4Julian Robichaux  6/29/2007 7:35:56 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Class browser for LotusScript (so the classes and their methods show up in a tree view, like with Java -- or even something better).

2. Auto-complete for methods/properties in user-defined LotusScript classes.

5Nathan T. Freeman  6/29/2007 7:43:11 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

"and modify any value on the fly"

Charles... you can do that, man. Any individual scalar value, anyway.

I feel ya on the code execution, but if you just want to see what happens on value "X" vs. "Y", you can do it today.

Bob, my votes are too complicated to put in a comment box. Watch for an email.

6Nathan T. Freeman  6/29/2007 7:52:23 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Ah, I know...

A complete and total irradication of "inches" and "cm" as a measure of anything whatsoever in Designer. Instead, px, em and pct for absolutely everything. Match the CSS standards for length measurements.

7Nathan T. Freeman  6/29/2007 7:53:21 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

And my other one! Native PNGs for everything.

That SHOULD qualify as obvious, but I asked for Notes 8 and heard "no plans," so yeah, I'm considering it non-obvious.

8Rick Wofford  6/29/2007 7:53:48 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Can we duplicate other peoples picks?

My first pick was already covered by Julian Robichaux in his #2.

My second was covered by Charles Robinson in his request for an improved Lotuscript Debugger.

9Andy Broyles  6/29/2007 7:55:20 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1. Fully integrated custom class/external object support in Lotuscript; class browser and type ahead for any early bound class reference.

#2. Finish all of the great functionality (my favorite unfinished function is not being able to programatically control the reference the parent database for embedded views.)

10Nathan T. Freeman  6/29/2007 8:15:50 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Dammit... I forgot...

EMBEDDED FRAMESETS

Then Andy's #2 goes away.

it's as useful as IFRAMES in a browser. The possibilities are AWESOME.

11Rob McDonagh  6/29/2007 8:17:28 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Debuggers. Every supported language has a debugger that is valid in every context the language is valid in.

2. Get the html pane feature right. Don't make developers convert between Notes and html, let us switch design modes at any time (like an html layout editor). Don't approximate the html conversion, use exactly the same html rendering the server will - let the developer see EXACTLY what html they'll get from the server AND edit it as html and save those changes to be applied whenever the server renders that design element. Don't limit it to forms, subforms and pages - let us do the same with Views/Folders, Framesets, Outlines, Action Bars, etc. If the Domino server is going to render it into html, let the developer see it and modify it in Designer.

12Scott Jenkins  6/29/2007 8:34:06 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I had four or five, but I will stick to the rules and do only two:

1) Create a method to allow QueryOpen/WebQueryOpen and QuerySave/WebQuerySave events to share code, in either LotusScript or Java (or see my number 2) both. This implies the need to permit WebQueryOpen/WebQuerySave events on subforms. The order of subform based code being executed should be defined by the order of appearance of the subform on the parent form--but even an underfined order would be a vast improvement, since many modular QueryOpen/QuerySave type features don't interact.

2) Permit Java -everywhere- LotusScript is permitted. Cross-calling between LotusScript and Java would be a bonus of epic magnitude for those of us with extensive legacy code, although I don't truly expect that. The main reason I prefer Java--after years of writing LotusScript--is the standard libraries (especially the collection classes).

13Julian Robichaux  6/29/2007 10:45:23 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Just to clarify, when I mentioned a class browser in comment #4, I meant for custom classes that I've written. I'm so sick and tired of having to scroll up and down in the Declarations section (yes, I know about TeamStudio Script Browser, but it should be built-in).

14Richard Schwartz  6/29/2007 11:34:38 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. LotusScript class browser.

2. Ability to turn on a visual indicator for hide-whens, with display of the formula when you hover over the indicator.

15Brian Green  6/29/2007 11:47:57 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) I will echo Julian's comment. Overhaul the code editors. We need something modern. For example:

{ Link }

2) A new Rich Text data type that stores everything in ODF (with an API of course). Big possibilities there.

16Ben Poole  6/30/2007 2:57:44 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Formula debugger. First, because it would be very useful and secondly, this is something we've asked for forever, so makes sense to continue asking ;)

2) An inbuilt standards-based configurable WYSIWG editor that can be used on the web and in the client

17Travis Retzlaff  6/30/2007 3:57:24 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Since I can't whittle my feature wish list down I'll go for general directions as opposed to specific features which everyone else is addressing quite well.

1) More emphasis on building and extending features that address management of the development process and development artifacts. If you want more explanation of what I am referring too see the following blog entry.

{ Link }

2) More embracing of community efforts to provide functionality. Not only does this encourage the community to contribute more, it also brings functionality to market quicker than building entirely from scratch. Think of Steve Castledine and providing the blog template in ND 7. IMHO a good place to start would be lotusscript.doc, or some of the Projects at OpenNTF.

18Jeff Gilfelt  6/30/2007 5:12:51 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I am making the same assumption as Charles (@1), that the product is re-developed for the Eclipse platform and so I really don't need to suggest features like class browsing, content assist, better debugging, source refactoring and integration with CVS (to name a few). Therefore my requests are as follows:

1. The floating properties box/window to be implemented as a standard Eclipse ViewPart so that it is dockable, with window perspectives available for each of the different design element types.

2. A "show dependencies" or "show references" tool that I can use on a field, function or design element.

19Sebastian  6/30/2007 5:22:51 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Outlines for LotusScript Classes

2) Formula Debugger

20JC  6/30/2007 5:45:10 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 Persistent type ahead/autocomplete help for completing parameters in Lotusscript methods, ones that appear even if you edit an existing line without needing to remove the first bracket, and ones that remain until you have finished editing and not disappear if you cursor back to another point on the line.

#2 Persistent type ahead/autocomplete help for completing parameters in Lotusscript methods, ones that appear even if you edit an existing line without needing to remove the first bracket, and ones that remain until you have finished editing and not disappear if you cursor back to another point on the line.

[this might be a waste of a wish, but this issue annoys the heck outta me]

21Julian Buss  6/30/2007 6:36:11 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1.) have all Notes design elements with dynamic labels/texts - missing are currently view column titles and button labels.

To be short: have every visible element which contains some text dynamically, so that the text is changable via formula/script. This is very important for international applications.

2.) better LotusScript editor: class browser and support for version control systems (I think this will be reached by the new Eclipse Designer).

22Maureen Leland  6/30/2007 7:53:31 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

It is safe to assume Domino Designer is well on its way to Eclipse (with all the caveats that the lawyers that watch over Bob and I require!) - but very good to see the validation. The Designer team is watching this thread :-)

23Mats  6/30/2007 8:29:03 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 I second an improved Debugger w possibility to set breakpoints when a variable changes value or gets a given value.

#2 Domino Designer for LINUX!!!

/Mats

24Charles Robinson  6/30/2007 10:41:11 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@5 - Nathan, I'm aware of setting a scalar value at runtime, but being able to set object values would be tremendously helpful. Resetting the code execution point would be HUGE. Both of those have been in Access and VB at least since 1995 and now that I'm back working with MS dev tools I'm missing them tremendously in Notes.

@14 - Nice one on the hide/whens. That drives me nuts, too.

@18 - Dockable property windows would be SOOOO nice!

@22 - Seeing the work you've done there is why I didn't mention a LotusScript class browser or fully integrated autocomplete. I've seen you demonstrate those, so I know they're coming.

25Nathan T. Freeman  6/30/2007 11:09:21 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Is this a self-selecting audience or what!??! Look at all the Lotuscript editing & debugging requests!

Nobody thinks outside the box anymore. :(

26Travis Retzlaff  6/30/2007 11:33:13 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@18 A lot of suggestions in this thread fall under the category of things we can assume will be possible and hopefully easier to implement now that the core of Designer is going to be Eclipse. Even dockable properties windows (which will be fantastic, good call), the concept has already been implemented in the Notes Productivity Editors.

