Genii Weblog


Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Wed 30 Nov 2005, 10:49 AM
If I go to http://www.lotus.com/lotusphere in Firefox, it redirects to http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/lotusphere and shows a completely blank page.  If I go there in Internet Explorer, it redirects to http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/events/govfor.nsf/wdocs/ls2006home, and show the Lotusphere page.  If I go to http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/events/govfor.nsf/wdocs/ls2006home directly in Firefox, it displays just fine.

What could be wrong with the redirect from  http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/lotusphere to http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/events/govfor.nsf/wdocs/ls2006home, and how could IBM leave this as a problem, given that lots of people who are interested in Lotusphere use Firefox, being the technologically savvy and Microsoft-bashing folks that they are.  I thought it was a fluke a week ago, but it is still the case today.  I guess I'll write to Rocky and ask if he can do something about it.

Problem resolved.  Not sure what the original problem was, as I tried on three machines and it failed on all last week, but whatever it was, it now works if I clear my cache.  Phew!  IBM has confirmed that the problem is resolved as well.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 29 Nov 2005, 11:08 PM
This year's browser statistics:

This year's browser stats

Last year's browser statistics:

This year's browser stats

The first item looks the same, but look at all Internet Explorer (this year, 58.6%; last year, 78.3%) and look at all Mozilla Firefox (this year, 31.9%; last year, 5%).  That is a pretty big shift for one year, even if it is a wildly unscientific sampling (people who hit the Genii Software website).

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 29 Nov 2005, 03:12 PM
A question has come up occasionally about how to make a web table look more like a Notes client table when using CoexEdit.  For example, the table below (shown as a bitmap):

Default Notes client view of table

looks like this, by default, on the web (also shown as bitmap):

Default web view of table

but with the addition of a simple configuration property, it can look like this in Firefox:

Inline JPEG image

and almost as good in Internet Explorer 6:

Newer web view of table

All that is required is to modify the $CoexProperties in both the FCKEditorSubform and NotesClientSubform (or whatever you use as equivalents) and change from

"CoexEditor='FCKEditor' "

to 

"CoexEditor='FCKEditor' CSSBorders='Yes' "

and new fields saved from either the web or from the Notes client will use the collapsed border look that appears more like Notes.

You may wonder why we don't set this as a default in CoexEdit, which we could and have discussed, but it does make setting CSS styles of your own a bit harder, and some web users would be more comfortable with the web like appearance, so we have left it up to the form designer to decide on his or her audience and their needs and desires.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Fri 25 Nov 2005, 04:19 PM
At the end of September, I wrote that I thought Google had a glitch, because it showed 90,900 hits for my name.  Popular, I may be, but not that popular.  Here was the screen shot from September 30, 2005:

September screenshot

and here is the same search for today:


November screenshot

In two months, the number of hits has gone up 30%, or 27100 hits.  Mind you, I have been posting on this blog for three years, and posting frequently on other sites including forums, for a decade.  What are the chances that my hits have gone up 30%?

But even if they had, what of the other people who responded to that thread?  Richard Schwartz has gone from 283,000 to 321,000.  Only 13%, but a whopping additional 38,000 hits.  Even Gary Roberts, who searched without quotes and got a sky high 13,200,000 hits, has moved up to 14,200,000, a whopping million additional pages.

Why do I care?  Why should you care?

Because Google is the font of all wisdom these days, the Walter Cronkite of this generation.  The computer is seen as Truth, and it is worth stepping back a bit and reminding ourselves that Google is not infallible.  More than reminding ourselves, it might be worth reminding our children, who may not have as much perspective on the fallibility of computers as we do.

By the way, Yahoo reports 46,700 for "Ben Langhinrichs", but only 45,300 for "ben langhinrichs".  It gives even different results for "Ben langhinrichs" and "ben Langhinrichs".  Google at least reports the same number for all of these, but again, there is a suggestion that we should not put too much faith in computers, which are, after all, designed, created and run by fallible people, and run on fallible machinery.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Fri 25 Nov 2005, 10:30 AM
After additional testing, a new version of CoexEdit 1.2 for AIX has been put on our website.  This version will work with Domino 5.x/6.x/6.5x/7.x on AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2 and is presumed to work on AIX 5.3, but has not been tested there.  See CoexEditDownload page for details.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

Wed 23 Nov 2005, 01:10 PM
I recently contracted with Christopher Byrne (aka, FileSave) to do some different kinds of work for Genii Software.  One of his first efforts is a redesign of the web interface for the Midas Help database.  It looks very cool, and uses AJAX, CSS and other fun acronyms.  It should be out on the website soon, after we tweak sizes and a couyple of extra things.

Thanks, Christopher!  I can't wait to see what people think once the database is up.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.