IBM Lotus Domino: Classic Web Application Development Techniques: This tutorial takes Domino developers on a straight path through the jungle of techniques to deploy applications on the web and introduces you to the classic strategies. Why Google it when it’s all here?

I have to admit to wondering, when I was first asked to review this book, exactly what the market was that it's aimed at. After all, aren't all domino developers heading towards XPages now? Could a book on "traditional web programming in domino" still be relevant today?Well, surprisingly it is.The opening chapters deal with issues and requirements that our developers and I still constantly struggle with . They cover version control, issues logs, staging servers, commenting/documentation, standards and the big killer "scope creep". There are sections on using the "champions" in your office to drive projects, maintaining consistent URLs and setting up a developer test environment.These are aspects which affect all domino development regardless of the technology level (XPages, Notes, Pure HTML or JavaScript/CSS). If you regularly contract domino developers to develop applications for your environment, those first chapters are absolutely required reading. They're not overly technical and are very suitable for management level reading.The last two chapters of the book cover Security, Performance, Testing and Debugging. Again, these are mostly high-level. The security sections discuss planning for security, ACLs, reader and editor fields, the problems of hidden fields and sensible additions such as edit prevention after approval and logout facilities. The performance sections discuss archiving, code optimisation and the measurement of response time. The testing and debugging chapter talks about the requirements and limitations of user-testing and suggests various ways this testing could be improved. There are also some great sections on debugging which will help those new to domino to track down issues in their applications.The middle chapters cover CSS and JavaScript as it relates to forms, views and agents. The book talks about some features which are only available in Notes/Domino 8.5 but it never discusses XPages.If you're already a domino developer and you're looking to move into XPages, then this book certainly isn't for you. If however, you've been using Notes and want to quickly port some applications to the web or if you're familiar with classic HTML, CSS and JavaScript but want to get some Domino projects off the ground, then this is the right book.Of course, if you're on a version of notes/domino prior to 8.5 with little prospect of upgrading in the near future, this book will help you to get the best development potential out of your existing systems.The book offers a lot of great web development advice and code. It covers basic design rules mentioning some stylistic considerations which many web developers seem to overlook. It looks at form validation, usability and export functionality.The book exposes each increment in usability/design one step at a time. This will provide people new to domino with an understanding of the effect of each of their changes. It's a great way to cover these topics.There's also a whole chapter dedicated to navigation. It covers action buttons (how to style them, where to put them and when to use them). It provides tips for adding better URLs to your applications and provides some great coverage of the "go forward" navigational strategy.This is a really good book with great explanations and good technical detail. If this book had come out three years ago, it would have been a bestseller. Sadly though, XPages is taking over (at least in the minds of cutting domino developers) and this dates the technology in the book a little.If you're not going XPages yet and you're interested in classic domino development, then this is easily the best book I've seen on the subject.

La référence que je recherchais.Attention, ne s adresse pas aux débutants.Tres complet. Je vous le recommande vivement !!

I would divide up the audience into three readers for "Classic Web Application" with Lotus Domino: 1. The "classic" adjective in the book's title is an acknowledgment that not all Domino developers are jumping into XPages and mastering the subtleties of Dojo. Some developers wear many hats and don't have time (or, are not ready) to push into frontiers. 2. There are Domino applications that are essential to a business, in which the architecture is late 1990's or early 2000, and does not need to be modernized, just maintained. This is the book for building the checklist of what can be polished up. 3. There is also the newbie programmer, frequently presented with the task of taking on a Domino application as their entry into enterprise application development. This is the book for them.With sections on design strategies, testing, and core application development (e.g., forms and views) anyone will find the right orientation for working in Domino web development. CSS and Javascript were clearly explained (and their integration isn't exactly transparent in Domino). Finally, the security chapter is terrific, with a very practical perspective on what is a good idea and what doesn't work well.

The short summary is that this is a book that gives you guidelines for developing Domino web applications the non-XPages way (introducted in Domino 8.5), and gives you pointers to where you can look for more information, but isn't a "cookbook" kind of book with a lot of samples. It's targeted at Domino developers who are new to web development on Domino, but are decent at HTML/CSS, and Javascript.This book covers techniques used in Domino 6.5 and up, but unfortunately doesn't point out which versions specific features were added; this would help if you're maintaining older versions of Domino, but doesn't matter if you're running the latest version of Domino because it has always been good about backwards compatibility.Good best practices are recommended for things like using div tags to replace framesets and aligned fields, how to organize css/styling. There's good overage of making the ugly default Domino web views prettier using CSS and Javascript. Domino techniques for security (hidden fields, controlled access sections, and read/author fileds) are covered well. There's also good coverage of things that can slow down the server so you can avoid them. And there's a good guide to testing/debugging.There are also some oddities like recommending that you avoid coding java applets, but it's ok to use built-in Domino applets like the action bar. An example of using Ajax calls to call an agent is used but there's no mention of using jQuery or Dojo to make it easier. There's good coverage of Lotuscript agents, but no coverage of Java agents.Overall, it's a good "best practices" guide, with a lot of mentions of design elements mentioned that you can look up fairly easily, but be prepared to dig at other resources to get the most out of this book. Packt Publishing has PDF/ePub e-book versions of this book if you'd prefer an electronic version.

The folks at Packt Publishing are continuing to expand their shelf of IBM Lotus books. Their latest addition - Classic Web Application Development Techniques by Richard G. Ellis.Before I tell you how absolutely awesome this book is, I have to get something off my chest. The word "Classic" in the title is the absolute key word here. Mr. Ellis starts off the book by saying that everything here was written for and tested with Domino Designer 8.0. Upon reading that sentence I just had to go back to the very first page to check the publication date: someone is playing a trick on me. Alas, no tricks. The book was indeed published in March of 2011.The book also stays away, far away, from anything related to XPages and says so right off bat. But it is about classic development after all.Once you get over those two facts, the book is actually very good.I was afraid that it would stick to the trivial topics of web enabling Domino applications and using framesets and tables to layout an application. Of course, you can't talk about web development without explaining the basics of including HTML in a Notes form. And the book certainly does mention framesets and tables. However, it quickly moves to more advanced techniques of using DIV tags and CSS to effectively build a modern-looking web application. And for Notes developers who are not faint of heart, there are even sections devoted to advanced JavaScript and AJAX calls to boost performance.If you are an advanced Domino developer building web applications every day, this book may not be for you. But if you are a Notes developer who is making a transition to the web and want to know how to web enable your awesome Notes apps without looking like they were built by 5th-grader in 1999, get a copy of the book. You'll be hard pressed to find a better single source collection of Domino web development tricks.