Something that seems a gimme still deserve a vote if they are important to you. Just because all of these things are possible doesn't mean they can all be implemented in the first iteration of Designer on Eclipse.

I am speaking from my perspective where we are concerned and have been tasked with bringing more maturity to how we manage development processes and artifacts. Some of this is room for ISV's however some pieces of the puzzle are so basic they should be baked into the product, especially due to the unique nature of Domino Development.

It's great that an application built for the Lotus platform from 5 releases back can still run, however some of the investment protection is lost if an application developer can't maintain and bring new product functionality to existing applications. That responsibility is on the developers shoulders, but the developers toolset has to support fulfillment of those responsibilities.

27Charlie Phillips  6/30/2007 12:20:56 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I saw two items I see as a hugely useful and hopeully items that can be implemented in my lifetime (which is what Bob asked for):

@14.2: Ability to turn on a visual indicator for hide-whens, with display of the formula when you hover over the indicator.

@18.2: A "show dependencies" or "show references" tool that I can use on a field, function or design element.

While I'm proably not "thinking outside the box," just a few of the little things will make my work easier than any amount of yuppie buzz-words. :-)

I would also like to express a general desire and that is PLEASE give us more on the web side! I personally know a LOT of developers here in the D.C. area and NOT ONE does client development. I haven't done client development since R4.5 days - there's just no market for it here.

28Andy Broyles  6/30/2007 12:57:42 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@20.1/2 Try pressing Ctrl-Shift-Space to get your help back

You can also get a member picker by pressing Ctrl-Alt-T .

29Michael Bourak  6/30/2007 1:54:41 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

"css" style mesurement unit (px, em ...) everywhere (specially in tables...)

Ability to set computable html options for every elements (embeded views...)

30David Leedy  6/30/2007 2:49:58 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I don't know if this is Domino Designer wish as much as the client or both...

But I'd love to be able to do full html fidelity in the client as the browser.. So complete css, javascript events, etc.. Do away with "this form is optimized for web and this one is for the client..."

31Dan Sickles  6/30/2007 3:33:26 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Enhanced OO capabilites in Lotussrcript to do that class browser proud.

2. A lazy/stream XML API for those big docs.

32Gerald Mengisen  6/30/2007 4:35:22 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Formula Debugger

2) Support of a JavaDoc like system for code documentation. This includes having the documentation show up during type ahead for function or method parameters like it is implemented for Java in Eclipse today, and when I type the equivalent of /** and press enter above a function or method, the structure for the doc is created for me.

The Aptana Eclipse Plug-In ({ Link } ) implemented such thing for JavaScript with a similar syntax as JavaDoc; the same thing was done for PHP with PHPDoc ({ Link })

33Fredrik Stöckel  6/30/2007 5:56:38 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Fix the "undocumented" getAgentOutputStream() method for java agents, so that it finally can be used to print binary output directly in a safe way :)

(Or give us another handle to a more proper type of OutputStream)

2. A "set name as id" checkbox when creating a new field (next to the imput field for the fieldname in the property dialog).

(the last one might just be me being lazy...)

34Hynek Kobelka  6/30/2007 6:05:11 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Perfectly working embedded views

- computed source database !!!

- working functions like Ctrl-A,Expand/Collapse All even when when SINGLE category is used

- working resortable columns even when SINGLE category is used

- option to insert an embedded view into a page/form in such a way that it uses 100% width and 100% height (right now a blank line is always displayed above the view)

- (properly working column totals when SINGLE category is used)

- (computed column titles)

2) Some good solution for keywords with aliases in views

Keywords are a standard in an application and it would make totaly sense to use the available alias ("xxx | 1") functionality. However if you want to use this keywords in views (which is very often the case as categories) then aliases are now totally useless.Why should i store my data in a document in a nice way (as an alias), if i have to hardcode the text values into every view where i want to display them ?

We need a solution where a view-column formula can read the text values for aliases for example from a profile-document

OK. I know that i have hidden some sub-requests there but i could not resist. A full list of some others can be found here: { Link }

35Jack Serves  6/30/2007 8:57:49 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 Implement some web framework that will make a Notes app work over the web unmodified (think Silverlight, Flex, JavaFX)

#2 A conditional-break functionality to the LS debugger so that if a designated variable changes or meets a condition it goes into break

36Wild Bill  7/1/2007 5:54:23 AM  *Cracks knuckes*...

I think you've heard of #1 before:

1. Implement something that will export all design layout/color/font/size/placement information from all notes design elements into a .CSS file (and provide "standard" html to display it with. Allow us to edit that CSS and then reapply it back to the notes design elements.

I DONT meant that notes design elements should use CSS - I meant that CSS is used as a means of expressing the internal notes design element stuff.

Think of this as a "reskinning" tool.

2. Make notes design elements respect CSS within the notes client, so we can use the same CSS for notes client apps as for HTML.

Why should they be different ? And why shouldnt Notes support *these* standards - it does so many others so well ?

;-)

---* Bill

37Wild Bill  7/1/2007 5:56:58 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

(And just to inject some completely innapropriate humour into this thread - you could call my first suggestion "Buffalo Bill")

---* Bill

38Tony Palmer  7/1/2007 6:00:34 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@4 point 2 and @12 point 2 gets my two votes...

39Ingo Erdmann  7/1/2007 7:20:21 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) My most desperate feature wish is to provide access to the column value array, as well as the full category path in NotesUIView events. This would be specifically important for onSelect and queryOpenDocument.

Example for onSelect:

OnSelect is very useful to publish row values as properties in composite applications, when the user cycles through the view. But the event provides no parameters to identify the current view row. The documentation says you can use CaretCategory, as well as CaretNote ID to identify the row.

This is not very helpful though, as it doesn't work in all occasions. CaretNoteID is (obviously) not available if the view entry is either a category or federated data in a DB2QueryView.

CaretCategory only delivers the string of the current category navigation level. So both cannot be used to ensure that you can access the required column value. As such, it also cannot be used to publish a column value as a property within a composite application.

Example for queryOpenDocument:

You have a Query view that displays federated data. Therefore, no document object is associated with a view row. But users don't care where the data they see comes from, so the developer tries to emulate document-like behavior for data in that view. Once the user double clicks on a row, the developer usually intercepts the QueryOpenDocument event of the view and programmatically opens a document. Or creates a new document on the fly. But the developer has no way of telling which row has been clicked. There are workarounds that do the job in some scenarios. But none of those work in categorized views with documents appearing more than once. CaretNoteID is (obviously) not available, CaretCategory only delivers the string of the current category navigation level.

A simple thing that both events need: A parameter that provides a NotesViewEntry Object or at least a column value array, so the developer can add a column that contains a key to identify the row.

2) Embedded Views: Multiple embedded views on a page/form/document in HTML web rendering.

40Ron Kats  7/1/2007 7:52:15 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

And as stated before:

1) Better debuggers (and I mean ALL, so also the remote debugger).

2) HTML wysisyg viewer or convert Notes vv HTML

41Frank Wiele  7/1/2007 8:23:45 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Hot code replace for LotusScript.

If I'm debugging a particular method and discover a mistake in the code, I'll like to modify that code directly in the debugger and say save. Than the debugger starts this method from the beginning. Only this modified method is started again. All other methods and context is not changed. This gives me the ability to modify code on the fly and I don't have to start my whole application/script from the beginning.

2) @32, no 2: A similar system like JavaDocs for LotusScript which is also shown in type ahead for methods and paramters.

42Frederic Block  7/1/2007 8:32:40 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Be able to use HTML in Notes View (for Notes clients). I'm only asking basic HTML to be able to include bold / color / italic / image / simple table & links (be able to click on some content in views, not having to 'open' the document) so that views would have amuch better end-user experience.

2. Be able to define, in views, that a column can be sorted when clicking on it... but keeping categories (= sort in categories)

43Henning Heinz  7/1/2007 9:21:45 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I would like editable columns to become easier to create and maintain (not only with Lotusscript but as a seperate tab in the Designer properties and that it works better for the user (there is a noticable delay if you edit a column just as if a java applet is loaded in the background).

