Accessible Web Forms With Domino - Addendum

I'm finally trying out what Jake probably have done for close to four years. Getting rid of "Use JavaScript when generating pages".

My addendum, is the choice of the submit element. In his article he chose <input type="submit" />. The downside with this is that the value attribute is used as a label for the button. I'm going to use <button type="submit">, which frees me to put whatever I want as a label. It makes it a lot easier to make internationalized button, as it lets you separate data from design.

E.g. (brackets indicates field)
<button type="submit" name="action" value="save">[cfd_save_label]</button>
<button type="submit" name="action" value="archive">[cfd_archive_label]</button>
<button type="submit" name="action" value="delete">[cfd_delete_label]</button>

He's probably using this already, but since I couldn't find a mention of it on his site, I thought I should share it with you.

If you're having trouble designing buttons across browsers, check out this guide.

HttpRequest class - Support for multivalue requests (e.g. checkbox)

A colleague of mine needed to process values from a form with checkboxes. In some instances, the amount of checked boxes (select all) was so great that he hit the 32k limit of Domino fields.

I suggested that he tried posting to an agent/used my HttpRequest class. This didn't work, as each checkboxvalue is sendt as a single parameter.

E.g. ...make_report?OpenAgent&user=tom&user=jane&user=jack

The previous version of the class only fetched the last parameter.

Dim request As New HttpRequest()
Print request.parameter("user")
' Prints jack

I updated the code, so that the class aggregates the values into a comma separated string dynamic array. Single value parameters are still Strings.

Dim request As New HttpRequest()
Print Join( request.parameter("user"), "," )
' Prints tom,jane,jack

>> The class in a txt-file

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New NotesUI-bug found in Notes 8.5 (includes workaround)

Update: The bug(?) isn't as serious as I first thought. The settings document wasn't closed, but it was sent to a frameset of another application. In the other application, an action calls NotesUIWorkspace.SetTargetFrame. I'm not sure if it is a bug, that a document from another application ends up in this frameset. For all I know this is just Notes' quirky way of doing things. If I call setTargetFrame("someRandomValue") before NotesUIWorkspace.EditDocument, the code works as designed.

--

I'm back working in the client again. It seems every time I'm working on client code, I discover a new NotesUI-bug. :-\

Purpose: When user tries to create a settings doc, check to see if one already exists. If yes, open the existing doc (by static unid), else set static unid, continue.

I'd have thought it would be as easy as (in PostOpen) Source.Close, NotesUIWorkspace.EditDocument. And it would, if the user was running Notes 8.0.X. In Notes 8.5, the client closes both the "Create Settings" instance, and the LS instance if the user opens the Settings-form when a settings doc already exists (see code below).

The workaround is easy: Source.Close, NotesUIWorkspace.URLOpen

Even though it's easy to make the code work in 8.5, I shudder to think about how many existing applications that's going to misbehave if the user upgrades to Notes 8.5.

Sub Postopen(Source As Notesuidocument)
 On Error Goto handleError
 
 Print Source.IsNewDoc 'True then False when settings doc exists
 
 '// If new doc, check for existing settings doc
 If Source.IsNewDoc Then
  Dim settingsDoc As NotesDocument
  Set settingsDoc = s.currentDatabase.GetDocumentByUNID( UNID_SETTINGS )
  
  '// Set static unid on new settings doc
  If settingsDoc Is Nothing Then
   Source.Document.UniversalID = UNID_SETTINGS
  Else 
   '// Open existing settings doc
   Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace()
   Call ws.URLOpen( settingsdoc.NotesURL ) 'Works
   'Call ws.EditDocument( False, settingsDoc ) 'Does not work
   Source.Close True
  End If
 End If
 
 Exit Sub 
handleError:
 If Err = 4091 Then Resume Next 'Invalid UNID 
End Sub

>> Bugreport

Serving correct MIME-types for Office 2007 attachments on the web

Several of our users had problems with opening Office 2007-attachments in Internet Explorer. The browser identified the attachments as zip files.

The workaround for this is to set up the Domino server to send the appropriate MIME-type header.

The correct headers

Then you need to configure the Domino Server. We hoped it would be as easy as adding config documents to the "File Identifications" view. Alas, this didn't work.

What did work was modifying the httpd file in the data-directory of the server/refreshing http
(tell http refresh).

#   Office 2007
AddType .docm      application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12
AddType .docx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
AddType .dotm      application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12
AddType .dotx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template
AddType .potm      application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12
AddType .potx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template
AddType .ppam      application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12
AddType .ppsm      application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12
AddType .ppsx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow
AddType .pptm      application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12
AddType .pptx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation
AddType .xlam      application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12
AddType .xlsb      application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12
AddType .xlsm      application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12
AddType .xlsx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
AddType .xltm      application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12
AddType .xltx      application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template

Not sure if it is a bug that the "File Identifications" solution didn't work..? The server-version is Domino 8.5.

Great tool to test web applications in IE 5.5 -> 8

A colleague of mine discovered this great application, IETester. It seems to be able to run four versions of IE at once (IE 5.5, 6, 7 and IE 8).

There have been tools like this before, but all previous tools I've tried have not supported cookies, so no go for Domino login. This one does.

It's currently in early beta, but seems quite stable.

Mail from Outlook to Notes/Domino applications without Notes installed

I'm sorry to say that this post will be words only. No juicy code or bug ridden demo applications. Hopefully it will give you ideas on how to make use of this concept in your own applications.

Backstory: A customer of ours needed to get mails from Outlook into a Domino CRM web application. The prerequisite was that the users shouldn't need to install the Notes client.

This was presented to me by my boss over a couple of beers. I more or less immediately thought of the great functionality the Domino server has, that you can set up any NSF as the receiver of mails. If you could tag the mail with values inside Outlook, an agent could process the forwarded mails (add Readers/Authors fields based on customer id/etc.).

I started out with a POP3 Gmail account inside Outlook. I went through most of the writable properties of the mail-object, and struck gold. :)

The mail-object has a property called Category. When the mail is received inside Notes, this field is called Keywords. The field seems to be restricted to ASCII characters (or Gmail/Domino converts it to that). Therefore, the values need to be URL-encoded. From my small tests, everything seems to go through the wire. Line break, international characters, etc.

I send the values in a URL parameter pattern, so they're more readable, but formats like XML, CSV and JSON should work just as well. The only restriction I can think of is the ridiculous 32k limit on fields.

To let the user select the customer ID, I use the WebBrowser control inside a dialog in Outlook. The user interface is more or less a view with some DHTML code. When a user click a table row, I add a class on the row so that the user sees which customer is selected. I collect all the values from the selected table row, and put them inside a hidden field (comma separated). When the user clicks OK in the Outlook-dialog, I use VBA to collect the values from the hidden field. A second dialog is used for some custom fields (document type, date and description). That's about it.

Share and enjoy!