I’ve been using the 8.5 Gold Designer on Eclipse for a few weeks now. A few observations/queries:
The About This Database/Using This Database document:
In previous versions of Domino, a design refresh may not update the documents, because by default they have ‘Prohibit Design Refresh’ ticked and you have to have some content. So to resolve this I would go into designer and make sure prohibit was not ticked. But there does not seem to be any way to do this in DDE. Does this mean About Documents can no longer be prohibited, and what about pre-8.5 databases? How can I get to the prohibit property?
If I add a form, view etc. or change its name, the design element apears at the bottom of the list. I can refresh the list in the Applications pane to re-sort it. There does not seem to be a way to do this in the main window. I can sort it on name, but if I go to Views, back to Forms, it loses the sort. So my new form appears back at the bottom. Very frustrating!
Copy and Paste for design elements is rather awkward. It appears I need to select a design element, press Ctrl + C, select a different design element, then press Ctrl + V.
I got used to Alt + F, T, F being the new shortcut for refreshing design in Notes 8.x client. It’s a bit annoying that the same key-sequence in DDE switches to the Notes Client. Alt + F, A, F Equally Alt + O, D is the new shortcut in Notes 8.x client for switching on debug LotusScript, but in DDE this it’s Alt O, Enter (because Alt + O, D is used for Debug LotusScript AND DXL Utilities. Presumably this was because the Notes Client was developed for R8 before getting as far as shortcuts for DDE. But as well as being important for accessibility reasons, keyboard shortcuts are a lot quicker than reaching for the mouse and clicking a couple of times. So it would be useful if they were consistent and unique.
I have a number of customers and a number of groups of applications. Working sets seems the way to manage these. However, I can only see a maximum of 5 working sets via the drop-down, so if I want to switch I have to go to the ‘Manage Working Sets’ window and select/deselect the ones I want. Is there any way to increase the working sets - I cannot find anything in the Help or the preferences.
And with working sets, a couple of defaults it would be useful to turn off. If I want to check code in another database while I have a working set open, why does it add the database I open to the working set? This would not be a problem, if when I removed the database, it only removed the database from the current working set, not ALL working sets. So I have to open another working set.
When I remove an application from the working set, there is an option to delete from disk. Is there any way to turn this off? I very rarely wish to delete a database from the disk, I’ve never wanted to delete a database from Designer client. This seems geared to designing in an environment where the application/code cannot or cannot easily be accessed via any other method than the designer IDE. This isn’t the case with Domino.
With the Help, I echo the posts from others about Index. This was the main method of access for me pre-8.5. I’m not sure what the index in 8.5 Designer Help is indexed on, but after a few times of never being able to find what I want, I’ve never used it.
There are improvements, such as the HTML editor. I hope to see further improvements as it gets used more and more.