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FUTURE FEATURES AND DREAMS
A Web browser development environment
By Chris Stoner, a.k.a GreenJellyBean
I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic a few months ago, and a thought struck me. Why not have a Web browser development environment? I don't mean, "Let's all develop Web apps" but rather I'm talking about manipulating design elements without the Notes Designer. The idea came to me as I pondered a serious issue that I was about to face.
In a few days, I would be traveling to a client site to demo an application that we were hosting on our Internet site. All well and good, but I realized that the client may (as clients often do) ask to see a small change in the application, and without the ability to directly dialup my server, I had no way to make any design changes to this application. What a quandary!
What I really wanted was the option to choose my own Web development environment the same way I can choose how I browse my Notes databases -- either via the Notes client or a Web browser. Given that, what if I could use my Web browser to manipulate the design elements the same way I used my browser to enter and edit data in Notes documents?
The vision
The more I thought about this, the more I thought I was really onto something. But I started to realize that some things wouldn't be able to run in a Web browser.
I realized that any client-side compiling that the Notes Designer did would probably wind up running on the server once the form is submitted. I think it would just be too painful to keep a Java or JavaScript compiler and the Notes formula and Script compilers all in sync.
I'm sure it would be possible to make LotusScript (JavaScript, etc.) code changes, submit them to the server for compiling, and get back either a list of errors or a happy message. Picture it: "Thank you, Green Jellybean. Your Agent successfully compiled." The same would happen to a form when the design is changed. Either it compiles successfully or it could return a message like this one:
Field: Tracking_Number
Error: Unknown @Function: '@Dbanme'
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Rather, what I'm looking at is really just another form that allows you to edit your design. The WebQuerySave would have to fire off some sort of translator that would attempt to create design elements from the text that was entered on the form.
My idea, in depth
Let's start with loading up the form's design in a Web browser. The idea is to be able to do most of what could normally be done in the Designer through the Web client.
As you can see in Figure A, I can edit the name of the Form, MyTestForm, and two fields called Tracking_Number and Display_Tracking_Number, respectively.
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