July 3rd, 2008
Yes, You Can Run Second Life inside Lotus Notes! (or any other Win32 app)
There has been a lot of hype in the Lotus community as of late about the upcoming capabilities of Domino XPages. What follows is always "But what about new features for the Notes client?" In my opinion Composite Applications for the Notes 8 client are one of the coolest things we've ever done, but I'm disappointed that they are not talked about all that much.
Here are four videos showing examples of composite applications:
- IBM Lotus Notes 8 - banking composite application - Part 1
- IBM Lotus Notes 8 - banking composite application - Part 2
- Lotus Notes 8 Composite Application Capability: Lead Manager
- Lotus Notes 8 Smart Assist Composite Application Demo
Last year Lotus released a library of 22 components that developers can use to make composite applications in Lotus Notes 8.
Lotus plans on releasing a big update to that library very soon, and you can have a sneak peak!
A few of the things that the first sneak peak mentions are:
- Update Site and Documentation Site are now separate.
- A lot more than 22 components, and you can install features at a lower level of granularity.
- Includes new components not just for composite applications, but also for the sidebar, and menu extensions.
At 2:40, notice the Export View As Spreadsheet! I want to try that one.
In the second sneak peak you are shown how to run a Win32 component inside Lotus Notes as part of a composite application. The example used is Second Life!
So if you are a Lotus developer, take a look into Composite Applications. Here are some key resources:
- Lotus Notes component development in Composite Applications Wiki
- IBM Lotus Notes composite Application blog
- IBM Lotus Notes composite application podcast series
- Designing composite applications: IBM Lotus Notes components
- Developing composite applications: Composite application assembly, part 1
