The Domino Designer Application and Design Environment

Although there are numerous ways to open the Domino Designer, the easiest is to select a database and right-click it, which displays a pop-up menu. Select Open in Designer, which opens the Domino Designer shown earlier in Figure 12.1.

There are two basic “panes” within the Domino Designer window: the Design Pane and the Work Pane. The Design Pane maintains a list of databases that have recently been opened in the Designer, as well as a list of the design elements they contain. You can click the type of design element on which you want to work, and the Designer displays a list of those elements in the Work Pane.

The Work Pane displays a list of design elements of a given type, such as forms, views, or agents, within the selected database. A developer can then double-click the design element to open it, which then modifies the display of the Designer, as shown in Figure 12.2.

Opening a design element such as an agent makes Designer split the window into three panes. The Design Pane remains on the left side of the screen, providing quick and easy navigation between elements and databases, while the Work Pane is displayed at the top of the screen and is joined by the Programmer's Pane displayed at the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 12.2. The design element opened is displayed in the Work Pane and developers can modify user interface elements of the selected element, such as adding fields to a form, or modifying the columns within a view.

The Programmer's Pane at the bottom is used to enter programming code and provides a plethora of handy features that will simplify and speed your development efforts.

Automatically Enable Option Declare

The bane of all experienced LotusScript programmers is the use of implicitly declared variables, which are variables that are not formally declared in the code before they are used. The LotusScript language enables developers to manually specify that all variables be formally declared before they are used (explicit declaration) through the use of the Option Declare statement in the Options section. Designer 6 now enables you to automatically insert the Option Declare statement in the Options section, ensuring that developers must explicitly declare their variables, which is a good idea because it ensures cleaner, more maintainable code.

To enable this option, open an element coded in LotusScript and follow these steps:

1.	Right-click in the Programmer's Pane and choose Programmer's Pane Properties from the menu, which opens the Programmer's Pane Properties dialog box.
2.	Click the Format tab (second tab) to access the Format options, shown in Figure 12.3. Figure 12.3. The Format tab's options.
3.	Click the Automatically Add “Option Declare” check box in the Options section.

Using the Programmer's Pane Auto-complete

Auto-complete is a very handy new feature of Domino 6 that uses type-ahead functionality to select and paste certain syntax elements directly into the Programmer's Pane as you are coding. If the syntax element that you have selected takes parameters, the valid parameters are displayed in the pop-up to help guide you as you code.

Auto-completion is available when coding the following:

• @Commands

• @Functions

• LotusScript classes

Using the Auto-complete with @Functions

Auto-complete is a handy new tool that can aid developers using @Functions to code formulas. An @Function is a native function that can perform a calculation or task and return a value. To use Auto-complete when coding @Functions in the Programmer's Pane, follow these steps.

1.	Enter the “at” symbol (@) and pause momentarily to launch the Auto-complete pop-up, which displays a list of all available choices, as shown in Figure 12.4. Figure 12.4. The very handy @Function Auto-complete list. [View full size image]
2.	Begin typing the name of a function (type-ahead) or scroll through the list and select the appropriate function. For example: @Left(
3.	After you have located the functions, press Enter to paste the function into the Programmer's Pane and close the pop-up list.
4.	Optionally, for functions that take parameters, type a left parenthesis “(“ to launch a pop-up containing the syntax of the first signature. The first valid parameter appears bolded. If up and down arrows display, they indicate that you can press the up and down arrow keys to display the various options.
5.	Optionally, if the function takes multiple parameters, enter a semicolon ( ; ) between each parameter, and the next parameter appears bolded.
6.	Enter a right parenthesis “)” to complete the function, or press Esc to close the pop-up.

Using Auto-complete with @Commands

Auto-complete can also help developers using @Commands to code formulas. @Commands are a special type of @Function that provide a mechanism for developers to programmatically execute a Lotus Notes/Domino command. To use Auto-complete when coding @Commands in the Programmer's Pane, follow these steps:

1.	Enter the “at” symbol (@) and pause momentarily to launch the Auto-complete pop-up, which displays a list of all available choices, as shown in Figure 12.5. Figure 12.5. The @Command Auto-complete list. [View full size image]
2.	Begin typing Command (type-ahead) or scroll through the list and select @Command, which then displays a list of valid commands. For example: @Command(
3.	Begin typing the name of the desired command (type-ahead) or scroll through the list and select the appropriate command. After a command is selected, square brackets ([ ]) are added automatically. For example: @Command([AddBookmark])
4.	Optionally, for commands that take parameters, type a left parenthesis “(“ to launch a pop-up containing the syntax of the first signature. The first valid parameter appears bolded. If up and down arrows display, they indicate that you can press the up and down arrow keys to display the various options.
5.	Optionally, if the command takes multiple parameters, enter a semicolon ( ; ) between each parameter, and the next parameter appears bolded.
6.	Enter a right parenthesis “)” to complete the command, or press Esc to close the pop-up.

