Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Hi everyone again!

Before today the site in our company used a “build-in” functionality of notes’s web access - just a collection of framesets, pages, views through java applets/html. Of course, it looks very-very ugly and primitive.

But now it’s time to make a better looking thing. My question is: what tools are needed to make a better-looking site - like this? We want to use Notes/Domino as a “document control panel”, and use anything else (maybe Notes itself?) to generate a good-looking corporate web site.

Any advice?

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Subject: Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

you can try with CSS … Cascade Style Sheets on the web to improve the look n feel. use Dream Weaver MX.

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Subject: Re:Re:Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

…the main 2 problems I see are:

  1. how to integrate all the cool web features (Css and so on) with Domino server?

  2. what (Notes/other)tools to use to completely hide/change the ugly native Notes web-look and feel.

For example - This forum/date(threaded) view - it doesn’t look like a simple notes view opened in a browser. How it is “tuned”?

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Subject: RE: Re:Re:Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

There is a lot to learn I’m afraid. Try www.codestore.net for some tips but I’m not sure if this site will help if you are a total beginner. Try downloading some of the sandbox demo databases for tips and studying how they have been put together (the ones that don’t use native notes methods that it)

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Subject: RE: Re:Re:Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

  1. Are there examples of sites COMPLETELY made by notes built-in tools?

  2. Sand box - I’ll see, thanks!

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Subject: RE: Re:Re:Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

I think that this site is pure Domino. This is too (until you get to the shopping cart, anyway):

http://www.sybex.com

There’s a lot you can do with Domino alone with judicious use of CSS, embedded views, $$ViewTemplate and $$Search forms, and pass-thru HTML.

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Subject: RE: Re:Re:Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

A list of Domino sites:

http://domino.siteatlas.com

There are a LOT of good-looking web sites built completely with Designer and Notes (okay, SiteAtlas itself may not be one of the good-looking ones, but it does list many of them), but you really need to know what HTML and CSS are all about. The only way around that is to use something like Dreamweaver (or any similar WYSIWYG HTML editor) and adapt its output back into Designer. None of these tools are REQUIRED for good web design; they just make the process a bit easier. All you need (in addition to Designer) is a text editor (Notepad will do if you have nothing else) to create proper CSS files and an image editor of some sort to create your graphics. The better you are with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the better your site can be.

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Subject: Thanks, Stan!

…an everyone who answered!

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Subject: Newbie: customizing views/docs look and feel in web - alike THIS FORUM.

Hi there,

The sandbox is the best bet for some nice templates and code. You can download the template used for this forum:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/sandbox.nsf/Search?SearchView&Query=forum&SearchOrder=1&SearchMax=0&SearchWV=FALSE&SearchFuzzy=FALSE&Start=1&Count=10

Also try http://www.openntf.org for some cool templates/code.

HTH

Craig