I was creating yet another HCL Notes demo client application recently and was hunting for an existing application I could copy the basic navigation features from without having too many unique things to get rid of. Strange hide formulas, Queryopen code, etc.
It occurred to me there should be a template for that. So I created it and here it is (also available on the Downloads page).
This is for applications whose main screen is a frameset with navigation in one frame, a view in another frame, and maybe other frames showing current document or additional controls or whatever (I added a Preview panel, which is easy enough to delete if you don’t want it).
How is it organized?
The main frameset has three frames:
- On the left is a navigation area — a Page design element containing the application icon, name, and an embedded outline
- On the right top, a view
- Right bottom, a collapsible preview frame.
The application is set to open the frameset on application launch, and the frame containing the view has frame name NotesView, a special name recognized by the client to mean that if someone opens a view link into the application, it should use the launch frameset to display that view, putting it into that frame. The frame properties also contain a default target for links — the Navigation frame’s target is NotesView, and the NotesView frame’s target is preview.
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Deployment & Use
Put the template in your Notes client data directory. Use it as a template to create an application. The template doesn’t have a design template name because we never want to inherit this design — we use it as a starting point and immediately start customizing it.
I won’t go into the series of steps to customize — aside from the obvious like adding your own forms and views — because the Help Using document covers all that. Please download it, try it out, and comment here.
Have fun!