Mock-up tool
If you are and have a habit of producing very quick and rough mock-ups with a pen an a piece of paper (or maybe occasionally using an Table PC), then you might be interested in Balsamiq Mockups. This is an Adobe Air application that allows you to paste together quick mockups by dragging and dropping pre-defined templates onto a work area, such as a browser window, menu bar, image holder, etc. It’s a really simple idea and works really well Source: Interface Matters
WordPress not Domino
I’ve been heavily using Domino for development for 8 years and though I’ve had many issues with it (anything relating to Java and the Web on Solaris), I’ve found it really easy to build complex web applications. Although I have a number of Domino servers available to me, work regs mean that I’m not allowed to use them for a personal web presence. So despite having developed blogging facilities that are used within the intranet, I need to find another blogging solution. After a brief play with some of the alternatives I’ve plumped for good old WordPress hosted on a Mediatemple Grid Service. For $20 per month (I got it for $17 – after searching for a discount code), I get what appears so far (after two hours of playing) a really comprehensive service, offering php, mysql, and gives me something that I’ve been itching to play with, Rails. I find it disappointing that not only isn’t there any…
Document locking
StudyNet provides students with access to an online website for everyone of their modules. Each module provides staff with tools to create resources, podcasts, video, discussions, etc. One feature that’s steadily developed is our module ‘wiki’ facility. This year there’s been a significant number of staff using the facility with large cohorts and this has led to a problem when students edit a page at the same time requiring staff to manually merge the contributions. There appeared to be two solutions. To provide better tools to merge contributions across a number of documents or to lock pages when somebody edited the document. Locking appeared to be the best and easiest solution. It was how to achieve this in a cluster. I’d been considering implementing my own locking system but after a web search it was clear that the ‘document locking’ facility introduced with Domino 6 that I’d discounted because it…
Welcome
Welcome to my new blog. Through this blog I’m going to document the many trials and tribulations of being a Domino-based web developer. I work for the Learning Technology Development Unit at the University of Hertfordshire developing their on-line Domino based learning environment, StudyNet. With so many good blogs on this subject already available, why another one? Well, to be honest, I’ve been all too happy to consume the expertise provided by other bloggers so I thought it was about time to I add my thoughts and hopefully they’ll be of help to new developers getting started with Domino