Everything that has been said here about embedded views although I would like it if IBM introduces something like Cloudscape as an additional datastore for all environments (client, server and web).

44Daniel Ruth  7/1/2007 1:06:24 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Enhanced Redo

2. Enhanced Undo

That's all ;-)

45yuval  7/1/2007 3:28:24 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. keypress capture for the notes client (onkeypress)

2. A view like ui control to display a customize document collection (like search results) in a picklist style without the need for folder tricks.

46Peter Presnell  7/1/2007 3:49:06 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Class Browser

2) LotusScript Refactoring

47Bastian Wieczorek  7/1/2007 6:55:14 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1.) more colors for the database icon to build a better icon. I mean we doesn´t use Windows NT ;-)

2.) a better LotusScript debugger.

48LongLiveLotus  7/1/2007 6:57:48 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Easy 2 - productivity/useability improvements PLEASE -

1 - Add a tickbox (or whatever) so I dont have to type in the field name as the column header everytime - ticking the box will put the data field name in the column title box saving me the need to type in, for example "Username" when the field is called, hmm, lets guess - "Username"!!

I must have done this many,many thousands of times...

2 - When in DD, again making changes to a view, the swirly arrow to show real data is a pain when the view selection formula might bring back thousands of documents. Give me an option somehow to just show one category's worth of data or 100 records or something. Again, many, many wasted hours watching the little network icon flashing...

49Markieg  7/1/2007 7:09:22 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

The ability in Designer to EASILY and temporarily downgrade my access level (usually from Designer, of course), typically by selecting a user from the address book. That way I can flip into the exact access rights that the user who reported a problem has got and see the problem first hand.

Maasiveley useful whilst developing and maintaining complicated multi-user level apps.

50Nathan T. Freeman  7/1/2007 7:14:15 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Okay, I revoking my prior ones...

1) The ability to package a group of NSFs together as a bundle. So I could associate a group together and have them move around between servers & desktops as an entire bundle. This would make it easy to associate embedded views -- instead of being associated by replica IDs, they could be associated by being linked to a particular db in the group. Likewise, perhaps we could build views that included docs from multiple NSFs in that architecture.

51Markieg  7/1/2007 7:14:33 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Forgot to vote for 34)

Hynek Kobelka 6/30/2007 6:05:11 PM

1) Perfectly working embedded views

- computed source database !!!

- working functions like Ctrl-A,Expand/Collapse All even when when SINGLE category is used

52Phil Jeffery  7/1/2007 7:16:03 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Subs/functions in the lotuscript object pane to be sortable by name

2. user preference to disable inline editing of design element names (although I initially thought the editing of the element names was great, the number of times I have accidentally edited a element by clicking on an element makes it a frustrating feature at times!)

53Andrew Brew  7/1/2007 9:17:21 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) What @30 and @36 said. Notes forms/pages/views should be describable in Designer using HTML/CSS (i.e. you can code it that way if you want, or use the current WYSIWYG tools, swapping between the two whenever you want). They should then render the same way in the client as they do in the browser.

2) Javascript feature-parity with Lotuscript, with appropriate object models loaded for browser and client. I love lotuscript, but it does have this huge limitation of not running in a browser. I believe you have already given this some thought, Bob : )

54Miguel Calvo  7/2/2007 2:09:00 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Same as Julian @4:

1. Integrated class browser for user-defined LotusScript classes.

2. Auto-complete for methods/properties in user-defined LotusScript classes.

Let's make user-defined classes something "usable".

55José Manuel  7/2/2007 2:09:33 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 Domino Designer for LINUX!!!

#2 Domino Designer for LINUX!!!

56Suchitra Swain  7/2/2007 2:34:49 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 Ability to find fields in the designer.(just like

finding text in a form).

#2 Hide whens(Changes when a lot of elements are present

in the form).They some time give a lot of head ache.

57Rune Kristiansen  7/2/2007 4:06:36 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1. A NotesUIField object accessible from LotusScript with the same events you have when working with fields on a form + a property stating if the field is in a hidden text-paragraph.

#2. The possibility to subclass product classes, or at least a possibility to extend them with your own methods.

Imagine what you could do if this was possible...

58Tomas Ekström  7/2/2007 4:40:38 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Since Maureen is already working on a class browser (see: { Link } ) I find it obvious to ask for.

1) I’m looking for some thing like the javadoc functionality in the Eclipse java editor for coding in LotusScript, Java, JavaScript. The Idea is to show your "javadoc" comments next to the selected function/method in the auto-complete dialog. Displaying the parameters dependencies and other comments you made for your custom class and/or function.

I would suggest having a look on Mikkel Heisterbergs lsdoc (www.lsdoc.org) project to use as LotuScript syntax.

2) The same for Formula. Made it my second request since it seams harder to realize then the first one.

59Patrick Kwinten  7/2/2007 4:58:20 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

uhm, maybe very simple, but

1 - the support for PNG images as resource (New image resource)

2 - a validate 'mark-up' function, to make sure my markup is 100% correct

60Ralf M Petter  7/2/2007 5:00:16 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I have two feature requests:

Front end classes for Java.

Full Rich Text support like Midas LSX for Lotusscript and Java.

Greetings

Ralf

61Pejman  7/2/2007 5:15:44 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1- see dependencies between elements and be able to refactor or navigate through them

2- auto-complete

ps : Having in fact all Rational Application Developer possibilities for the Designer

62Thomas Schulte  7/2/2007 5:43:19 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

What Hynek said at 34. And Julians suggestions at 21 also. So it is a mix.

1. programmatic control over every bit of textual output on view headers, tableheaders and so on (language dependand).

2. a solution for using language dependand keywords (alias problem) in views.

And all the other things mentioned here. The first two are biting me in me every day work. The rest is something i would really love to see but can somehow figure out how to live with that.

63Jeff Gilfelt  7/2/2007 5:48:17 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I have used up both my wishes, but I would like to cast a vote for Nathan's suggestion (@50). The "Project" paradigm found in most modern IDEs should apply to DD. A project could consist of multiple databases. Defining relationships between databases within the same project should be simple. Allow us to deploy a project to any Domino server without breaking those relationships. Allow the DXL representation of an entire project to play nicely with CVS/Subversion.

64Anthony Pope  7/2/2007 6:05:06 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) On the Embedded view theme started by Hynek @34. The ability to categorise Calendar views so they can be embedded with single category.

2)Drag and drop within regular views in the same way you can drag and drop within calendars views. All we need i for the querydrop or postdrop to return a reference to where the document is to be dropped, this could be the document or caret of the drop location. This would allow for in the fly sorting or re-ordering of documents.

3) Better code analysis tools. Enhanced synopsis/ cross referenceing of code (function names, fields names, forms names). E.g i'd like to be able to search through all Formula, LS, java, etc for reference.

Sorry, thats 3.

65Sean Burgess  7/2/2007 7:30:22 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Since everyone else has already asked for my favorite (Class Browser), I am going to list 2 of my biggest pet peeves.

1. Allow Class/Style/HTML Attributes to be set across multiple cells at the same time. Just like being able to change font and cell attributes, we should be able to select a bunch of cells and set the class for those cells. Completely annoying.

2. Allow multiple embedded views in a browser. I hate having to resort to using iFrames everywhere I want to do this. It works in the Notes client, why shouldn't it work on the web.

66Richard Hogan  7/2/2007 7:53:50 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) The ability to designate (help) documents in a template as 'pseudo design' elements, so they get updated along with forms, views, etc when a refresh design is done from the latest template. The help example would be the most useful for us (ISV), but this could also be very useful for configuration & setup docs, etc.

2) In the LS Debugger, be able to set breakpoints like:

'strCustomerName = "Acme" ', or 'i = 25', etc.

