Beyond The Yellow Bubble

I am constantly suprised that no matter how much I learn about Notes Development there seems to be so much more I still don't know.  In the past few days both Nathan Freeman and  Chris Blatnik posted some excellent articles on how to use style sheets to simulate the HTML Fieldset capability on a Notes client.  I had always thought  Style Sheet resources were the domain of Web application development only.  It never occured to me that these could be used to style a Notes client application...

So I have already been busy enhancing the UI for a number of forms in the .Domino Framework that utilize the tricks they have shown.  In doing so it also occured to me that it may in fact possible to build a Notes application in such a way that the look/feel can be customized to suit individual preferences.  

The .Domino Framework supports a User Preferences form/profile document in which each user can (now) select from a list of available skins.  Each supported skin is represented by a Style Sheet, and an associated subform that contains this style sheet.  Various forms in the .Domino Framework can now include a computed subform that is based upon the user's preferred skin.  And voila the look/feel of the form reflects the user's preferred skin.

As best as I can tell a great many Notes Design elements still do not get effected by Style Sheets so this is a at best a partial solution.  The application skinning feature is still needed to apply a base theme to an application (views, embedded outlines etc.) At least now I can provide some flexibility how some aspects of the application look/feel.