However Ed Brill of IBM spotted the 'discontent' and 'had a word' and mysteriously things are appearing again (well done Ed).

I read yesterday that Oracle have been appointed onto the board of the Eclipse project (open source IDE) which IBM are heavily involved in. It seems Oracle now want to make it their business to drag the project back towards Sun's implementation of Java instead of IBM's prefered 'flavour'.

Basically for those who know a bit about Java - Sun use whats known as Swing classes - IBM/Eclipse uses SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) ones instead which almost makes the open source project very biased towards supporting IBM's products etc - instead of being the 'open' project as intended (although IBM has funded Eclipse with substantial amounts of money).

I also read that Microsoft have launched their 'Trustworthy Computing' initiative which is based on four 'pillars' - reliability, security, privacy, and business integrity. Okay - call me old fashioned - which one of these have they ever adhered to? Microsoft also go on to say that Security is now their number one priority - I can re-word this to say previously security was not number priority - getting software out of the door was (ouch!).

Its been reported on most sites - so I won't go into detail, but its claimed by onestat.com that IE is used by 19 out of 20 surfers. If that is the case is it justifiable for me to write cross browser code (in business cost terms?).

I found yet another good Domino link yesterday - Arras Online - a Domino News service.

This got me thinking though - what is happening? I started this site 3 months ago (and incidently claimed that it would never become a blog!) and there were a trickle of such Domino sites. In that 3 months the whole Domino world has gone blog mad.

Another addition to the links today is Bruce Elgort of openntf.org. This will go under 'interesting' as is a 'personal' blog more than a 'domino' one. Ben - I did lift this from your site - I'm going to write a blog 'trawler' that automatically creates my content from yours, codestore and notestips !

To add insult to injury I may even do a blog template of my own - but we are talking well into next year for that one. It will not be a rival to any current ones as I'm going to add it as a feature to my Content Management software.

My thinking then spawned into IT in general - we have all these 'enthusiasts' blog sites (done in spare time for free), we also have an ever increasing number of 'open source' projects across all technologies. Whats happening? - maybe people are waking to the fact that unless you are Microsoft it is very hard to make money (or even compete) with software - its the added value stuff like consultancy and training that bring in the revenues.

But what of those people who are giving up their free time to 'open source' projects? The corporates are benefiting - what do these people get - is the satisfaction etc enough? What if a key 'open source' developer decides one day - enough is enough i'm bored of this and does something different. What then with the bit he was working on? or later on there is found to be a major bug/flaw - as there is obviously no come back. Who to blame??!!

I'm not knocking 'open source' as I think its valuable and as openntf.org has shown (For Lotus Notes) can bring great results. I just have the above questions in my mind! My personal aim is to make the majority of this project open source - just got to decide at what point.

I am obviously an 'enthusiast' myself else I would not drivel on like this for ever. I think Domino has so much to offer all companies - no matter the size - I just have a problem with the perception IBM (and previosuly Lotus) put out there about it. I also think some things could work better - but thats just software and thats why people like me write software for software!

If anyone doubts my madness, then keep checking back - I will attempt to create a complete online marketing resource for Domino.

Moving on, I have been adding links to my Links page - Ed Brill has started a personal Blog, it is hosted by Volker Weber, who also has an interesting blog (found some good Finnish jokes - some of my family live there). I have also added a link to an excellent Lotus Notes Link resource kept by Frank Cseh and also a site for Domino.doc - swapcode.com.

Taking the above comment further - I am a concerned person over the future for Lotus Domino. The business's I have contact with seem to make the same mistake that has happened over the years - 'buzzwords'.

J2EE and .Net are the current buzzwords that most Directors seem to know that are involved with IT. Because of that there seems to be a panic to make sure their software uses one of these. Admittedly sometimes it can be the equally 'buzzed up' (I'm sure I have made that up) director of one of their customers who expect to receive a .Net or J2EE solution - depending on their own preferences.

My worry is that Domino falls down a very huge gap as it is neither. There seems to be a trend for movement away from Domino and so far a slow uptake on R6 upgrades. Can we do anything about this? I think maybe we can - I've noticed and I know others have noticed the 'Domino' community have finally shown their faces after all these years (the ones I know about are on my links page) and pushing the platform and producing excellent software - that runs on Domino. My opinion is always that its the killer applications developed on the platform that sell the platform.

On this subject, I'm thinking of creating a 'Domino' marketing section - resources/links which give 'factual' information on when and where Domino and associated technologies excel. I also want to show that Domino is not a 'fall down the gap' product - it can be embraced by both .Net and J2EE. As with my site - I dont just want to waffle about it but actually prove and show exactly how.

I would like some help - what i need are good links to products, solutions, white papers etc which give informed information (I'm not interested at all in Domino v Exchange rubbish - take note SearchDomino - its such an old chestnut!!!). I would also like 'one liners' - ie Domino is good at.. , is great at - also just important - its useless at.. etc. Jake at codestore has recently had a lot of conversation about the bad things - lets have some on the good as well!

All content ideas to steve.castledine@projectDX.org - You will be hearing further on this subject!!! Other domino sites - please link this blog!!!

Next week will see the return of some Domino technical articles as I do not intend on abandoning that part of this site!

One article I plan to write for next week is to take a Notes Contact Manager application and web enable it using the 'toolset'. So you know there is no smoke and mirrors - please feel free to send me any of your Notes Contact Manager applications for web enablement.

As it stands I hope to have a full Public release of the "DXFramework" probably second week of January - by then it will have all the features that will make it into a unique and useful toolset.   As the servlets have been fixed, the comments/discussion part of this site are also back up and running. I'm not happy with them yet by a long way - but I'm getting there - another couple of days and they will work as you would expect. Then this will be available as an add on component - to use in other DX applications. It may be a bit slow - it is on my $10 a month hosting (will be upgrading soon) - plus it is a bit bloaty for its purpose - another task of mine is get the software not to include api code that is not needed for each application etc.