67Sean Jennings  7/2/2007 8:09:05 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

First: @35 #1 Notes-development and Web-development are too disperate. Too often we end-up having to code the same functionality twice, once for the client and once for browsers.

Second: Domino Designer to be Eclipse-based and for IBM to provide a 'Eclipse Lotus' build containing all the code/plug-ins etc, needed. We don't want to have to get Designer from IBM, then download the correct version of Eclipse, then hunt-down the extra plug-ins needed out of the hundreds available. I wnat to develop applications, not spend my time trying to configure IDE's and programming-tools.

68Karl-Henry Martinsson  7/2/2007 9:42:30 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

There are already many requests for my top wish, a better debugger, so I will list two other things:

1) Improved dialog boxes. Make it easier to build custom dialog boxes, with different controls/fields, and allow the designer to set the size (in pixel) as well as position (exact, centered to parent window, centered on screen, etc).

Allow embedded views and other controls.

2) When a field has a value and an alias, the alias get stored in the backend. Beut when you use th3 UI classes, you need to use what is visible. Change uidoc.FieldGetText() to allow the alias value to be returned.

E.g. MyField has a value of "Yes" with the alias "Y". uidoc.FieldGetText("MyField",True) would return "Y", not "Yes". The second parameter is the optional flag "ReturnAliasValue".

69Arjan Uijl  7/2/2007 10:13:39 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

My two wishes:

1. Private LotusScript class navigator (this one is already posted by someone).

2. dxl export of webservices, this one is not available yet (or I cannot find the way to do this)

70Edith Birrer  7/2/2007 10:16:29 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) I think I'm not the first to wish more Java support: allow it "everywhere" (everywhere where LotusScript is allowed) and have all classes also in Java (eg. frontend classes, they are still missing)

2) I'm programming a lot in Eclipse (also for Notes - use Domiclipse), thus my idea: when you press the Ctrl key, every name of a design element becomes a link and you can click on it to open that design element. Say you are in the code of an agent that has a @Lookup formula and the formula mentions a view, click on the view name to open it. Same goes for @Formulas in fields or for some LotusScript that calls an agent etc. - Ctrl-click and the design element is open. Wow, that would save time finding the way around the code in a database!

71Chris Toohey  7/2/2007 10:33:58 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Both of mine are "client" requests:

Programatically-accessible, computed view column titles:

Writing an "international" or an multi-lingual application is almost worthless when you can't display relative labels for the content that you're storing...

Ability to run a formula action across "selected" documents.

Right now, you have to "hack" your way through, by dropping a few environment variables and then calling an agent that'll loop through said selected documents and use your env vars. Not the cleanest thing in the world...

And that's about it for me! Thanks Bob!

72Jasper Duizendstra  7/2/2007 12:04:27 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

My votes, and one wish.

1) Class browser in the designer

2) #50 by Nathan T. Freeman

And one that has not been mentioned here yet, render HTML again when the UIDocument is refreshed.

73Irina Kojevnikova  7/2/2007 12:53:49 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

My two wishes:

1) Full Rich Text support like Midas LSX

2)#36-1 by Wild Bill

74Turtle  7/2/2007 2:10:34 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Designer client for Mac OS X

2. Designer client for Linux

75Marius Neumann  7/2/2007 3:27:48 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#4 by Julian speaks for me too:

1. Class browser for LotusScript (so the classes and their methods show up in a tree view, like with Java -- or even something better).

2. Auto-complete for methods/properties in user-defined LotusScript classes.

That would be christmas and birthday for 10 years in a row on one day!!

76Anthony pope  7/2/2007 3:56:24 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@73 I second your 1st point "Full Rich Text support like Midas LSX"

77Bruce Perry  7/2/2007 5:02:52 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I'm delighted to see that a class browser is in the works.

I'm glad to see a large assortment of truly useful changes proposed. I want most of them.

Let's think a little larger though. What's the biggest problem with the Designer? It's not up to date and IBM doesn't appear to be committing enough resources bring it up to date. I'm not trying to flame anyone by saying this, just point out what should, by now, be obvious based on past experience.

So what's my idea? IBM should do like Borland did with Delphi and make the editor in Designer "pluggable". You could stop using Borland's editor and use another that conformed to a Borland's published spec. Would third parties build editors that plugged into Notes? They did for Delphi. This is a large community of developers. What editor vendor wouldn't want a piece of this market?

I vote for my one idea twice. :)

78Wayne Sobers  7/2/2007 5:24:37 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 Full SVG support in client, including click events

#2 support for onkeypress event to allow better control during keyboard input.

79Dietrich Willing  7/2/2007 8:36:53 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. In lotusscript, an AddressOf function

2. Full Rich Text support like Midas LSX and keep formatting of rich-text fields (including position of attachments) when document saved via Domino server

80Holger Ploch  7/3/2007 3:23:20 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 No Access Fields

A new security field type to exclude people, roles and groups from document access. This feature is very useful to use groups or roles to grant access to a document and exclude only a view members.

#2 Improved Lotus Script Debugger with the ability to review and edit the code during runtime.

81Henrik S Törnblom  7/3/2007 3:39:16 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. All functions and subroutines in alphabetical order in script libraries

2. As #18.2 Show dependencies

82Theo Heselmans  7/3/2007 6:56:17 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Like the Turtle #74:

1. Designer client for Mac OS X

Like many (e.g. Wild Bill #36):

2. full CSS/HTML support

83Kerr  7/3/2007 7:11:24 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

OK, It took me little while to come up with one and then another two come along right behind. They are all pretty ubiquitous in eclipse java dev, so hopefully they can be integrated in without too much hassle.

1: Ubiquitous Dynamic Hyperlinking. The ability in any code to navigate by ctrl-clicking on elements in the code. So clicking on a variable takes you to a place it was initialised, clicking on a type takes you to the class that defines it, clicking on a reference to a notes design element opens that element.

2: Show References. The ability to find all references to a selected design object. So if I select a view and right-click>show references will give me a list of all places the view is referred to.

3: Refactoring. Ability to rename a design element and have all references update. This should include things like adding or removing columns in a view causing lookups to be refactored such that they are still pointing to the correct column.

Now which two to pick for my votes? Well, to do the refactoring you really need to build the referencing structures required for 2. So I'll vote for 1 & 3 with the hope that 2 makes an appearance anyway ;)

84Ben Langhinrichs  7/3/2007 10:31:26 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

It is always tough to pick, but I'd probably go for:

1) As others have mentioned, AutoComplete and other private LotusScript for user designed classes,

2) better LotusScript debugger with the ability to set your own watch variables and break on values.

85Alain H Romedenne  7/3/2007 11:07:11 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. UML design with forward/reverse LotusScript,JavaScript,Java engineering

2. LotusScript, JavaScript, Java reflection in order to support auto-completion in Domino Designer

3. .. well, you said only two

Cordially

Alain

86Robert  7/3/2007 1:14:52 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Java everwhere.

2. Full Rich Text support like Midas LSX but in Java

87Jay Tyo  7/3/2007 3:56:23 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

There have been a lot of very good comments so far on debugging, and on code completion/reflection/class browsing. I second(third, fourth, tenth...) those ideas. I'd to be able to debug all the fields on a form, and run a full test harness against a form/event/agent. The idea of code completion, reflection, and class browsing of native and user defined classes is all about making it easier to reuse the code someone has already done. Anything along that line would sure be appreciated.

88Mike Kinder  7/3/2007 10:44:15 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Already so many great ideas, hard to come up with new ones.

#1 - Already mentioned, but, better programmatic control of selected entry in a view, not the document, the entry in case the column is a "Show multiple values as separate entries". I want the entrie's column values.

#2 - Better client/web fedelity. It would be great if I could mark design elements as "Always render in HTML" (or something like that) and whether I open it in the client or a web browser, it renders it the same and adheres to the current local machine's browser standards.

89Carolyn Kraut  7/4/2007 11:44:04 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Lots of good suggestions here. The two that are most important for me are the ability to set conditional break points and the ability to easily determine dependencies for design elements.

