Allow selections not in list (for the web)

One of the neat options with drop down selections in Notes, is the ability to let people type an option that is not in the list. This helps build dynamic lists.

Here is some javascript to use to get this working on the web:


function changed(el, cmp, pmt){
if(el.options[el.selectedIndex].value==cmp) {addoption(el, pmt);}
}
function addoption(el, pmt){
var txt=prompt(pmt,'');
if(txt==null) {return;}
var o=new Option( txt, txt, false, true);
el.options[el.options.length]=o;
}


You can either put this in an included javascript file or wrap it directly inline.

Then you can call it using the onchange event for your selection field:

onchange="changed(this, 'New Group', 'Please enter new group:')"

Where "New Group" is the text you want to trigger the prompt for the text and "Please enter new group" is the prompt you want to display.

QuickPlace 8/Quickr Screenshots

Satwik has posted a blog entry with a link to the Quickr screenshots. These were shown at LotusSphere 2007 and should be available mid year as part of the product. It looks really nice and will allow people to do a lot more within a Quickr.
PDF link with screenshots

QuickPlace Clustering over a Wide Area

I have started to experiment with wide area clustering of QuickPlace 7.0. In QuickPlace 8, it will use more Web 2.0 technologies and libraries such as Dojo. The impact of this will mean the QuickPlaces will become more chatty (more smaller and lighter requests). As a result, any latency issues might become more noticeable. To make the most of this, having your QuickPlace server as close as possible, will make the place much faster.
Once I can sort out any clustering issues, the next stage is to use directional dns from Neustar. This will direct the user to the closest server to the users location. For Australian users, this will be Sydney (latency of 20ms instead of the current 300ms), West Coast USA will be San Francisco (10ms instead of 80ms) and East Coast will keep hitting our main servers in Somerville, MA (10ms or less from New York). So far the Australian server is keeping up with the load and the West Coast should be online soon. I hope to have the world wide cluster working before LotusSphere 2007.