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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

I see you've given the HTMLArea database a good testing - 294 documents created so far! Even if some of them didn't really test much at all. It's funny to see how many people simply entered "sadasdasda" derivatives or "test". No markup whatsoever and hence not a test at all. Also funny to see how many of you entered nothing at all or tried to actually type markup straight in to the wysiwyg editor.

Looking through the forms you guys created I came across a few comments along the lines of "Jake rocks" and "Another great one from Jake". Well, I don't want to take all the credit. After all, I simply took a piece of code one of you posted, tested it, bundled it in to an example database and made it available for the rest of you to play with. There's very little ingenuity on my part. Not that I want to play down my part in the whole thing of course. There's a lot of work goes in to running this site, but I couldn't do it alone!

As I mentioned last week, another one of you guys, Alex Gorlenko, has made another amazing breakthrough. He's devised a clever way of hacking together a form that allows Rich Text editing on the web and in the client. All this with no Java applets in the browser. It also allows file uploads that behave as you'd expect. There's not a whole lot of code involved either, apart from a simple WebQueryOpen agent that runs when you edit a document. It's ingenius in its simplicity. There's no way I would have ever arrived at this solution alone.

The database is almost ready for the prime-time. I just need to skin it up and polish off the edges before releasing it in to the wild.

Tomorrow I will continue the theme and discuss my Lego Theory of Domino Development.

Comments

  1. I have to be honest, I'm really looking forward to the article/blog entry about this solution. I'm looking at an upgrade to a database that will require this exact thing and I've been stumped for months.

    Thanks in advance Jake and Alex.

  2. Just a quick comment on your humility:

    In my research, I often find that a working solution exemplifies the nuances and elegantly displays the context of many facets of a given Domino feature. Wuite often (due to an understandable limitiation of time and space) a given explanation does not adequately EXPLAIN a feature.

    A working demonstration does that, and more.

    IMHO your blogs, articles and demos have done more for the Domino community than can be readily measured.

    Keep up the good work.

    • avatar
    • Jake
    • Wed 7 Jul 2004 11:08 AM

    Thanks Patrick. I think this might tie in with tomorrow's Lego Theory.

    • avatar
    • Joel
    • Wed 7 Jul 2004 05:04 PM

    I have been using HTMLArea with Movable Type for a year or more. IMHO, it made the standard interface better than the user-friendly TypePad that the put the Trotts onto the capitalist map.

    If there is one thing that is a bit daunting, it is customizing the HTMLArea code, and I, for one will be very happy to be able to see how Jake does this. For all the time I have spent coding Domino on the web, I do not feel like an advanced life form when it comes to connecting Javascript and Domino. I appreciate your wielding the scalpel on this and look forward to seeing this in action in the database.

    • avatar
    • Anura
    • Wed 7 Jul 2004 09:08 PM

    For me, you are getting close to the 'holy grail' of Domino + web, Jake.

    I have looked at HTMLArea for some time, but my javascript skills aren't up to scratch when it comes to making sure that it integrates with the Notes database. So, I'll just sit back and let Jake do the hard work ...

    Seriously though, I'm still playing around with it. One thing I have noticed is that the 'enlarge editor' button on the demo database doesn't work - I have exactly the same problem at the moment.

    Just thought I'd mention it so that we can iron out the bugs.

    I'm really excited about this. Bypassing Domino's crap rendering of rich text would solve so many problems.

    Keep up the great work, Jake. You've built a fantastic site that has saved my skin more than once.

    • avatar
    • Markus
    • Thu 8 Jul 2004 12:44 AM

    Jake, I'm just at the beginning of becoming a web programmer, but without codestore it would be much harder for me. So I just want to thank you. :-)

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Written by Jake Howlett on Wed 7 Jul 2004

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CodeStore is all about web development. Concentrating on Lotus Domino, ASP.NET, Flex, SharePoint and all things internet.

Your host is Jake Howlett who runs his own web development company called Rockall Design and is always on the lookout for new and interesting work to do.

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