Beyond The Yellow Bubble

The latest beta of the .Domino Framework was released on the weekend.  This latest beta contains a number of tweaks to the existing framework as well as adding a few new features.  This includes integration with OpenLog and a new application skin feature.

The application skin works at three levels:-

The first level involves the creation of XSLT code to transform various aspects of an applications design.  It requires a good working knowledge of DXL and XSLT, but offers the most flexibility.  Examples of where this would be best used includes making a global change to use a specific font in all design elements.  The XSLT code to do this is provided with the latest template.  XSLT can be applied to all selected design elements.

The second level involved the creation of a "Design Rule".  A Notes form exposes many of the design parameters of Forms, View, Framesets, an Pages and allows a developer to indicate which attributes are to be set and what the setting should be.  (e.g. Form background color, action bar background color, view grid style,...).  Once the design parameters are defined, XSLT is built from the "Design Rules" and can then be applied to selected design elements.  Design Rules can be a sophisticated as defining the enture UI/Skin for an application to something as simple as setting the background color for view/form/page action bars.  This approach does not require any knowledge of DXL/XSLT but is limited to the design elements exposed in the Design Rule.  The XSLT generated for the Design Rule can be copied and adapted using the first approach to provide additional flexibility.

The third level allows a developer to clone existing design elements creating a Design Rule from selected design elements.  This approach can be used to take a look/feel of an existing form/page/frameset/view and apply it to all/selected other design elements.  Once the cloned design rule has been cretaed it can be further modified using either of the two previous approaches.

The next step in the evolution of this feature will be the ability to assign design attributes to CSS classes much in the same way as can be done Web applications.  Various design components (frames, tables, table cells, computed text etc.) already support the assignment of a CSS classes within Domino Designer.  There is nothing in the rules that says these have to be for Web applications use!  By defining the attributes of a CSS class as part of a Design Rule it should be possible to use XSLT to generate the apply the  design changes to design elements (e.g. font, background color, line width).  I am hoping to have this next capability available with beta 0.4 in May.