I’ve used iUi in conjunction with ASP.NET MVC to create simple web applications for the iPhone before – it’s a useful way of adding a quick iPhone layer to any web application.
As the title suggests, Build your first iPhone App in five Minutes via XPages and iUI is a quick primer on doing the same thing with XPages.
Mindscape has just released a preview of their Silverlight elements suite. They all look very slick, but for me the coverflow and the scheduler could be particularly useful. Maybe it’s time for me to start paying attention to Silverlight again!
We’re pleased to announce a technical preview release of our Silverlight Elements suite, a pack of controls for Microsoft’s Silverlight Rich Internet Application platform. Silverlight is becoming an increasingly popular solution for building business applications as well as graphically rich media-oriented applications, and Silverlight Elements builds on that.
Check them out here: Mindscape Silverlight Elements now available for preview
Tags: Mindscape, .NET, Silverlight
This morning saw Tentacle Software release version 1.1 of it’s incredibly popular Windows Home Server Add-in:
Tentacle Software is proud to announce the release of Disk Management 1.1, the next version of our very popular Windows Home Server Add-In. It has, as they say, been a long time coming.
This release also sees a large update to their website – the new site is looking very shiny indeed. If you’re a current user of their Disk Management Add-in, or a WHS user who hasn’t seen it yet, then you should definitely head over and check it out.
Tags: Windows Home Server
I use SublimeText a lot. So much in fact that I don’t have any time to write about it.
That’s lame, but the point is I’ve been meaning to write about it for quite some time now. It’s a great editor, and I’m not going overboard when I say it really has changed my daily computing experience.
All of this is a prelude to mentioning that Version 1.3 is now available. Click the link above to find out what’s new, or simply go and download a copy and give it a trial – the trial mode runs for an unlimited period, so there really is nothing to lose.
After building my new Macbook Pro as well as rebuilding my main rig on its new Intel X25 SSD I wanted to briefly document my client setups for Visual Studio and Lotus Notes/Domino. So to get started, here’s the Notes/Domino post.
Firstly.. I install the client! I’m currently using 8.5.1, but ideally would be running 8.5.1 with 8.0.2 basic installed concurrently. Why? 8.5.1 is an utter pig for making quick design changes over slow remote connections – and this is how I do a lot of work for my clients. Setting the project to build automatically often means making a trivial change to a view column can take 10 minutes. Turning off build automatically is an obvious solution, but yeah, 8.0.2 for trivial/reactive changes would be ideal. Running a VM on my MBP isn’t an option due to the size of the SSD, so if you’ve got any hints on installing these 2 clients side by side please post them in the comments.
Add Remote Console icon to the toolbar – I very rarely run Domino Administrator. If you want to send a quick one off command to a server or view the console output while running an agent then this is the quickest way to do it. Simply add a new icon with the formula of @Command([AdminRemoteConsole]). Incidentally, the list of previous servers that appears in here has always seemed a little random – I’d love to know how to add/remove entries here.
Add Debug Lotusscript icon to the toolbar – I add the standard toggle debugging icon to the Universal toolbar for quick access.
Add Chad Smiley’s Edit Document Fields – very handy for fixing corrupt fields. Latest version here, change history here.
Apply the Eclipse RAM tweak - documented here, it really does make the Eclipse client feel snappier. If you don’t want to follow the link, the quick version for 8.5.1 is: browse to {NotesProgramDirectory}\framework\rcp\deploy\ and find the “jvm.properties” file. Look for the line “vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx256m” and change this to a suitable value such as “vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1024m” (depending on how much RAM you have).
Decrease delays for LotusScript autocomplete and hover - documented here at DominoGuru.com, this little fix really helps my sanity while coding. The default values are simply a little too slow for my liking.
Create a shortcut to my Notes Data directory in my user folder – I could add it to my Windows 7 favourites or to a jumplist, but I prefer it with the shortcut. I don’t go there too often, but when you want to paste in a template or something like that it just speeds things up.
Add a NotesDBS.dir file to the data directory – to store any large databases off the SSD.