90Florian Stamer  7/4/2007 2:37:50 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1.) Sort variables by name and data type in the LS debugger (maybe even a search mode?).

2.) The undo could also be improved... I'm thinking of a history window, where you can see the last 50 or 100 steps.

Of course, I'd like the other stuff, too... ;-)

91Jason  7/5/2007 5:57:04 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Refactoring definitely

2. Option to select 1~n views and set similar properties like action bar height, colurs, fonts etc

92Mark Demicoli  7/5/2007 9:04:39 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Make debugger fantastic (as per all previous posts)

2. WORKSPACE. Fix up the bugs, give it a facelift, come up with some REALLY sexy way to stack replicas. No, I don't get turned on by bookmarks.

93Larsson  7/5/2007 9:16:33 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) A VersionControl - plugin or enhance the WebDav with it to use it on forms/views.

2) Allow use of computed subforms across databases or why not Server Side Includes

94Franklin  7/5/2007 10:45:23 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Be able to "pin" the properties dialog box. So if I'm working within the @ tab of table properties, it stays there when I move to the next field.

2) We have forms with lots and lots of fields, and it is hard to know where on they are on the form. A "find field" feature would be very helpful.

95Alex  7/5/2007 10:55:24 AM  Eclipse and development tools

1. As many post here: eclipse Eclipse ECLIPSE! for coding, debugging and all what it comes with! what for?

- class browsing (especially the javascript, cruelly missing in the designer) and code organization.

- powerful find and replace

- powerful debugging capabilities

- development plug-ins

- and much more ...

2. Embed some very useful tools that we still need to purchase from 3rd parties, for example:

- scanEZ for direct access to the core data, to understand what's in our database, what is really in your documents.

- code versioning, not just a design locking feature but some real successor to CIAO!

96Scott Skaife  7/5/2007 12:42:53 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) A way to pass some kind of token to allow the browser and client to pass the users credentials back and forth between the browser and client. This would allow us to seamlesly switch between the browser and the client, using each where it has it's greatest strengths.

2) The same as Charles.. "Give a single-window view of all the code in a module, like Visual Studio does. For example, on a form I would like to be able to scroll through a single code window that has every event for which there is code defined, as well as all the custom functions I've written in that object."

97Turtle  7/5/2007 3:49:54 PM  One more thing...

We were talking the other night, and realized that a really useful feature would be the ability to make a non-replica copy of a database and have an additional option... in addition to "copy design only" and "copy design and documents," it'd be nice to be able to "copy design and SOME documents," allowing you to clone, say, a database that has a bunch of "lookup table" sort of documents that you'd want to carry forward to the new copy but NOT copy all the regular data documents.

I often have databases that contain tables like that: for example, a form and views that show a static list of office locations or products or something, something that drives @DbColumns in your database, but you don't want all the actual documents that contain customer orders and stuff.

How about an option where you copy the database and then say, "also copy documents that use THIS FORM." So, the new database would be new and "empty," but still contain the documents that constitute your lookup views?

98john head  7/5/2007 10:24:31 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

First, while I agree with Nathan that embeded Framesets would be a very powerful feature, that does not replace the need for embedded views to have a source database that is a formula, just like an outline entry or frame. This should have been done when embedded views were build and I consider this a bug. Not a feature request.

My enhancements are more to the core product development plan vs Domino Designer. I have seen what Maureen and her team are doing and I trust they will get it right ... so here is my list

1) I want to be able to do joins across multiple views in a Notes view. I would be ok with having the first column be the Notes ID of the document, and the columns couldnt be intermixed when the views merge. But this would be a HUGE feature and really give power ... and not require that I need to use DB2NSF to get this feature.

2) ProdEditorSession, ProdEditorWorkspace, ProdEditorDocument, ProdEditorSpreadSheet, ProdEditorPresentation classes and a whole slew of methods and properties ... I want to be able to programatically drive the editors ... from LotusScript and Java ... just as I would OpenOffice.org or Office. The OLE trick coming in 8.0.X is not enough.

Thanks for asking :)

99Scott Skaife  7/5/2007 11:19:14 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I want to change my choice. The number one thing that would totally change the way we perceive Domino development would be to have a feature to make a stand alone, redistributable application. If we could select "make stand alone application" and the target would be a Notes client that was married to the designated at design time databases, we would then be able to distribute "Single-User" applications that have been built on Notes, as well as have an "Enterprise" version that would be multi-user, but would only run on a full Domino installation.

Not only would this allow us to get software to completely new markets, but it would also encourage new Domino installations, as once a business is running 2 or three Domino based single user applications, or wanted to move to multi user, it would make sense for the company to go with a full Domino install.

This would also mean that the Notes client and sametime would inherently be available to the single user users. This familiarity would also help to bring more users into the Domino fold.

100Alan Forbes  7/6/2007 8:27:31 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

#1 I would love to be able to right click on an item in LotusScript code and select "Go to Definition"... that would take me to where a variable has been declared, or take me to a function or subroutine if that is what is highlighted.

#2 Then I'd like to be able to right click and select "Go Back" and have it take to the last place my cursor was in the code.

101Brian Miller  7/6/2007 9:19:47 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Here's a very different sort of idea.

What if we could all write our own @formulas using LS? In Microsoft Excel, any function declared in VBA (within the "worksheet" scope) may be used as an "=" function in a cell. Wouldn't it rock if you could do that in Notes?

That way, if people wanted, say, a view column to reference another view, or something else that a formula just can't do. And, if a developer writes a broken/buggy formula, they're on the hook to make it work right.

Second idea, I'd like to have well thought out editors for every file time we might use and include. The current method for editing CSS files is a hack, for example. If you're going to edit and include a file in an application, it should have a good editor built in.

102Bob Balaban  7/6/2007 6:20:40 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Greetings, Geeks!

Yikes! I thought I'd get a lot of good feedback with this one, but 100+ comments is a little overwhelming...

I can't reply/comment on each post individually, so let me just issue a blanket THANK YOU to all who responded. Your comments are all noted, and while I obviously can't promise anything, you may be assured that all input is being carefully considered.

Oh, I am SO looking forward to Lotusphere08 (and not just because it'll be my 15th one...)

:-)

103Erik Brooks  7/6/2007 7:37:39 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

With everything we've seen from Maureen's side of things I think if I were to vote for Eclipsifying Designer I'd be wasting my votes. If not, please throw me into the crowd of "Class Browser, User-defined Class Auto-Complete, Better Panel Docking, etc." and read no further.

Otherwise, here's my two votes:

1. Bring Notes into the 32-bit world. Abolish as many 16/32/64k limits as possible.

2. Views - better internationalization (i18n) and general fix work. Others have touched on these; here's my $0.02:

- Formulaic column labels: Critical for multi-lingual apps. And if the view is embedded, the formula context *must* use the containing form/doc so it can access fields, subforms, etc.

- ?ReadViewEntries: allow &Expand with multiple categories, e.g. "&Expand=1.1,1.3,2.8"

- NotesViewEntry.CategoryNoteID: With ?ReadViewEntries there is a NoteID property. The Designer helps states that "if the entry is a category, this corresponds to the category ID". This attribute has no corresponding *backend* property, and desparately needs one to allow processing of user-selected categories from the web. NotesViewEntry.CaretNoteID is close, but returns "" for categories. I imagine this goes hand-in-hand with the talk of getting selected docs from an embedded view in the Notes client.

- NotesViewEntry.CurrentColumnValues(): If a doc appears as multiple entries (i.e. with "show multiple values as separate entries"), NotesViewEntry.ColumnValues() returns ALL of the values for the column. There is no way for you to determine which value corresponds to the entry you have.

104Erik Brooks  7/6/2007 11:25:26 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Oh, and if my #1 vote (getting out of the land of 16k limits) isn't doable, then...

