BoFrede™ - Home

Blog migrated to Mephisto

2009-11-27T20:16:00Z

This site has been migrated from a home brewed CMS on Lotus Domino, to an open source blogging application called Mephisto, made with Ruby-on-Rails.

Now this blog has had a serious upgrade.

PreviouslyNowApplication:Application framework:Application server:Markup:Compression:Design:

A home brewed CMS	Mephisto
None	Ruby-on-Rails
Lotus Domino	Passenger (mod_rails) for Apache
Invalid HTML 4.01 transitional	Valid XHTML 1.0 strict
None	Gzip
I had no idea what I was doing.	I ported a WordPress template, originally made by Andreas Viklund.

The result

It looks better, in every aspect. Better design, better code.

Search Notes/Domino forums from Mozilla Firefox and IE7.

2008-11-30T20:26:00Z

OpenSearch plug-ins for Firefox 2+ and IE7+.

IE 7 and Firefox have a search bar in the upper right corner, and now you can use it to search IBM's Notes/Domino forums.

I wrote these search plug-ins, and you can install them by clicking on the lit arrow next to the search field, in your browsers upper right corner.

Stop framing me!

2008-07-17T11:36:00Z

Using the Firefox extension GreaseMonkey, to unframe websites framed in a single frame. And another user script for removing target="_blank".

I am so tired of websites where the browsers address line doesn't change when I click a link. The most annoying thing is when the site lives in a one-frame frameset.

To solve this problem I have made a GreaseMonkey user script called: "Unframe single frame".

I am also tired of new windows, that some random webmaster have chosen to open for me, by putting a target="_blank" on a link. To avoid that I use the GreaseMonkey user script: "_blank must die".

I am the user/consumer. I am in control.

Change Domino's DOCTYPE

2004-12-07T12:00:00Z

One step closer to standard compliance for the Domino web engine.

What

The Domino HTTP task automatically writes the doctype, as the first line in the html code. IBM has released Domino 6.5.3 with an interesting fix for web developers. It is now possible to add a system url to the doctype of the html generated by Domino.

Why

When a system url is added to the doctype, the newer browsers switches into standard compliance mode. This feature makes a big difference in how newer browsers renders web pages. Newer browsers are MSIE 6+ and Gecko based browsers, like Mozilla Seamonkey and Mozilla Firefox. It may also include Safari that uses the WebKit engine, and Konqueror that uses the KHTML engine.

Another issue is the calculation of relative sizes, like width:100%. In the CSS2 standard it is relative to the parent element, but in old browsers it is calculated relative to the view port (window).

How

Upgrade Domino to at least version 6.5.3 and set the DominoCompleteDoctype environment variable in notes.ini. It has 3 different values:

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

A value of zero is the default/old behavior, with all the problems that creates. At first I thought 2 (strict) was the way to go, but Domino still generates old-school html, that does not validate as html 4.01 strict. So I ended up using 1 (transitional).

Gotcha's

When the browser is in standard compliance mode, the css selectors become case-sensitive.

Example html:

<div id="container">
...
</div>

This css selector does not work:

#Container {...}

This css selector works:

#container {...}

In Gecko based browsers, the Content-Type of the CSS become important. The CSS will be ignored if the Content-Type is not text/css. I use a page (Notes design element) for CSS style sheets.

The bad news is that DominoCompleteDoctype is a server wide setting, that will affect all the websites hosted on that Domino partition. So you will either need to test and adjust all your sites at ones, or divide your server into two partitions.

Update - the good news

As of Domino 7.0.2 there is a new field that allows you to set the doctype on a form basis. Just add a computed for display field called $$HTMLFrontMatter, with this formula:

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

Apache in front of Domino

2004-08-30T12:00:00Z

Make a flexible web server setup.

What

This is a configuration example of how to configure Apache and Domino to work together. On one computer with one IP address, and all the users sees, run from port 80.

Why

There are a number of situations, where you would want to run several web application servers on the same IP address, all on port 80.

If you only have one public IP address.
You want to run in a mixed environment, like Domino, Ruby on Rails, JSP, PHP, ASP and other server side code.
An SSL certificate is for a specific host name.

You may also want to take advantage of some of Apache's advanced configuration features.

How

Configure Domino to listen on port 81

Edit the server document in the Domino directory:

Change the field labeled "TCP/IP port number" to 81, or any other available port you like.

Configure Apache's rewrite module

In httpd.conf we find most of the Apache's configuration.
First we need to load some modules:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so

Allow access to Domino's icon and java directories:

<Directory "/local/notesdata/domino/icons">
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

<Directory "/local/notesdata/domino/java">
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Alias /icons/ "/local/notesdata/domino/icons/"
Alias /domjava/ "/local/notesdata/domino/java/"

Remember to remove the alias to Apache's icons or create an icons alias inside a virtual host.

Then we need to configure a virtual host:

<VirtualHost 192.168.1.3>
    DocumentRoot /somedir/bofrede.com
    ServerName www.bofrede.com
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteRule ^/$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/bofrede/en.nsf [P]
        RewriteRule ^/en/(.*)$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/bofrede/en.nsf/$1 [P]
        RewriteRule ^/(.+)\.nsf(.*)$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/$1.nsf$2 [P]
        RewriteRule ^/\$Preferences.nsf(.*)$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/\$Preferences.nsf$1 [P]
        RewriteRule ^/servlet/(.+)$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/servlet/$1 [P]
        RewriteRule ^/diiop_ior.txt$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/diiop_ior.txt [P]
        RewriteRule ^/dwagss.jar$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/dwagss.jar [P]
        RewriteRule ^/dwa8W.cab$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/dwa8W.cab [P]
        RewriteRule ^/robots.txt$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/bofrede/en.nsf/robots.txt [P]
        RewriteRule ^(.*)/favicon.ico$ http://%{SERVER_NAME}:81/bofrede/en.nsf/favicon.ico [P]
        ProxyPassReverse / http://www.bofrede.com:81/
    </IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

The "big discovery" here is the ProxyPassReverse directive, that fixes the url's in Domino's http response header. This is what makes redirects work. Redirects occur i.e. at form submission, when the url in $$Return is sent to the browser. Without ProxyPassReverse the browser would be redirected to some url at port 81.

BoFrede™ - Home

Blog migrated to Mephisto

The result

Search Notes/Domino forums from Mozilla Firefox and IE7.

Related links

Stop framing me!

Change Domino's DOCTYPE

What

Why

How

Gotcha's

Update - the good news

Related links

Apache in front of Domino

What

Why

How

Configure Domino to listen on port 81

Configure Apache's rewrite module

Related links