Set some colours/fonts for the LotusScript/Java editors – A few personal tweaks to get it as close to my Visual Studio setup without spending too much time on it. I set the font to Consolas 10, and remove the bold/italics (which just looks silly in my humble opinion) and make a few other minor changes.
(Optional) Install BCC_ClientGenie - I'm running this on my desktop but not my laptop yet. I’m a sucker for skinning apps and making them shiny, and lets face it the Workspace is long overdue for an overhaul. I’m quite surprised that there aren’t more people making skins available for this thing, I’m sure there must be someone out there with some PhotoShop skills who’d like to make their Notes client look shiny (I’m looking at you Daniel).
Other stuff – things I’m not running, but have looked at. I did some work trialling SWING Software’s PDF conversion tools for a client (well, 2 clients actually). Both of them went in other directions for those projects, but SWING’s tools were really impressive. If I had a need for Notes/Domino PDF conversion then I’d definitely look to use those tools.
I’ve played with a few developer based Sidebar widgets (File Nav, Snippets, and a couple of others), but none of them really seemed to improve my development experience. I see people talking about various Widgets, but haven’t really found many which have made me go “Wow” – what am I missing?
A while back I mentioned I was looking for Notes/Domino refactoring/analysis tools, and despite the wealth of options supplied in my comments I’ve ended up using a manual but free and effective solution for the searching side of things, which I’ve documented here. I’m sure there’s some Eclipse plugins coming soon to make this process a little slicker.
So that’s my current setup. If you’ve got a tweak, widget, or setting change which you wouldn’t be without then please tell me about it in the comments below - I’m very keen to refine my list and I’m sure there’s some great Widgets out there which I haven’t come across yet.
Tags: IBM, Notes, Domino
Firebug Lite 1.3.0 beta for Google Chrome is making it easier for me to live without Firefox. It’s still missing a few features, but it’s a start!
Firebug Lite is not a substitute for Firebug, or Chrome Developer Tools. It is a tool to be used in conjunction with these tools. Firebug Lite provides the rich visual representation we are used to see in Firebug when it comes to HTML elements, DOM elements, and Box Model shading. It provides also some cool features like inspecting HTML elemements with your mouse, and live editing CSS properties.
For more detailed information, visit: http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/chrome/
Now all I need is for Chrome to fix it’s utterly stupid saved password security on the PC and I’ll be happy!
Tags: Web Development
I’ve upgraded a LOT of Domino servers in my time, and so yesterday when I upgraded another one (Windows 2003) to Domino 8.5.1 I was expecting another smooth ride. After running the install wizard it informed me that the computer needed to be restarted – interesting, as I don’t recall needing to do a Windows restart for previous upgrades, but who am I to argue?
As the box was coming back up it locked up at “Applying Computer Settings”, meaning logging in via console or RDP was unavailable. It took me a minute to realise what had happened – the Domino Service had automatically started and it was sitting there asking if I wanted to upgrade the address book’s template. It took a little while to realise what was going on as I’ve never needed to restart Windows after a Domino upgrade so I’d never seen this happen before! A simple boot into safe mode to set the service to Manual followed by a reboot and a manual start of the Domino server and all was well.
I am interested as to why this box needed to be rebooted, when others I’ve upgraded haven’t. My only theory is that it had a hotfix applied to it and perhaps there’s something in that which needed a reboot, however I really am guessing there.
Tags: IBM, Notes, Domino
Apple’s recent Bootcamp driver update added Windows support for the Magic Mouse. This is a good thing! However after updating I couldn’t seem to add my mouse. It showed up in the list of available devices, but sat at “Connecting” step for an eternity.
It seems this is a common problem.
I had this same exact issue. Here's what I did to resolve it:
1. Remove the mouse from your list of Bluetooth devices if it was added
2. Choose to add a Bluetooth device
3. Right-Click on the Magic Mouse and choose Properties (or Settings)
4. Choose services, and put a checkmark in the empty box (It usually takes a few seconds to show up)
5. Close the properties window and let Windows install the drivers
I could personally never get Windows to connect to the device without following these steps. Hopefully it works for you!
Yes, yes it did. A simple fix, but not overly obvious!
Tags: Apple, Windows