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This is an XPage...

11/18/2010 08:55 AM by Chris Toohey


<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC 
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> 

<html lang="en"> 

<head> 

<title></title> 

</head> 

<body> 

Hello World!</body> 

</html>

With a custom Theme, RAD-generated Form suppression via a dropdown, and a single line of text in the xsp.properties, I now have complete control over my IBM Lotus Notes Domino XPage... and thus I have complete control over my apps. +1 for the future of the platform!

And here's the how-to:

Step 1: Custom Theme

Create a new theme. I called it custom, but the name doesn't really matter.

Since you don't want to include the webstandard Stylesheets, you'll remove the extends="webstandard" attributes from the Theme, and save what is basically a blank Theme.
Step 2: Using the Custom Theme

From the Application Properties (in the XPages Tab), you'll set the custom Theme... which is now available via the Theme: dropdown/combobox.
Step 3: Killing Dojo

I'm not a huge fan of Dojo. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for RAD, but it can be overkill sometimes... so I tend to kill it.

Add the following line to the xsp.properties of your NotesDatabase (available from the Package Explorer):

xsp.client.script.libraries=none

(Note: You could have skipped step two and added the following line directly to the xsp.properties to define the Theme: xsp.theme=custom.theme.
Step 4: Creating your no-Form XPage

This one is simple, and can be done from either the Properties or the Source Panes.
- Properties
  
  From the All Properties section of the XPage Properties, find the Basics\createForm Property and set it to false.
- Source
  
  From the Source Pane, add the createForm="false" Attribute to the xp:view Node.
Step 5: Hello World!

Here's my oh-so-amazing XPage markup, so show you that there's no trickery involved:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xp:view xmlns:xp="http://www.ibm.com/xsp/core" createForm="false"> Hello World! </xp:view>

Pretty simply, huh? With 5 (rather verbose) Steps, you can do in XPages what you could only do previously with unsupported hacks: have absolute and complete control over your NotesDatabase applications!

About the author: Chris Toohey

Thought Leadership, Web & Mobile Application Development, Solutions Integration, Technical Writing & Mentoring

A published developer and webmaster of dominoGuru.com, Chris Toohey specializes in platform application development, solutions integration, and evangelism of platform capabilities and best practices.