Fri 5 Apr 2002's Blog

A few years ago I was given the task of spending a few weeks with a VB/Access developer and coaching him while he got to grips with Notes/Domino. It's never easy trying to justify some of Notes "finer" points but I must have made a good start as he now has his own Domino site and has been listed in Internet Magazine. They gave him 4/5 for design & 5/5 for content. Well done Gary.

Here's his page for my home team. Come on you Stags...

I'm still trying to convince him that disabling the right-click event using JavaScript is a serious crime against usability. Not only that but all a user needs to do is type this in to the address bar to get past it:

Try it here (IE USers): Turn ON no-right-click then try right-clicking this page and then Turn OFF no-right-click Et voila...

You can pretty much do anything in JavaScript to get round most of the "security" that is implemented in JavaScript. For example changing the value of fields that are made to look "computed" by removing their borders and giving them an attribute of "readonly". Like the field below. It is a field, honest:

You can edit the "computed" field with JavaScript still: . I rest my case...

Update: I've just been to buy said copy of the magazine and found the following quote in their write-up on the site

Unsurprisingly for such a large and complex site , FanZone is database-driven. But rather than using a widely supported language such as PHP or ASP, Gary's used Lotus Domino. This is unusual for a site like this, since Domino is expensive, and so is the hosting to support it. Gary used a US-based host as it's cheaper than a UK-based one. Domino is used mainly for high-end corporate applications and is impractical for most amateur Web developers.

I agree with a couple of his points but most of it is simply the way people without much experience of Domino tend to see it. Why should hosting support for Domino be dearer than ASP or PHP? There is no reason a US based host would be cheaper than a UK one - it just happens to be that way. I agree with his last point though. I'd go as far as to say it's impractical for professional Web developers ;-) I've got the reviewer's email address if anybody wants to put him right...