Web Dev Free-for-All

Cool!  A new blog.  Sounds like she's giving away free stuff.  Better check it out!

Well then, let me introduce myself.  My name is Mary Warner and I have been doing Notes development since '93 when Notes was at version 3.  There was, of course, no Lotusscript back then and web development was just a gleam in John Landry's eye (some of you may remember John as Spider Man at Lotusphere '95).   How far we've come since version 3!  I've been developing Domino web applications since about '97 (in version 4 of Notes when things were still pretty rudimentary) and although I haven't upgraded to version 8 yet, I am just amazed at all the wonderful things we can do in our web apps now which would have been really difficult or even impossible just a few years ago.

In the course of my development activities, though, I have also discovered two things.  (a) I am not a graphic designer (i.e., even though I have some pretty decent artistic skills as a photographer, I am not gifted with the skills necessary to put together elegant user interface designs for my applications).  And (b) I am a bit lazy. Rather than starting from scratch, I would rather use something -- whether it be a gorgeous-looking UI or some very cool code -- that somebody else has already created.    Why re-invent the wheel when somebody else has already done it?  I'm not talking about plagiarism here, but simply the fine art of using "stuff" that others have offered for free as a basis upon which to build. 

Over the years I have used magazine articles and sample applications distributed at Lotusphere and various other development conferences as building blocks for interesting new features in my applications.  But then Al Gore invented the internet and the possibilities are now pretty much unlimited.  There is  Open.NTF, of course, and  Jake Howlett's Codestore, as well as what we used to call the Iris Sandbox  (which has become not so great since it was taken over by Big Blue).  There are any number of blogs written by really clever folks in the Domino community where the authors freely provide code samples and example Domino applications, often with detailed explanations on how to incorporate the ideas into your own applications.  In addition, there is just a ton of really useful "stuff" out there in the general (i.e., not specifically Notes/Domino-related) open-source community. 

It is my hope that I can use this blog over the coming weeks and months to share some of the information I have gathered (as well as suggestions on where to find more of it) with other developers as a way to give back to the community that has been so helpful to me over the years.  I hope you'll come back and visit again soon!