A few months back I created a group called Friends of Lotusphere and an event, Lotusphere 2008, on facebook. Today the group reached 200 members, but I think it should be a lot more. If you are a facebook user and have been to a Lotusphere and/or are going to Lotusphere 2008, go join the group and check your RSVP to the event.
I have had the privilege to speak at every Lotusphere since 2002. In 2001 my first son, Jakob, was about to be born and my wife did not want me to travel that close to his birth. I have actually never attended Lotusphere as anything other than a speaker. This year I have three sessions accepted by the Content Team.
| Session: | Building Custom Themes for IBM Lotus Quickr |
| Track: | Hands-on Sessions |
| Abstract: | The elements of a good user interface are just the beginning when it comes to Lotus Quickr — with this platform, you expose functionality, user context and security in the “look and feel.” Custom themes give you much more. In this first-ever hands-on session you’ll explore the inner workings of themes, building one from scratch (with a little help). Your instructors wrote the book on themes, and have developed more than 100 in the past 8 years for companies worldwide, from simple corporate looks to highly complex, feature-packed themes. You’ll learn the custom tags, tips and tricks on Lotus Quickr CSS, and how to use themes to improve Lotus Quickr performance. You’ll also get some brand new themes you can take home to study … and even deploy!The corresponding breakout session for this hands-on is “AD502 Customizing IBM Lotus Quickr Themes and Skins”.Please refer to the Pocket Agenda for date, time and location information. |
| Speakers: | Viktor Krantz Troy Reimer |
This is the first time that I am presenting at a hands-on session and it will be fun. You will learn a lot about theme developing here.
| Session: | Extending and Customizing Templates for IBM Lotus Quickr: Straight from the Developers |
| Track: | Track Four: Best Practices |
| Abstract: | The IBM Lotus Quickr 8 release was quickly followed by a suite of eleven free, open templates, now used by thousands of companies worldwide. Each template has a specific business purpose and design, but they share common elements and reusable techniques and components. In this session, the developers of the templates will dig into the code, expose and explain some of the most valuable components, and teach you to assemble Lotus Quickr applications using a modular, extensible approach. By learning techniques for adding comment capabilities, custom workflow, tagging, and more, you’ll come away with the skills and tools necessary to build your own Lotus Quickr application. Plus, you’ll also receive a new template designed exclusively for Lotusphere 2008! |
| Speakers: | Viktor Krantz Troy Reimer |
This will be a really fun session. You will learn how to extend and combine some of the 11 free templates we at SNAPPS have created for Lotus Quickr 8.
| Session: | The Great Code Giveaway: “Beyond Cool” |
| Track: | Track Four: Best Practices |
| Abstract: | All new development techniques are brewing in the labs at SNAPPS, an IBM Business Partner with a penchant for giving expensive code away while providing a great education. It’s always very cool, and incredibly useful — the code is used by businesses, governments, partners, customers, and celebrities to improve applications and techniques. This year the SNAPPS labs have produced some of the most impressive IBM Lotus Domino-centric techniques in four areas: visual effects, data access and processing, mashups, and cross-product integration. Sounds like a lot, and it is! We’ve logged more than 500 hours bringing you these demos, so don’t miss the opportunity to experience “Beyond Cool” and take home incredible examples and full-blown applications! |
| Speakers: | Rob Novak Viktor Krantz |
This is the session I look forward to all year long. Rob Novak and I spend a lot of time on this one. Over 500 hours last year and it will not be less this year. We have delivered it several years in a row now, always with new content, free useful code to take home and sometimes a little cool.
I hope to see you at Lotusphere 2008 in January.
The Dojo Toolkit 1.0 was released this morning. Many of us, including me, has waited patiently for this release. Now I can finalize the updated code for Dojo Calendar.
There are many new, improved and awesome features.
New and Awesome:
- The Grid. This is the feature everyone’s been waiting for, and now it’s here! With support for virtual scrolling to accommodate huge data sets efficiently, built-in sorting and column resize to help you find what you’re looking for, complex formatting, and fixed rows and column headers, the new Grid lets you slice-and-dice your data as never
before. The 1.0 grid features a Tundra theme, editing and write-back examples, support for custom cell editors (including the full set of accessible and localized Dijit editing components), and markup-driven instantiation.- Charting returns! The new dojox.charting supports automatic axis calculations, widget-driven instantiation, multiple chart types, dojo.data data sources, and theming. Good-looking, data-oriented default themes help make your data understandable and easy on the eyes at the same time. And since dojox.charting is based on dojox.gfx, the general-purpose 2D drawing layer in Dojo, charting will only get more powerful, responsive, and good looking over time.
- a11y and i18n: rich experiences for everyone. All Dijit 1.0 widgets feature keyboard navigation, right-to-left text detection and layout, and solid localizations for 12 languages. No matter where in the world you are, Dijit has you covered. Dijit goes even further by providing ARIA role and state hinting to give users of assistive technologies the experience that developers intend.
- Universal data access. dojo.data and the growing list of data store implementations makes building and using data-driven widgets simpler and faster.
- dojox.gfx3d. Beautiful, portable 2D drawing is what dojox.gfx has always been about, and we’re taking it further with the ability to draw 3D scenes. 3D charting is based on gfx3d. This module was developed as a Summer of Code project by Kun Xi.
- improved widget look-and-feel. The base Tundra theme continues to be improved. New and exciting extension (dojox) widgets are appearing in 1.0, including a new Lightbox widget.
- Django templating for widgets. Many people have fallen in love with Django’s templating syntax and now you can now use it to build widgets thanks to Neil Roberts’ excellent dojox.dtl package.
- improved stability, speed, and compatibility across the board.
Improved:
- Dijit form widgets obey width in a way that makes visual sense
- reworked validation indicators for form elements
- lightbox widget
- the widget lifecycle has been improved such that create() is now called from postfix(), allowing your constructor code to “get in on the ground floor”
- the new Drupal front-end for the Neil’s documentation parser is now checked into the util namespace. This version provides disambiguated summaries and detail pages of the parsed object hierarchy, and since these pages are in Drupal, comments can be left by anyone.
- better command-line functioning of the unit test system
- an improved Firebug Lite which allows inspection of errors, popup-window placement, and parent-child cross frame logging.
- smoother animations
- build system now handles UTF-8 correctly end-to-end
- improved documentation and unit test coverage for all Core and Dijit APIs/widgets
Congratulations to the Dojo team for this milestone. I know it’s been a lot of hard work.