OpenNTF May 2021 Webinar: recent Mindoo ToDoManager changes for Notes 12
Karsten Lehmann 20 May 2021 21:10:19
Today I took part in OpenNTF's May webinar on recent project updates. I presented the results of my efforts to leverage new functionality of the upcoming Notes 12 client to make our Mindoo ToDoManager application more responsive and adaptable to the available screen real estate.The application now autodetects the size of the Notes/Nomad client window on startup and picks the best application layout: you either see all four quadrants
or the mobile optimized narrow layout with a single quadrant at a time:
Notes 12 provides two new @formulas @ResolutionWidth / @ResolutionHeight to read the dimension of the current UI form or UI view.
And you get a new form/view event "onsize" that gets triggered on window resize. Enter the formula @Command([RelayoutWindow]) here and your layout gets recomputed when the window is resized by the user, e.g. hide/when or subform formulas that depend on the form dimension might produce a different output.
To be honest I was fighting a bit to get this new functionality to work reliable in the latest R12 beta 3 client. The TodoManager proves that responsive layouts for Notes applications are indeed possible.
But I reported a bunch of issues in the beta program that hopefully get fixed until the final R12 release to make this easier to use.
E.g. my Designer installation does not save the code that I enter in the "onsize" event. And the resolution formulas often seem to be computed too early, e.g. you still get UI view dimensions back after you have opened a doc in a view.
While I was updating the OpenNTF project download with the latest version, I also added some documentation and references on the project summary page. I highly recommend watching the two videos that are linked in the text if you haven't done already. They were recorded in 2007, but are still very inspiring.
Anyway, I hope you like the new version. Here is the updated project description:
Four Quadrant Theory
The TodoManager is based on Covey's Four Quadrant theory that is described in this article:
Time management strategies for busy people using the 4-quadrant method
It provides a graphical concept of todo management where you place your todos in a 2x2matrix of four quadrants. By doing that you decide whether your topic is important/ not important and due soon/ not due soon.
Following the order of the quadrants is key to organizing your life:
Start with quadrant 1 (important/ due soon), continue with 2 (important/ not due soon), 3 (not important/ due soon) and end with todos in quadrant 4 (not important/ not due soon). In each quadrant, pick the ugliest task first.
I got to know Covey's theory when I was watching Randy Pausch's Last Lecture and his Lecture about Time Management. Both recordings are highly recommended to put your daily struggles and project deadlines into perspective:
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium, months before he died from pancreatic cancer and reflects on how much he achieved his childhood dreams.
Usage
Use the “+” icon to create new todos and decide in which quadrant (=Notes folder) it should be moved on first save.
Use drag and drop or context menu actions to move your tasks between quadrants (numbers “1”, “2”, “3”, “4” are drop targets) or into the recycle bin.
Responsive UI
The TodoManager application has a responsive user interface that works on desktop Notes Client, HCL Nomad clients on tablets/phones and even the new Nomad web client. By providing two different application layouts it adapts to the available screen real estate: one layout that displays all 4 quadrants at once and a second one where you only see a single quadrant and have hotspots to change quadrants in the top navigation.
On Notes 12 we leverage new @formulas to query the current window dimension while still being backward compatible with older Notes Client versions. That means that even in the desktop Notes Client you get a different user experience when the client window width is not very wide. The window size is detected on application startup.
Installation
Just copy the provided application template to your server, sign it and create a new database instance. Then give yourself editor access in the ACL and all others no access.
There are currently no background agents to enable.
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