Notes Development Tools I can’t live without
Posted by Theo Heselmans on July 5th, 2007
There's some tools I can't live without when doing Notes development. Some of them are free, some of them are quite expensive, but the ROI is very high.
Here's what I like:
a) Pure Notes development
: ScanEZ is an incredible useful tool from Ytria. It allow you to examine almost every aspect of your database, selected document(s), profile docs, notes.ini, replication history and conflicts,.... I really use it a lot, and it saves me heaps of time. Not only can I look at the innards of all of the notes (docs & design elements), but I can change them as well. The guys at Ytria also update their stuff regularly, but they give great support too. Give them a try, as they got a free evaluation period, and a free 'look only' version. They got other interesting utilities too, but their ROI is not nearly enough for me. ScanEZ is not cheap, but worth your while.
: NotesHound is a tool I recently discovered thanks to a link on the blog of Kevin Pettitt (the Lotus Guru). It's a multipurpose tool that allows you e.g. to update view and form-information (select-formulas, view and form properties, actionbar properties,...), a script sorter !, a general find and replace, and a lot more. Incredible stuff, for a modest price (Ytria has some of these tools too, but way more expensive). Ken, a Swedish-Australian-Englishmen, gives incredible support, and his upcoming version will be a beauty !
- Edit Document Fields by Chad Schelfhout is a powerful smarticon formula, that allow you to change fields on selected documents. Easy to use, extremely helpful, and free. Use it !
b) Domino/Web development using FireFox
there are some tools you just got to have:
- Web-Developer Toolbar: Chris Pederick has done a great job. It's really a free web-development tool I use almost daily.
- Firebug: another wonderful and free tool to inspect design elements and more. Joe Hewitt is a wizard !
- Many more, but these are the most important
c) Domino/Web development using IE
- The IE developer toolbar: does most of the stuff the Firefox developer toolbar does (some of them better, most of them a bit less powerful). But a must-have anyway.
- Debug Bar: Free for personal use, and extremely great tool. Just discovered it, and I'm sure I only figured out the tip of the iceberg.
BTW. I'm NOT sponsered to say all those nice things about them ;-)
Is there a tool you use a lot, and I should add to my repertoire ?
Let me know.
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Comments (12)
You want to look at Teamstudio. I found them quite valuable. Especially CIAO's (Version Control) release propagation mechanism and Configurator's global search and replace are very valuable.
I also use the Oxygen XML editor. Once you get into DXL you need a decent XSLT debugger. Oxygen does that and runs also inside Eclipse.
Eclipse is also a must have (Domino Designer is moving there anyway). You can start using the HTML and CSS editor as well as embedded Oxygen. I like the Aptarna JavaScript plug-in that helps you with all the eye candy (a.k.a Ajax).
For Firefox I have 3 more plug-ins: the XML Toolbar (for quick translations), LORI (a little tool that tells you how long it took and how big the transfer was) and X-Ray (shows the page with the HTML tags visible).
Also nice: ScreenGrab for Screen shots and Sellenium for Unit Testing.
:-) stw
Teamstudio is nice, but pretty expensive for a one-man-band ! The find and replace of NotesHound does all I need.
I'm not into Notes 8 (yet), but I'll certainly keep your tips in mind.
Downloaded LORI. Looks like a nice addition. I did have X-Ray, but don't use it a lot (I should say enough).
I've been using 'Gadwin PrintScreen' for years.
Tx for your feedback Stephan.
One tool I can't life without is the GhostTyper.
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You can define code snippets and parameters to be replaced in the code. The GhostTyper could be directly used from the Domino Designer.
And the GhostTyper is ShareWare which is nice.
I have a sample in our blog:
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Glad you like the tool. The GhostTyper looks like a nice tool also.
Script Browser: { Link }
and ActionCheck, a small utility designed to tell you which actions are not compiled.
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Both tools are freeware!
Notes Design Searcher { Link }
Have to deal often with JavaAgents, so: Domiclipse { Link } (Open Source)
Good list, and I agree (although I could never get the developer toolbar in IE to actually show up. Odd).
The Teamstudio suite is fantastic—I love CIAO!, Analyzer, Snapper and Configurator especially—but I agree, not really viable for a one man band.
Great list. However, I have to disagree with the "one man band" comments. I am a "one man band", and I love the Teamstudio tools. Lone developers still need auto-save (Snapper), performance-testing (Profiler), code snippets, design comparison (Delta), drag and drop for design elements (Design Manager), and auto-reviews for standards violations (Analyzer).
Theo, I see that NotesHound is now hosted by Prominic (not the URL given above). It's now at { Link }
Not to forget various tools from OpenNTF. For example, I use the Document Viewer quite a bit, and the Profile Document Manager sometimes.
This is such a nice post..I truly deeply agree on it. :) there are some times that i cant do my work when my tools are not complete.