about this (WCT etc) to comment?
discussion thread| 1 |
I know it's only a small part of what you want, but Icodex used to offer a product that would do Notes client skinning. See:
{ Link }
It works in 6.5, but I haven't tried it in R7 yet.
At the least, it might give you a little insight to get started on.
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I currently use the iCodex product, and it's cool but certainly doesn't allow you to completely customize the interface, including menus. All it does is let you change the background of workspace pages and the shape of workspace buttons.
I would think that if Hannover is based on Eclipse, it might be possible to skin it, although whether or not that would be a supported feature or a hack is another story.
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right, the more i thought about this last night, the more i thought about how cool it would be if lotus were to do something like this in an officially supported kind of way.
i downloaded the latest eclipse client last night, just the bare bones deal. i was writing some code in java, and i really needed to debug it. i forgot what a wonderful IDE that is for java coding. i sure hope we get to use that instead of designer at some point for java coding in domino.
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@1 - i'm really not looking for the "old' way of doing things, i'm looking for a completely different thing. but thanks for the info, that is cool. :-)
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I couldn't find anything in my notes, but I remember someone presenting on being able to add to the Hannover client because it is Eclipse based (maybe in ID107?). I specifically remember mention of adding menu items; I don't remember if it went to the extent of hiding standard menu items but it wouldn't surprise me that you'd be able to.
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thanks don...
i need to put a decision tree together. i gotta figure out what my goals are, what domino brings to the party that i can't live without (and will therefore have to code somehow on my own), what open source technologies will bring, and so forth.
one of the biggest considerations is that my skill set is heavily invested in domino. i think it would be way cool to start a community / business based on it. but i'm open to learning new things. Ruby looks really interesting to me.
i think i need to look into the whole WCT thing and find out what that is about, and i also need to learn some Ruby and figure out how large the curve there really will be.
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wow don, you are blogging! i didn't know, way to go man!
:-)
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Yeah, I decided to take off the training wheels and strike out on my own. ;)
I'm with you on broadening the skill set. I can do pretty much anything I want in LS but I'm an absolute beginner in Java. And after listening to the latest Taking Notes podcast, I'm concerned that a) I need to learn Eclipse and b) that isn't going to be an easy proposition (if Julian says it's time consuming, I *know* I'm in trouble!).
But I do already have a project in mind for using web services once we get on ND7! Cool stuff.
Jon Udell (InfoWorld columnist) has talked a lot about Ruby. Don't know if he has any examples of things, but he seemed pretty high on it.
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I like the Ruby on Rails idea. As long as you are able to access the functionality you need or can easily recreate it, it seems like the best way to go. That way you get a completely customizable interface. Also if you did it as an open project (or open source ala source forge project) like you suggest people could borrow ideas and code snippets from each other and the functionality would bust out quite fast. I don't know enough about Notes development to comment on too many specifics but I'm sure they've exposed most everything you'd want by this point. Weren't they considering eliminating the client app altogether themselves anyway? I was a die hard pop/smtp email guy and mostly refused to use web based mail until gmail came along. It still lacks a few features of a full blown outlook or whatever but mostly I've got what I want. Outlook web access with an Exchange backend is remarkably feature rich these days to the point where I can't think of anything that it won't do anymore. I also used to be opposed to trying to shoehorn everything into a web interface but more and more, it is actually capable of most everything now. AJAX type stuff is going to replace most smaller applications anyway. This is especially true of client / server applications. Corporate desktop organizations would rather keep a web browser patched than install 30 different client applications to 250,000 desktops and incur all the pain of rollout issues and support. I think MS Office could be all web 2.0 based or ajax by now if they wanted to do it strategically. Notes is probably ahead of that curve in terms of exposing the core functionality to the development community so I think you're heading down the right path.
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Don - in my view getting started with eclipse is dead simple. i've downloaded and played with a number of versions, and it keeps getting easier to use.
just unzip the whole thing to a directory. that's it, that's all you have to do to install it. then click the eclipse icon. then create a project. call it anything at all. then create a class. start coding.
if you haven't seen this IDE yet, i think you will like it a lot. it is truly fantastic.
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John - the client app is here to stay for the foreseeable future. in fact it is getting a facelift with a new Eclipse-based technology. they are taking the core Notes dlls and wrapping them up in this Eclipse wrapper. they call the wrapper WCT, Workplace Client Technology.
the next version of Notes is code named Hannover. the UI stuff they are doing in that client looks really darn good from everything i've seen so far. an order of magnitude more modern (and Notes continues to look better in a UI sense every release).
the basic question i'm asking is, will this technology be flexible enough to truly wrap the power of Notes inside a highly customized wrapping.
seems like IBM would have a potentially brand new marketplace to explore if this were the case. the business opportunities for people like me who are highly invested skill set wise in Notes would be incredible.
just a crazy idea...
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The answer is yes -- eventually.
By basing on Eclipse, we are enabling Notes to have signficantly more customizations (basic layout, branding, theming, menu items, etc.) than in previous releases of Notes.
The model is that you get a lot of control by just configuring various parts. You get even more control if you write some Java.
Don't expect us to be 100% there for Hannover. Many things will be skinnable but likely that some parts will not be or will not completely be.
But, Hannover is just the first step on a path -- more coming in Hannover+1, +2, etc. and the various thoughts above about being skinnable and customizable is certainly where we are heading.
Jeff Eisen
Lotus Notes Chief Architect
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wow! thanks for stopping by Jeff. your comments are heartening and as always fascinating.
thanks again! :-)