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Awesome Notes Fieldsets


Over at Interface Matters, Mr. Blatnick completely rips me off by rehashing an article I wrote over a year ago...

I'm kidding, of course.  Chris points to several ways to emulate fieldsets in the Notes client, and gets some interesting results.  Patrick Kwinten responses with a rather surprising remark.
an excellent demonstration how BAD the support for CSS and HTML in the Notes client is.
Au contraire, quintessens!  CSS can be used for this purpose quite nicely in the Notes client!  All you need is a bit of class!

Here's a form I created in Designer...
Two nested tables and a couple of layers. No big whoop.

And when I render with Notes client...
BOOOOOORRRRING!
Yuck, right?  But keep reading...

So I'll add a CSS stylesheet resource to the form, and voila!
Legen... I hope you're not lactose intolerant 'cause there's gonna be...

It even resizes nicely...
DARY!!

You can find the database I used in the Downloads section to the right of this page

Posted by CN=Nathan T Freeman/OU=NA/O=GBS On | Digg This |

Comments

1 - Nice. Very nice.

I'm curious about your choice of graphics though. Perhaps it's just me, but Doogie != Crazy Hot. Emoticon

-Devin.

Posted by Devin Olson At 02:10:00 PM On 04/21/2008 |


2 - +3 cape of awesome

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 02:15:40 PM On 04/21/2008 |


3 - Oh come on he is the best part of that show.

The episode a few week ago when they did whole "blog" thing and the way they wrapped it up at the end.

Maybe you have to be in your 30's but it was funny.

Posted by Randy Castle At 02:27:04 PM On 04/21/2008 |


4 - Nice work Nate!

Which database in the downloads section were you referring to?

Thanks!

Dan Soares

Posted by Dan Soares At 03:04:44 PM On 04/21/2008 |


5 - is it just me or are other people also having problems downloading the suit up database - when I select the link on the left the page design breaks and I do not get a file to download? I've tried it using Firefox 3 and Safari?

Emoticon

Posted by ursus At 03:32:54 PM On 04/21/2008 |


6 - Yes, there's something wrong with the download. I'm working on it.

Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 03:50:03 PM On 04/21/2008 |


7 - @5 Ursus, hmmm, happening for me also, no file resource to download.

Nathan, this happened on my blog also, did you add the <$BSAttachments$> tag in the site template document \downloads\entry tab? When I upgraded to the 3.0.8a version of blogsphere seems that tag went away or was a newly added tag, not sure which Emoticon

Keith

Posted by Keith Strickland At 03:59:29 PM On 04/21/2008 |


8 - What versions of Notes is this supported in Nate?

Posted by Bruce At 04:08:56 PM On 04/21/2008 |


9 - That was it. Thanks Keith!!!

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 04:09:20 PM On 04/21/2008 |


10 - @8 - It works fine in 7 and in 8.0.1. I don't have a 6.5 client installed anymore.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 05:14:19 PM On 04/21/2008 |


11 - Ok, the stylesheet stuff is cool. And the choice of graphics is also cool. But the copyright notification? Le-gen-dary!!!

Posted by Rob McDonagh At 06:30:22 PM On 04/21/2008 |


12 - Working perfectly now - thank you very much :o)

Posted by ursus At 12:25:09 AM On 04/22/2008 |


13 - Hej,

I am surprised that I have to 'defend' myself here. We are still on Notes7 not Notes8, so I do not know how good the html rendering and support for CSS for Notes8 is, but I sure hope that its much better than Notes7 for the Notes client.

But for the Notes 7 Notes client one has to agree that there is no full support for CSS as mr Blatnick demonstrated with his work-around.

Emoticon

correct me if I am wrong...

Posted by Patrick Kwinten At 04:50:25 AM On 04/22/2008 |


14 - There is no FULL support for CSS, but there's still a lot you can do with it. Download the suggested attachment and run it in Notes 7. It works fine.

There's no need to use client HTML rendering (which for the purpose of stuff embedded in the design, works exactly the same between 7 and 8.)

And I wasn't trying to pick on you or anything Patrick. I just thought your response indicated that you probably hadn't tried to do much with CSS in the Notes client. It's really surprisingly powerful, and we're all under-using it.

Of course, there are many people who's first reaction is "yeah but it doesn't support EVERYTHING." Well, sure, but neither did Netscape 4, and that eventually grew up into Mozilla.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 07:08:32 AM On 04/22/2008 |


15 - Nathan, are you commonly using CSS in new Notes Client applications? I have zero experience using it, but your posts are making wonder if it's something I should be learning and using. From a Notes Client perspective, what are the advantages of using CSS over the formatting options of fields, tables, and layers? Also, have you (or anyone else reading) run into any classic Notes 'gotchas' when working with CSS in the Notes Client?

Posted by Keil Wilson At 11:20:00 AM On 04/22/2008 |


16 - I've tried using CSS in Notes off and on for several years because I really want to use centrally-administered stylesheets. Change one stylesheet, let it replicate through the template hierarchy, and all my apps look the same simultaneously. That would be nirvana. The reality is oh so disappointing though. Emoticon I stopped trying to use CSS in the Notes client because it was very much hit-or-miss what will work and where it works, and the translation from Notes to web was similarly chaotic. No documentation plus inconsistent results means it was just too annoying for me to bother with.

Nathan showed me a couple of CSS tips, and I intend to start using those soon. For now you have to paint with a fairly broad brush, but it should get more refined as things progress.

Posted by Charles Robinson At 02:32:21 PM On 04/22/2008 |


17 - @16 - For documentation, search the Designer help for "Creating style sheets as shared resources." There's a table of what's supported.

It's challenging, there's no question. There are some annoying limitations. But I'll tell you what makes it for me...

BODY {font-family: Arial;}

That one line alone is worth the price of admission. Words cannot describe how much easier that makes my job as a designer.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 03:21:30 PM On 04/22/2008 |


18 - Nathan, I just now got around to actually looking at this. Very nice indeed - I had no idea layers would respond to CSS like this. Clearly I have some experimenting to do.

But a question - in the CSS file, why the presence in a few places of "DIV"? Removing it seems to make no difference. Is there an implicit div inside each Notes interface element, or what?

Posted by Andrew Brew At 07:33:17 PM On 05/06/2008 |


19 - @18 - LAYERS in the Notes client are addressable in CSS as DIVs!

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 10:40:06 AM On 05/11/2008 |


20 - So what about on the fly rendering of CSS modification in the Notes client?

Do we need to say more about the support? Emoticon

Posted by Patrick Kwinten At 03:34:17 AM On 10/09/2008 |


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