I’ve been looking at the new OpenNTF project XPages Extension Library and I’ve come to the conclusion that many of its features are going to make future XPages development a lot faster and easier, in fact I’ve already used a number of features in a project that I’m doing for work. The amount of time it has saved is quite amazing. So far I have made use of the model dialog box for forms and the name picker.
So the big question is, how would you feel if Blogsphere V4 required that the Xpages Extension Library was required to be installed on your Domino server for future releases of Blogsphere V4. There are a number of features, such as the dynamic page content, that will make for a better Blogsphere.
I could embed the XPages Extension Library into the Blogsphere V4 NSF but I feel that it would increase the size of the NSF by too much and I’d also have to deal with keeping it up to date as future versions of the XPages Extension Library are released. Making it a requirement for it to be pre-installed on your Domino server would mean that your Domino Administrator would have to install the package on the server. If your a Domino developer it would mean you would be able to use the XPages Extension Library for your own apps also, and believe me, you’ll want to use the XPages Extension Library.
So make it a requirement for it to be pre-installed on the server or embed it in the NSF?
Dec's Dom Blog 
You don’t have to pick one versus another, y’know.
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I agree with Nathan. Not all bloggers will be able to have the library installed on their server. So it would make adoption far easier if they could just deploy an NSF to the server and not have to bribe their admin into installing the library (if that’s possible at all).
I don’t think you will need to update the NSF to every new release of the library (except maybe for fixing major bugs). You will probably develop using a current version and would then only need to update the embedded library whenever you are making a new release available.
Even though I am able to have the library installed on our server it might be more convenient to just do a design refresh on the BlogSphere NSF if this is the only application using it. In addition to that we can avoid interoperability issues with newer or older versions of the library if it is embedded.
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> Making it a requirement for it to be pre-installed on your Domino server would mean that your Domino Administrator would
> have to install the package on the server.
Us Administrators are already fans of the
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What Nathan said.
My site (although I’m horribly remiss in posting for some months now) is hosted by the good folks at Prominic. While I could request that they install the library on the server in an accessible location, I would certainly not have any control over that. Having the option of deploying it all easily in my own server space would ensure that I can use the new version.
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I’m thinking it should be fairly easy to provide a button someplace within the Blogsphere configuration to update the library in Nathan’s Option #2 above. That way, you could let users update that part independently of the overall Blogsphere design. And of course you could turn it off in a similar fashion and rely on the server installed version if that is available. Heck, you could probably even auto-detect whether it is there and alter the configuration automatically to suit the circumstance. As far as disk space goes, it’s cheap enough to not care at this point.
So are we looking at the latest template here?
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By the way, we should have the computed custom control checked in in the next couple of days, so if you haven’t already addressed that need, that’s all the more reason to use the Extension library! 🙂
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I’d say it’s well worth relying on XPages Extension Library being installed. If I remember rightly Blogsphere v4 requires 8.5.2. From what I’ve seen of the XPages Extension Library, any developer developing for 8.5.2 will want to use the Extension Library, so will already have it installed. There is so much there that makes life easier and explains why you would want to use the XPages Extensibility APIs. For those reasons alone, even though I’ve got virtually no Java background (my only Java exposure is a basics course I did years ago, from looking at Java code for plugins and from background reading on JSF), I fully intend to dive in as soon as possible and try to work out what the controls are doing. Please let my next of kin know if I’m not seen again… Wink
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