Gradient effect in Lotus Notes Client and Web applications

Creating Gradient effect in Lotus Notes client is very easy. You just have to go to create a table in the form/page. Then in the Table Properties > in the Table/Cell Background tab you select Cell color. Then you select the type of style and choose the colors for the gradient. And your table cells are ready with the gradient effect.

However, this gradient effect is not visible in web. Thus, you have to find some other way to color the cells with gradient effect.

I have found one way which I have used in my earlier web-based projects. I got that from the Microsoft website. Now, of course they don't use that feature any more, I guess. However, they have left a beautiful one-liner for us.

Here's the code:

Here the startColorStr and endColorStr describe themselves what they do. You have to just choose your color code in hex decimal code.

You can check the hex codes in any tool used for photograph editing. Or you can get the code from some of the websites which generate hex code for the color you choose. One such website is: http://www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html

Now, about the gradientType; this value can be set to "0" or "1".

1 would give you a horizontal gradient i.e. the start color would be in the left and the end color would be in the right .

0 would give you a vertical gradient i.e. the start color would be at the top and end color would be at the bottom.

You can implement this code as HTML code in your form. Or, if you have drawn a table and you want apply the gradient effect then you can use this in the table properties. All you have to do is go to the Table Properties > Table Programming tab and in the Cell HTML Tags > Style field add the following code:

filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(startColorStr='#FFFFFF', endColorStr='#98B2E6', gradientType='0')

Thus, when you preview your application in web the cells would show the gradient effect.

If there are any other way of using gradient effect in forms, then please do let me know.

Field is too large - 01

Problem Description

Error Encountered: “Field is too large (32K) or View’s column & selection formulas are too large”

Problem Scenario:

You have recently deployed some of your changes and suddenly every document gets locked. You can’t edit any existing documents or save a new document. When you close or open any document you get the following error:

You can’t do anything with the database. You check in your test copy and everything works perfectly fine there. You check the production copy’s data size and it is not too much to trigger the error. This error doesn’t let anyone to make any changes to the database.

Problem Solution

Solution:

Step 1: Find out the Form name from the document properties which when opened/edited/saved/closed throws the error.

Step 2: Find out how many hidden Text fields are present in the Form/Subform that you found out in the Step 1. These hidden fields usually have some look up code which is used in the other Listbox field of the form. Some time these Text fields if are doing look up of more than it’s maximum limit i.e. 32K then it would throw the exception that field too large.

Step 3: Now, you have to find out which are the field(s) that have the look up code in their Default Value option. E.g. say field name is schMainCompList and the lookup formula used is:

LookupList:= @Unique(@Trim(@DbColumn("":"nocache"; ""; "LUCSCEntityName"; 1)));
@If(@IsError(LookupList) | LookupList = "“; "“; LookupList : schMainCompExtra)

Every time the document is opened/edited/saved/closed the field does a lookup as the form is getting refreshed; thus triggering the error.

Step 4: Change the code to the following:


@If( @IsNewDoc | @IsDocBeingEdited;
               @Do(LookupList:= @Unique(@Trim(@DbColumn;"":"nocache"; ""; "LUCSCEntityName"; 1)));
               @If(@IsError(LookupList) | LookupList = ""; ""; LookupList : schMainCompExtra));
"")

Now this would let the field to do the look up only when the edited and not when they are opened/saved/closed.

Step 5: Now, change the field type to Listbox and check the option Allow multiple values as shown below.

Step 6: Sometime, making the code change till Step 5 resolves the issue. But the issue may still re-occur after some other time. May be this time with some other form name but with the same subform, may be. Thus, to avoid this issue further, add the @DbLookup(…) code to the Formula Window of the field properties:

This completely resolves the issue of 32K exception triggered by the hidden text fields.

In short: Check if Text field > Change to Listbox > Place the @DbLookup code in Formula Window > Use proper validation.