[x] Generate HTML for *this* field

I'm shocked a few of us haven't mentioned this one yet.

105Dietrich Willing  7/8/2007 9:23:27 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Following on from @99, a stand alone single-user application should be accessible via a web-browser.

I distribute a CD to notes users where I use Python to transfer the database to the data directory, add a few files to directories and sign agents that are used in the display of the web menu.

It would be good not to have to add the files and sign agents.

IBM could grow the market if databases could be distributed to non-lotus notes users for access with a web-browser. If non-lotus notes users could add data to their stand-alone application, the market would be huge.

106Ken Janssen  7/9/2007 8:24:38 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Possibility to use the spell checker in any web application. I'm talking about the one that's available in iNotes but can't be ported to other (web) applications.

2. Provide a database option that disables html formatting when Domino generates the html. (no more font-tags etc.)

Also looking forward to having DD embedded in Eclipse...

107Anonymous  7/9/2007 8:27:53 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I would like to see the pre-filling of prooperties and methods to be LIMITED to those that apply to the object in question. I.e. if I have:

Dim db as notesdatabase

db.

Then I want it to be filled in only with those properties that apply to Notes databases! Easy enough to put in I believe and very useful to the programmer.

108Tony Austin  7/9/2007 10:00:21 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Assuming we're talking about an Eclipse-based IDE. Here are two very generic requests:

1. The capability to easily open two design objects (LotusScript, Java, Formula Language, views, forms, etc) in two completely separate window instances (two independent workspaces, or whatever). I want to be able to have them concurrently open side-by-side so as to compare them and maybe cut-and-paste code snippets, view columns, etc between the design elements. You can do this with Domino Designer up to and including ND8 Beta 3 (which is essentially the ND7 Designer with extras). I suspect and fear that this might be an Eclipse limitation: I've been looking at the latest Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) and don't seem to be able to do this, but there are SO MANY options in Eclipse that I could easily have missed it. I certainly wasn't able to open the same workspace twice in two instances of the IDE, but there might be a trick for doing so. It's certain more obscure than the simple "Open In New Window" context menu option in the ND7/ND8 designer. NOTE: in the new jazzy-looking Notes 8 Client, the ability to open two views, for example, in different windows has been dropped, which is a big loss in functionality. (There's a Preferences option to allow opening of two documents in different windows, but not two views or other design element types.) Here I'm talking about a generic productivity feature, that is, being able to have two windows side-by-side to compare and contrast their contents (script code, view column attributes, field properties, etc). Perhaps it's a limitation of Eclipse, I'm far from an expert here, but if so it's a BIG step backwards ... Please don't take anything away from us that we can do currently unless you provide an equivalent -- or better -- alternative function (the "Do No Harm Principle").

2. Since the earliest Notes releases, the Properties Box has suffered from being fixed in size (with all this implies) and being "non-sticky". So, if you're working on a Hide When formula for one field in a form and then switch focus to another field in the form, the Hide When property tab loses focus. So you are forced to continually change tab focus. Presumably there won't be a "Properties Box" much longer, and it'll be replaced with an Eclipse-style tabbed Properties panel of some sort, which of course will be resizable in conventional Eclipse fashion. Please try to ensure that it's "sticky" so that if the previous property (Hide When, or whatever) stays in focus.

109Samuel deHuszar Allen  7/10/2007 5:32:31 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Full CSS compliance on all Domino objects (with client parity so it will respect rules in the client as well as on the web or on a mobile device, etc.)

2) Designer for Linux!!!

I know these have both been asked for. But that's what I want. :)

110Jens Winkelmann  7/10/2007 7:22:15 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Class browser for LotusScript

2. A Find & Replace Tool for all design elements

111Karl-Henry Martinsson  7/11/2007 10:48:30 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Two additional ones:

1) Better printing, including backend printing classes. GetPrinterList, SelectPrinter, PrintDocument, etc.

2) Programatically force a replication to take place between two specified servers, not just client where code is running and a server.

112Bernd Hort  7/12/2007 4:19:52 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1.) Full CSS Support in the Notes client. It would specially be great to change the appearance of tables with pixel measures. No more destroyed tables with different widths on a form.

2.) Support of computed sources for embedded views etc.

I really want to use embedded elements across databases but today it is not possible in a real productive environment.

113John Foldager  7/12/2007 12:01:01 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

A little late...

1) Remove all 16/32/64 K limits completely!

2) Make sure that ReadViewEntries generate nested XML/JSON and doesn't include empty categories etc. because of readers/authors fields.

114Tim Siney  7/13/2007 6:08:53 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

I'll second the 16/32/64k limits comment above. Also remove so called "special text". Its not special, its completely pointless. You can't do anything with it programitally and its of little use to users. I'd like to see it either removed or "fixed" so it works as it should do and be fully accesible by dbcolumns/lookups and java/lotusscript agents.

115Scott  7/13/2007 6:32:21 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Well I finally (sort of) read all the comments .. not sure what to say now..

Looks like designer is on its way to Eclipse so I'll assume that'll supply the typical Eclipse dev environment ... do you realise how happy you will make sooo many people by doing this :-)

Anyway .. I think I can only add to what other people are looking for:

1. Debugging, if the debugging comes up to Eclipse standard then great, but will it allow you to debug a Web Query Save / Open event. E.g. I launch the form from designer to a browser but there is an error on the WQO so the test perspective (debugger) opens indicating the error OR maybe I've set a breakpoint and I just want to step through code etc. Visual studio .Net does it quite well! Hot change of the code here would obviously be great also - although I don't think VS .net does this for web apps.

2. HTML/CSS support across everything e.g. I should be able specify html properties (e.g. id, class etc) for a view column heading, the column value and the view its self (maybe even the data rows) just like you can for a field. Would be nice if say the class for a column value could be computed based on the column value??

And to finish it off, if you could get domino to generate the DHTML/CSS/Javascript required to render the view just as if it was in Notes - to be fair this is beyond 'Designer' and I think was sort of the subject of a previous post. But still it would be nice ;-)

116Bob Balaban  7/14/2007 9:59:58 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@114 - What do you mean by "special text"? I'm a little confused...

117Bob Balaban  7/14/2007 10:04:18 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@115 - Designer-in-Eclipse is something we are seriously considering (no promises!).

I would love to see the debug scenario you're talking about, though what you describe is really "remote debugging" -- attaching an Eclipse debugger instance to some code that runs on a server somewhere, and setting breakpoints, etc. The RAD product does that with WAS and Portal (and some other) types of app servers, and I agree it's desirable for Domino, too. Lots of issues, though...

118Darren Duke  7/14/2007 11:50:20 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

OK, I waited two weeks an went through a host of versions, but, based on myself saying "#$%%# Notes" over the last two weeks here are my "wishes".....

1 - Allow embedded single category views to display totals.

2 - Build in wizards for workflow, al la .NET and Quickr (openntf notwithstanding, it should be built in).

119Doug Finner  7/14/2007 8:13:14 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Programmable embedded views - i.e. allow view to be defined on the fly, condition 1, server1\db1\view1, condition 2, server2\db2\view2

2) Ability to decide which container holds the code you wish to execute and on which embedded object (form with multiple embedded views, allow me to execute code on any view from a form level action or button OR let me click a button in an embedded view and have it execute in the embedded view.

120Nathan T. Freeman  7/15/2007 6:50:29 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@116 - Special text like the result of @DocNumber, which can't be used for anything.

@115, 117 - Domino supports remote debugging today. Admittedly, it's a hack and a half, but it's there.

119 - I agree that it should be made easier, but there are ways to work against, say, a selected set of docs in an embedded view from a containing form. I've documented some on my blog.

121Nathan T. Freeman  7/15/2007 11:37:18 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@All - See here { Link } to see how to get programmable embedded views right now.

