The simple fact is: most of you haven't gotten your grubby little fingers on any Workplace code, so you're not really able to grok what you can do with Workplace.

That's about to change.

About Workplace Designer
Effective now, you can download the pre-release of Workplace Designer 2.5 from the IBM developerWorks site (we'll have a link for you at the end of this article).

"The IBM Workplace Designer Pre-release contains the full code for the product, plus an IBM Workplace Collaboration Server runtime developers can use to run and test their components and applications." So claims Chris Reckling, IBM's Workplace Application Development Tools Senior Product Marketing Manager. "It's everything a developer needs to start prototyping and testing applications for the IBM Workplace environment."

According to IBM, if you've used Lotus Domino Designer, you should be able to pick up Workplace Designer very quickly. Now, this isn't a conspiracy to get you all jumping from Domino to Workplace, so don't get your knickers all in a twist. Our analysis is that it's a good practice to make product migration and interop clear and consistent, and the Domino and Workplace Designer products do just that.

According to Reckling, "Our team, which includes many members of the team that created Domino Designer, built Workplace Designer to be very similar to Domino Designer." He continues, "Domino developers will see a similar layout and many of the same icons, and they will work with fundamentally the same programming model of document-based design and scripting. It's everything a developer needs to start prototyping and testing applications for the IBM Workplace environment."

So, what's different? Well, you're going to be scripting in JavaScript rather than LotusScript and you'll be using XML to manage documents. Frankly, even if you never touch Workspace for a production project, you should be familiar with JavaScript and XML and this pre-release will give you some hands-on resources to learn about these important technologies.