Does a widget know its a widget?

Here is a query for you widget guru's - Does a widget know it's a widget?
What i mean is you have a neat wee widget and you want to give the user and Email option
so they can email the widget content to themselves or others can the widget query the note environment? I have tried a variety of things and it would appear that the widget thinks it is all alone in the world rather than snuggled up in a notes side bar. Any ideas gratefully received...
Steve

Back from the wilderness

Gentle reader,

Hello again! Yes I am back from a short trip the south west of the UK via the wilderness that are modern airports. Having done the "travelling" bit I managed to upgrade a Notes server to V801 and do the 5 or 6 clients mainly to show off the lovely new V8 client and it has to be said this was done to much applause and ooo'ing an aah-ing. Widget-ery particularly impressed and several people have come back to me this morning with suggestions for Widgets and Dashboards they would find useful. I can see my DEV team being gainfully employed with widget wizardry for the next day or two!

More later ...

Widgeting your journal so that you get just a view without the frameset

I have been fiddling around and I could'nt make head nor tail of getting a view to open all by itself without the accompanying frameset. I have tried working out the URL syntax, but i gave up after a while and did this instead, which is a kludge but it works.

01. Created a less cluttered view in the journal file called sidebar, very minimalist
02. Changed the Application Properties so that the designated frame was ViewFrame
03. Opened the Jorunal file.. which now has a single panel frameset
04. Selected VIEW , Goto and select the minimalist Sidebar View
05. Click on the configure widget from current context icon which will be available
06. Select open a notes view of frameset option and accept the string that has appeared
07. Click Next
08. Give the widget a name
09. Select display as a sidebar panel
10. Click Finish
11. 02. Changed the Application Properties so that the designated frame was back to BorderFrame
You now have a VIEW only widget without the frameset.

Useful Regular Expressions for Recogonizers

Regular expressions can be a bit of a head scratcher if you haven't been exposed to them before, so if you are reading this and you want to have a play with the Recognizers in widgets here are some examples :-

UK Postal Codes:
^[A-Za-z]{1,2}[\d]{1,2}([A-Za-z])?\s?[\d][A-Za-z]{2}$

US Zip Codes (5 or 5-4)
^\d{5}$|^\d{5}-\d{4}$

IP Addresses :
\b(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\b

ISBN Numbers :
^ISBN\s(?=[-0-9xX ]{13}$)(?:[0-9]+[- ]){3}[0-9]*[xX0-9]$

Date in the format 99/99/9999
^\d{1,2}\/\d{1,2}\/\d{4}$

USA Phone numbers in the format ANN-NNN-NNNN where A=2-9 and N=0-9
^[2-9]\d{2}-\d{3}-\d{4}$

I have opened up this page on the IBM LDD Wiki to be a resource for useful RegExps that might be worth sharing with the rest of the lotus world. So come on all you RegExp-ers and RegExp-ettes, please nip over to the page and add to the list. There is nothing like a good list of examples so that folk can get their heads around a new skill.

Steve

Jake Howlett's Frameworks Poll and other questions

Something close to my heart came up as browsed the PL feed at coffee time today.
Jake Howlett has asked a very pertinent question in a poll .
What framework should codestore downloads use?
This is something that has troubled me for some time now. I have divided views on which one is best because some are better at one thing than others - by better in this case I generally mean easier for me and/or gives a better result for the user experience.

I encourage all your developers to nip over and take the poll on the link above.
I for one will be watching with interest.

It also leads me on to thinking how this will dovetail into the the whole "interface matters" ethos espoused by the like of Chris Blatnik we can now do all sort of whizzbang web UI's some of which are difficult to replicate in the Domino client. Do we as developers push the lovely and usable web things we can now do, or do we concentrate on the Dom Client making it as lovely and usable as we can? Do we have to sacrifice look an feel for function (or vice a versa)? In which do we lead our project planners and managers? Widgetry and Composites have further complicated matters in that we could potentially have widgets that will greatly supplement our Dom Client UI's ... oh it is going to be an exciting few years! :-)

I don't have answers for these questions but I would be interested to hear where the Domino community believes the thrust of new development will take us in the next few years, web facing, client facing or a mixture of the two.

Steve

Yoda V1.0.0 Dev Widget

YODA Dev Widget V1.0.0 Released!

Be the envy of your department!
Get your copy of YODA today!

PS. Yes i know they are old jokes , but still :-)

PPS. If you want anyothers added in just let me know

Slaun

Harry Pothead and the Widget of Desire

Well i wrote my first widget today !
A most gratifying feeling well done IBM a wonderful addition to the client.
Thanks to the various bloggers that posted a HOW TO in the past few days.

My widget recognizes one of our part numbers, can when clicked calls a Domino Web Agent
that nips off looks up various tables in our DB2 tables and Notes Applications and presents the user with a nicely formated page of HTML that summarizes stock sales and the like. Into a nice wee graph (courtesy of YUI's charting library) and a clatter of tables.

Now Chris Blatnik has set me thinking in this post what about splitting it into several widgets and having a dashboard..... oooooooooo..... i see some fiddling coming at the weekend.