122Tim Siney  7/16/2007 4:03:34 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@116 - As Nathan says, the results of forumulas such as @DocNumber. I believe they used to be called "Special text" but that may have changed. Still can't do anything with the results though ;o)

123Kerr  7/16/2007 7:47:51 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

As I understand it, special text is computed when the view is displayed not part of the index. This restricts what it could be used for. Presumably the limitation in usage could be removed but would mean that the whole column formula would have to be computed at display time, leading to performance issues. A trade off best left to the developer on a case by case basis, or something that is too likely to cause performance headaches when used naively (like @today in view selection formulae)?

124Erik Brooks  7/16/2007 9:28:57 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Special text can definitely be frustrating.

Another bit of "special text" that would be nice to leverage would be category totals across columns.

See this:

{ Link }

You could theoretically generate something similar by hacking in some NotesViewNavigator stuff, but that runs into other challenges due to what I mention in @103. Yet another case for NotesViewEntry.CategoryNoteID() and NotesViewEntry.CurrentColumnValues().

125Mac Guidera  7/16/2007 4:57:46 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Of Course, I would like to have the ability to fully round-trip a database as DXL. And wouldn't it be great to have a new an improved version of NotesPeek built into Domino Designer?

126Mike VandeVelde  7/16/2007 7:44:41 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Well, looks like I jumped in a little early. New top 2:

@49 - "The ability in Designer to EASILY and temporarily downgrade my access level (usually from Designer, of course)"

Wow yes that would save some time - maybe a right click on the preview button could bring up some options like "preview with different access". Switching users (closing everything down), testing, then switching back (opening everything up again) can be a hassle. A second machine can solve it, but why not include this?

Plus full native SVG rendering - I've always thought that this could be a great solution to some of the reporting shortcomings of Notes, and have played with it a bit on the web. I'd love to see some work done here for the Notes client.

(Plus yes special text is quite annoying.)

Fun stuff, great food for thought everyone!

127Benoit de TARADE  7/17/2007 5:52:22 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1 - Class Browsing

2 - Auto completion

More genraly ide improvement. I hope it would be done with Eclipse designer.

128Sudhir  7/17/2007 10:10:01 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

One- Ability to do a design replace / refresh on an individual element basis.

Two - Paint brush property like in Microsoft Office to paste properties from one object to another,

129Tony Austin  7/17/2007 5:13:43 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@102 Wow, Bob, you're right. ... Tons of good suggestions, with some of them recurring (class browser, for example). But otherwise they're all over the place, quite a few being in areas that are outside the Domino Designer scope. Not to say that's a bad thing: it highlights some painful Notes/Domino base architecture issues that are still with us and holding us back in one way or another (64K limits, etc) and doubtless are way outside your scope! I wonder what the response would have been if your question had been "2 new features (or fixes) for Notes/Domino." That would bring a few other topics out of the woodwork! Anyway, it's really great to see Lotus Software asking open-ended questions like yours in a public arena such as this.

130Jesper B. Kiaer   7/18/2007 6:26:44 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

The obvious ...

1) A Commodore 64 version of the Designer

and

2) An embedded version of "Donkey Kong" in the Designer...when your are bored at work..

131Jesper B. Kiaer   7/18/2007 8:50:51 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Dynamic load of computed subforms

This has been a pain in the butt for years.

If I use a formular for loading a computed subform, ..say if it equals a value in a field, ..if this value changes I want to be able to reload the subforms relevant to the new value in the field ....without having to save the document first etc.

Like a @ReloadSubForms function....

132emerson  7/18/2007 3:56:00 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) The IDE of LotusScript makes it extremely difficult to use programming OO, therefore she would have to be more easy following the model of the NetBeans or Visual Studio

and

2) Notes front-end (UI) classes for JAVA

133Nathan T. Freeman  7/18/2007 7:16:20 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@131 - Have you tried [ViewSwitchForms]?

134Ramana  7/18/2007 10:34:52 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Firing Input translation formula while cursor exiting from the field.

135smdelfin  7/18/2007 11:59:34 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1. Full javascript support in Notes client, like OnKeyPress.

2. Full java support wherever there is Lotusscript.

136Theo Heselmans  7/19/2007 4:05:07 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@118: Allow embedded single category views to display totals.

You can do that now: just add an extra categorized column behind your first (single) column, and add e.g. "Total" as the value. You end up having a nice total at the top of your data.

137Jesper B. Kiaer   7/19/2007 8:45:21 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@133 - As far as I can remember you need to save the document before you can switch the form (Correct?), so that is not good solution.

138Erik Brooks  7/19/2007 1:21:55 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

While we're listing things:

- Some way to create and iterate repeated groups of editable rows/fields. Rocky Oliver's "Righteous Hack" via DXL and importing attempts to address this but isn't a true production, scalable solution.

139Mike VandeVelde  7/20/2007 1:08:49 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Eric - that's where NotesUIView.CurrentViewEntry would help.

I have a set of multi value fields. Right now we use Add/Remove/Edit buttons that pop up a dialog to add a row of values.

I'd like to show the values in a view, categorized by unid, with show multiple values as separate entries, and then embed that view on the form. I've done this and it works fine, looks great, nicely solves wrapping issues getting rows out of alignment when just displaying computed text.

I'd like to be able to have people just double click on an entry in the embedded view to pop up the dialog to edit that row. And maybe even be able to delete rows in the normal view way (QueryDocumentDelete for views?). But there's no way to tell which value was clicked, so we're stuck with the buttons anyway.

If in view edit worked a little better, that could make this solution even nicer with no pop up dialog needed, but even if it worked nice enough to give to clients we're still stuck behind the same issue of having no way to tell which value was clicked on.

So change that to a vote for NotesUIView.CurrentViewEntry?

140Bob Balaban  7/22/2007 3:01:55 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@130 - Well, Donkey Kong was high on our list, but unfortunately it doesn't work on the Mac.

We were going to do a Designer-only configuration for the Commodore 64, but it doesn't run Linux!

Sorry....

@132 - If the LotusScript IDE were better, would you still need a Java version of the f-e classes?

141Bob Balaban  7/22/2007 3:50:20 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@71 - Chris, I'm confused about something. "Abiliy to run a formula across selected documents",

why not use a LotusScript agent that runs on selected docs, iterate the Database.UnprocessedDocuments

collection and use Evaluate to apply the formula?

@56 - I'm not sure what you're asking for with respect to hide-whens. What improvement(s)

are you looking for?

142Kerr  7/23/2007 9:18:21 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@141, re @56, maybe some form of visual indication that a hide formula is in place for a particular paragraph when viewing the form in designer?

143Ramana  7/23/2007 6:51:19 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Scroll Bar option in Dialogbox function parameters.

144Erik Brooks  7/23/2007 6:58:42 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Ugh, found another sore area that's probably easy tackled - formulaic button labels.

Create -> Hotspot -> Button

Static labels are the only option currently.

145Nathan T. Freeman  7/23/2007 7:45:35 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@139 - Why do one document in an embedded view that shows multiple values? Why not just have a doc for each value? Chris Toohey has written a description of this technique before. I've implemented it on numerous occassions. It's pretty easy to keep the doc requirements small in that scenario.

@138 - How about if we just got the Spreadsheet Editor as an embeddable element and we had a decent LS/java API to it? Then you could use that as a UI vector and just write whatever data you wanted behind the scenes.

146Werner Götz  7/24/2007 5:17:37 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@139 - I do this in my projects the same way you described and have found a solution for "telling" the uidoc which document was selected. Send me a mail and I will give you an example database.

147Erik Brooks  7/24/2007 9:20:36 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@145 - Works for me, as long as there's a web-enabled version. So better throw in a JS API too ;)

That's always been one of the weirdest "almost-there" pieces of Notes dev to me. List fields and @Formulas make working with arrayed data a piece of cake, *except* when it comes to the UI side of things.

For anybody not following, here's an example:

3 fields: Person (text list), FavoriteColor (text list), BirthDay (date list)

You can have n "rows" across those fields.

We've all done this -- you *could* store the rows as separate docs, but there are obviously times when that doesn't make sense from a data integrity or performance standpoint.