There is a demo running at hinkyminky.net (love the name!) - so far it is looking impressive stuff.

I have posted this article which explains more of the development concepts of the DXFramework software. Sometime today I will have a 2.0.2 release - as I found one bug yesterday.

Have you ever wanted to know what a 'true' developer looks like at work? - Brendon at puakma.net has put a web cam of him working away on his site. If that was me I would need to take a still shot and put it in front of the camera - I can't sit still - always got the munchies or need for coffee!

I promise to have the site comments working some time tomorrow - I'm working today on the new application which uses the version 2 software.

I've finally got to the point where I can release the Pre-Release version of the DXFramework software to the people who have very kindly said they would take a look.   Just got a bit more documentation to do and the file's will be on their way! - Many thanks for your patience - I am only a week late!!

So that all the documentation is always up to date and I can edit it based on feedback, it is all available on this site. This link will take you to it, and you will also be able to access it via the documentation link on the DXFramework menu to the left.

You will be able to see the first full screen screenshots of the application within these documents. I will adding further documentation on a regular basis, and will also explain all about the software etc.

I should mention the current aim of the software and where I want it to go. Currently I am targeting helping developers of all abilities write fast efficient web applications for R5 and R6, together with providing a toolset to web enable Lotus Notes applications that you would have deemed in the past either too complicated or full of 'Legacy' features that just cannot be made to work within a browser.

The next step is to provide a solid 'methodology' for developing and very importantly 'manage' Domino Web development projects. Then comes the ability to share and distribute applications and pre-built components to others in your department, company or any other company with ease.

Further into the future (although not too far - development has already started) the plan is to take all the development you have done for Domino (using the Framework) and make it available from a packaged Java server. This will enable you to then use a different backend datasource or platform for your applications with the minimal of work and also use full Java technology. Whilst its early to say - it will almost be a .NET for Domino. Java - but without the full complication (unless you want it to be) and cost.

Anyway - back to today - walk before run and all that!

Another article I have put up today is - DXFramework - Concept: Web Store - this explains one of the main 'concepts' behind the software - storing, managing etc of Domino Web Applications.

As always any questions etc - steve.castledine@projectdx.org

Hopefully sometime today I will now get onto fixing those servlets for the discussion/comments part of this site!

Rest assured from tomorrow things are going to change and there will be loads of content all at once. For today, above is part of the JavaScript events part of the DXFramework software.

I am writing this in the early hours of the morning having completed a 16 hour development stint on the Project and so is very unlikely to be interesting! The image above is from viewing the source of a page generated via the DXFramework. One thing that I wanted to make sure is that R5 produced better and more controllable HTML without the Domino rubbish that I don't need - so far so good. (It is obviously R6 compatible too).

The image above is the Notes UI I have been slaving over. I just hope it all still works when I wake up later!!

Talking of which, its been ages since I did any Notes Client UI development work - give me my browser any day - dislike is the polite word I could use!

The good news is that because I'm working hard on the 'Project' there is going to be a stack of stuff on this site very very soon. I expect tommorrow I will have a lot more information on the 'Project' and the 'Product' so will post it all up.

I'm not going to leave you empty handed today though. Guy Thomas of soberskin has sent me an updated version of the Excel Reporting tool for Lotus Notes (judging by the number of downloads - very popular).

Guy tells me that this version has some bug fixes from the last version and also that the tool now lets you export data from any database so you don't have to paste the code into each db. However, it uses the database catalogue (catalog.nsf) to do this.

Once my current workload has been sorted I will have a reorganisation of some of this site. Will start using the content and link management software I have written using the DXFramework - practice what you preach and all that! And if I didnt have enough to do I still have the browser based email client to complete.

Theres also the small matter of sorting the Servlets out so the Site Comments feature is working again and also so the Contact Manager Demo is fully functional again - I think I need sponsorship!!!

However recently with Netscape 7 being released and it being closer to standards than its previous versions I have become interested again in developing web applications that will work across the browsers.

So I have to find out which syntax etc always works. The first bit of Javascript/DHTML I use frequently and in fact I used it in a previous article, is the innerText property which is unique to Internet Explorer.

I have therefore put this tip/article together to show the cross browser version using the DOM (Document Object Model).

As I know people rarely understand my humour - the above duck is 'cross' - to go with the article. Humour is a strange area when you are writing content for an international audience - I only realised how international the readership was when I thought last week the internet had shut down for one day (after looking at my site stats) and then remembered it was Thanksgiving Day (which we do not have in the UK).

I shall be putting together an article one day this week, sharing more screenshots and explaining a little more.

On a different note, a 'wishitem' for Lotusscript - can we have an alert function please which works the same as msgbox. I only ask as I write far more Javascript these days than I do Lotusscript and I can't seem to get out of the habit of putting alert("message") in my code - especially when I am testing.

Anyway got to go I have an absolute stack of work to get done today!

On a slightly sadder note, my three month extension to my contract which was supposed to start today was cancelled last Friday night - thanks for the notice! - don't you just hate that when you have turned down alternative work for the month (g*ts!) !! Thats as annoyed as I get i'm afraid - The positive side means that I finally get the time to spend on this Project and i'm looking forward to that.   However, should you need any help on your projects, then I am now available for work at a minimum of 1 day onsite and flexible for offsite. Enquiries to: Steve.Castledine@ProjectDX.org.

I have loads of content planned for this week, and also the Servlet issue at DominoDeveloper.net has been sorted so I can get the comments and the Contact Manager Demo working again. I will keep you updated as and when I sort these out.