Using Auto-complete with LotusScript

With LotusScript, follow these steps to use Auto-complete when coding @Commands in the Programmer's Pane:

1.	Declare an object and enter a space following the As keyword to open a pop-up list of available classes, as shown in Figure 12.6. Figure 12.6. Type the As keyword and enter a space to open this pop-up list. [View full size image]
2.	Begin typing the name of a valid object, or scroll through the list and select the appropriate object.
3.	Optionally, enter a period (.) after an object name, which opens a pop-up of methods and properties.
4.	Optionally, from the pop-up list of methods and properties, either type ahead to select the desired element or scroll through the list and select it. Press Enter to paste the element into the Programmer's Pane.
5.	Optionally, for methods that take parameters, type a left parenthesis “(“ to display a pop-up box displaying the parameter list. The first parameter appears bolded.
6.	Optionally, enter a comma (,) between each parameter, which makes the next parameter bolded.
7.	Enter a right parenthesis “)” or press Esc to close the pop-up.

Using Find and Replace in the Programmer's Pane

Another very useful feature of the Programmer's Pane is the Find and Replace capability it provides. In a nutshell, Find and Replace works much like the Windows find and replace tools: It enables you to quickly and easily find text in your code and optionally replace it. Using Find and Replace is quite simple. In the Programmer's Pane press Ctrl+F or choose Edit, Find/Replace from the menu, either of which opens the Find and Replace dialog box, as shown in Figure 12.7.

Using Find and Replace is pretty straightforward. Enter the text string to find in the Find box, or select a previous entry in the dropdown (it conveniently remembers previous searches) and choose the scope of the search in the Scope box. You have three choices for scope:

• Current Object— search all code within the current object

• Current Section Only— search only the current section of code

• All Objects— Search all code related objects in the current element

After you have entered the text to search for and selected the scope, click the Find Next button to initiate a search. You can then continue to click the Find Next button to find all the matching text strings. If you want to replace the text for which you are searching, simply enter a new text string in the Replace box and then click the Replace button to replace the current text, or click the Replace All button to replace all matching instances.

The Find and Replace dialog also has several advanced searching features that enable you to further refine and speed your searches. These options include:

• Case sensitive

• Accent sensitive

• Whole words

• Direction

• Wrap at start/end

Making Preferred Tools Available via the IDE

Another cool new feature in the Domino 6 Designer is the really cool capability to customize and extend the Tools menu in the Designer client. You can now include menu items that launch other commonly used applications such as a graphics editing tool or CSS editor, or you can write your own formulas to run. You can also create submenus under which you can group related tools. A customized Tools menu is shown in Figure 12.8, later in this section.

Additionally, when you add a new tool to the menu, you can define when the tool will be available so that the tool appears in the menu only when you need it. For example, you might want to keep your graphics editor available all the time, whereas the CSS editor menu option appears only when you are editing a form, page, or subform.

Adding a New Tool to the Tools Menu

Adding a new tool to the Tools menu is easy; just follow these steps:

1.	Select Tools, Add Tool from the menu in the Designer client, which opens the Add Tool dialog box, shown in Figure 12.8.
2.	Enter a descriptive name for the menu option in the Tool Name field. Make sure to use a name you'll recognize later as this is what will be displayed in the Tools menu.
3.	Choose Run Program or Run Formula for the Tool Action, based on these guidelines: To launch an external application from the menu, choose Run Program and then either enter the path for the executable file to launch, or click the file folder icon to browse the file system to select the executable. To run a custom coded formula, select Run Formula and enter a formula.
4.	In the Tool Context box, choose one or more contexts in which the new menu option should be displayed. To ensure that the tool is always displayed, choose Always; otherwise, select one or more contexts in which the menu item should be displayed.
5.	Click OK to save the tool and add the new option to the Tools menu.

Editing a Custom Tool

After you have added a custom tool, it appears in the Tools menu for the contexts you defined.

To edit an existing custom tool, follow these steps:

1.	Select Tools, Customize Tools from the menu, which opens the Customize Tools dialog box shown in Figure 12.9. Figure 12.9. The Customize Tools dialog box.
2.	Select the context that contains the tool to be modified and click the arrow beside it to expand the list of tools in that design context.
3.	Select the tool and click the Edit button to edit the name of the tool and/or the formula that it executes. Tools that launch an executable program actually use the @command([Execute]) command to run the executable.
4.	Click OK to save changes.

Deleting a Tool from the Tools Menu

To delete a tool from the Tools menu, follow these steps:

1.	Select Tools, Customize Tools from the menu, which opens the Customize Tools dialog box shown earlier in Figure 12.9.
2.	Select the context that contains the tool to be deleted and click the arrow beside it to expand the list of tools in that design context.
3.	Select the tool and click Cut to remove it.

Customizing the Tools Menu

To further enhance its usability, you can divide the Tools menu into logically grouped categories by sing submenus. Figure 12.10 shows my customized Tools menu.

To add a submenu to the Tools menu, follow these steps:

1.	Select Tools, Customize Tools from the menu, which opens the Customize Tools dialog box shown in Figure 12.10.
2.	Select the context in which the submenu should display and then click the Add Submenu button, which opens a prompt.
3.	Enter a name for the submenu in the Submenu name field and click OK.
4.	Position the submenu and its children within the selected context by using either drag and drop or the copy and paste buttons.