So we all "roll our own" UI to present these things, and it's a PITA. If you know you'll only ever be dealing with a max # of rows you can just build a huge table, add hide-whens, etc. and possibly manage.

But to handle a large number of rows you're out of luck, unless you're developing for web-only... then you go with our best friend, pass-thru HTML.

Setting aside the fact that you can't store a number or date/time list where one of the elements is NULL (which you can work around if need-be), the data side of things is really simple. It's these UI vectors that cause serious angst.

148Erik Brooks  7/24/2007 2:48:06 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Oh, and another little headache:

Why can't you place Computed Text in the middle of a hotspot?

149Mike VandeVelde  7/24/2007 4:28:11 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@144 - Yes programmable button labels, programmable view column titles - how do people do multilingual applications in Notes? I can't imagine how so much duplication of design elements could possibly be the norm. grrr...

@145 - Well, if you have a bunch of documents that have sets of multi value fields on them, and you want to store those values on child docs instead, that at least doubles the number of documents - up to however many sets of values you have on average per document. I've been exploring using multi value fields exactly because I want to keep doc counts lower. I'm going from separate documents to multivalue fields for performance, but I'm still not 100% happy with the UI trade off yet. An embedded spreadsheet might be cool, that's if you could show cell values in views somehow...

@146 - I would *love* to hear it, I think I found your pavone site, and filled out a contact form, hope there aren't 2 of you out there!

@148 - 3 separate hotspots I guess :-( Not too bad really...

150Erik Brooks  7/24/2007 6:14:51 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@149 - 3 separate hotspots? I don't follow... What I'm describing is this: You have some text on a form, e.g. "click here." You select it in Designer, and choose "Create Hotspot -> Action Hotspot". Cool!

You can't put a hotspot around any chunk of rich text that has <Computed Text> in it anywhere. I don't know why -- it's just text, just like "click here". And it's a bummer for multilingual apps.

151Mike VandeVelde  7/24/2007 8:37:42 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@150 - never mind, I was thinking "blah blah <Computed Text> blah blah" and trying to make it all into 1 hotspot, and maybe the computed text in the middle messing it up. So 3 hotspots could look and act pretty much like 1 (1 for text, 1 for computed text, and 1 for text again). But now that I've tried it, nope you can't make any computed text into a hotspot at all. :-( Try a computed for display field instead?

152Andrew Tjecklowsky  7/25/2007 5:00:42 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Please add a @IsAuthor which returns either true or false if the user is registered as an author for the current document. Should work in views and documents at least. This would make it possible to output an "Edit this document" button for web applications and hidding it for non-authors.

153Erik Brooks  7/25/2007 7:13:58 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@151 - Yeah, that's the way to do it for now (CFD field). Not a show-stopper, but definitely lame.

154Kerr  7/25/2007 2:05:15 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@152. You couldn't have @IsAuthor in a view because when the index is built there would be no user context to evaluate against. It would only be possible to if some column formulae could be computed at display time, see @123.

Other than that it would be a handy little @function rather than having to check contents of fields and user roles yourself every time.

155Andrew Tjecklowsky  7/26/2007 4:10:45 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@154 I agree partly... it COULD be implemented if the developer decides to have the trade off of performance. Anyway... at least if we could have @IsAuthor on forms. That should be SOO easy for Lotus to implement.

156Erik Brooks  7/26/2007 2:52:09 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

@155 - What would be more appropriate would an @IsAuthor that could be evaluated on a *document*. The only semi-efficient way to do this sort of thing now is to capture @UsernamesList and then iterate through all Readers' Authors' fields and figure it out yourself.

157Giulio  7/30/2007 6:30:33 PM  Standard and Custom Code Snippets support.

Bob, I know you said 2 but I have only 1, (and it's big one), but would be a real time save and also expand developer skills rapidly.

1/ Standard and Customisable Code Snippets support.

Playing around with other Eclipse manifestations (ie Aptana), some of them provide support for "snippets" of common code. And how many times have we written a while/for/ loop or and if/select statement. Being able to pick from a standard set of lotusscript snippets would be huge. But why stop there, why not include other technologies like java (ofcourse, and Dojo, YUI, Scripta-thing-ami, and good ol' CSS!?!?!

Also, Back @4 and @9, guys check out Teamstudio ScriptBrowser. It looks up anything in a script library. Custom classes and everything in the way you describe. But it's not quite native enough. As it doesn't look in Forms or Agents. But it will give you all references in a DB.

158Mark Barton  7/31/2007 5:33:49 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) A unit testing framework

2) Not having to use Tools - Recompile Lotusscript every time I make a code change if I have more than 2 Classes ;-)

159Pankaj Sharma  8/2/2007 10:17:27 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

make the Help more comprehensive and easy to attract new developers and casual programmers.

Create wizard like interfaces for common tasks.

160John Smart  8/7/2007 12:57:40 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

Easy one, and a hard one.

Easy one:

Allow the Preview smart icons to work on agents, or put a button or menu option for me to be able to run the agent I'm editing, right there, without having to change tabs to the agent window and right click on the agent I've just been editing. In some ways I hate to waste one of my 2 (hypothetical) wishes on this, but it's one of those things that's so small it slips under my skin... metaphorically speaking.

The other wish would be automated end-user testing. This is tougher. I want something allows us to write user scripts that are tested for automatically, and emails appropriate people if a developer introduces a bug into existing functionality. Automated testing is often considered a requirement for a mature Agile development environment, and it's one area that Notes really lags behind on.

161Nick Radov  8/16/2007 12:56:56 PM  Move to Eclipse

I have only one wish: stop all work on the legacy Domino Designer and focus all efforts on porting it to the Eclipse framework. We saw a demo at Lotusphere and it looked far superior to what we have now. I've been using Eclipse to do Java development for a while now and it's really painful to have to switch back to Domino Designer for anything.

162John Vaughan  8/17/2007 10:37:06 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

i'm with julian - full support for user defined classes.

a full featured javascript debugger would be great too.

163Christian Voigt  8/26/2007 11:01:08 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Replace Notes Designer with Eclipse. Just fill in the editors for Notes design elements and means to access Notes databases.

2) Make all UI events accessible/programmable for java.

164Terry Traphagen  8/28/2007 11:46:13 AM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

1) Give me bookmarks &/or remember position in the IDE code window that are persistent as I switch between subs / functions

2) Class level auto-completes for variables, functions, subs

165charles ross  10/12/2007 12:04:56 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

LotusScript Editor Custom Class Display:

OO training wheels - Support for parsing custom clases into their own Editor Window, as is done for new Subroutines. All I gotta do is type "Sub" and I have a new editor frame, can you turn into a fly? I mean can you do that for "Class"?

OO Lotusscript is of course possible, but it would be great if the Editor supported it. This would greatly ease migration of agents, for instance to Java. It would be similar to MS outreach to the VB6 masses.

166Mark Singer  11/1/2007 4:50:24 PM  What if....you could pick 2 new features for Domino Designer?

How about

1) Ability to search for text in the debugger. I realize that you can't organize items in alpha because they are sorted based on where they appear in the doc. But what if I could at least just LOCATE it (or ANY text) in that window when it's expanded. Now THAT would be 'perdy'!

2) How about when I insert a row in a table we do the right thing and inherit all the attributes (HTML, tabs, indents, etc) of the row on top or underneath. I don't care which - just be consistent.

3) Did you say 2? I want 3. I know. I'm a bad boy. Please please please let me create Tables DYNAMICALLY. I mean full control. And without having to save the document to see a rich text change. By the way, ALL properties of RT tables need to be implemented. Ability to split cells etc.

Thanks!

4) Did I say I want 3? I know. I'm a bad boy AND a liar! Let ME decide if I want to run NSD on a crash. I have NEVER used its output but it sure can take a while to run sometimes.

No really. Now I'm done!

For now!

Cheers,

Mark