This made for an interesting sunday afternoon - with myself turning into a tour guide for an American with a camera (so a few Castles were definately on the agenda!) - made me realise how uninspiring my home city is to me - I only hope an outsider can take interest because its 'something new' !

Conversation was wide ranging and very interesting - i'm a person who likes to find out about other cultures, way of living etc. Upon Ed mentioning his baby daughter 'playing' with a keyboard already - I did manage to slip in and ask whether she was learning C# - english humour - you got to love it.

From these conversations with another person who's language is originally English based (although what did you guys do to it?)- was the reminder of my 'slang english' (hence the Monty Python picture) - which sometimes has to be translated to another English speaking person - it makes me think how other European people and indeed any other country who does not use English as their native tongue ever understand a word we all (or I) say!

Through the use of SMS (short message service) on my mobile phone - my email writing has become a series of shortcuts and slang words - so I can type it quicker - I had better change that before I get very very misunderstood!

Will I ever be forgiven? I'm putting a few things right - I now have a new Sony Phone to go with my Sony Laptop, and Sony Camera - this phone will synch with Lotus Notes - so theres my motivation to put everything into Notes Mail.

I design Domino Web Architectures/Solutions these days - so thats that forgiven (I hope) - my web site - well I have started to migrate - but its a big big job - and so many things to think off when you are doing it.

Microsoft Solution Providers, Rich Text, bloggin at work? - well I think they will burn a hole in my soul forever!!

What do I mean by this? - Well Lotus Notes templates are distributed far and wide - and used by lots of different types of people - end users, administrators and developers alike - a lot of these people do not care how it works 'under the bonnet' - but need as much flexibility as possible with the software.

I take an example - "Content Management" - generally with Domino it is hard to get a Content Management solution that fits all - you need to change the design of a form to get a new 'way of working' or 'totally different look and feel' - this has been helped with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - but there are other issues - such as what if I need to hide the design - what if this template is going to people who have no experience of Domino development - but they know html? What if your client wanted to make a form change - but didn't want to buy designer licences just for that reason?

Well thats why I introduced the 'DXTags' way of working - the output to the browser can be tailored by the 'end customer' to the nth degree - without having to go into the design and with the added benefit of the entire structure of your web site, blog, intranet being editable/created using a web browser - or by using tools such as DreamWeaver - now thats powerful!

I show you some examples - heres four sites using an identical Notes Template: DominoBlog.com, BrainDumps, Edbrill.com, PeterDCox - notice how similar they are not? - Tags give the real web designer something to play with!

Apart from a few talented individuals I know - I do not class many domino developers as good web designers - myself included - and I think commentary of late from people like Volker Weber and Mike Golding regarding site design only goes to prove this point - so Tags give the user the ability to design their sites properly - using a professional web design tool - or to get another non-domino web developer to design them a template - or to import a design from another blog.

Don't just think I am the only mad one with this idea! - heres another example of this concept at swapcode.com - and the feedback I have had has also been incredible - one size fits all - probably the most economic way of producing Domino software at the moment with budgets how they are.

Look out for the ProjectDX Website/Intranet site manager coming soon.. (uses DXTags naturally!) - and of course totally free for the community - and totally cheap for the commericials - one size fits all - economies of scale!!

Maybe today I can start migrating this site to a proper Blog Template!!

Well as a brit - I disappeared down the pub - spent the money - and then gave ten quid to students to do the job for me - this is what they came up with!!

Anyway my bitch for the day - (I will do an article soon on all my Rich Text experiencies of late - because it will save you a lot of time if you try and do a similar thing) - I was recently tidying the design of the dominoblog.com template - I had several groups of fields that were used in several forms - so I did what all 'Tidy' Notes Developers do - put them into a subform - great I thought!

Well was that a mistake - I discovered another Rich Text bug that spans versions 5 and 6 - if you put MIME stored Rich Text fields in a subform - they work even less - the main problem is they will no longer store Images - so be warned!

Finally today - I have decided to "bite the bullet" and force some time into my schedule - and therefore will get rid of this Dreamweaver generated site from next Thursday - dont know how long it will take - a day I hope - but its coming!

I do enjoy using Dreamweaver - which is why DominoBlog.com tool allows you to simply import/export/refresh files from dreamweaver - but its no good at 'Blog' sites when they grow to a certain size - in fact "out of control" would be a very good description!