To continue my journey with Designer 8.5.1, You may have already read my first , second and third article. Let's check what I've got in this article.
I'm doing my real time development in designer 8.5.1 and you don't believe it's so stable that I don't miss 8.5 release. Sometime I get "Null pointer exception" in Eclipse environment but I don't get worried because it's just a unreleased version and it will be fixed in actual release. Today I've submitted my 8.5.1 beta survey and I didn't forget to mention that "Domino 8.5.1 release will be the best release in Lotus Notes history" and it's going to increase productivity of domino developers by at least 30%.At least I believe that :)
1-Prior to 8.5.1 release very few people care about cause of Lotus Notes crash. There is a nice "Fault Diagnostic" report dialog box if you started Notes after crash.It will be an opportunity to every Lotus Notes users to participate in betterment of Lotus Notes product to share their error reports with IBM.
2- Run in background : In designer 8.5 , We had button in process dialog box "Run in background" to control whether you want to run a process in background or foreground. In 8.5.1 designer it has moved under global setting.
However it doesn't work as expected and after setting this option every time process runs in foreground. Probably we will get fix in actual release.
3- Monitor Heap Size : Most often we encounter "Out of memory" or "buffer overflow" problem while working on Domino Java program in designer. Also, There are very few domino developers who actually know what is maximum heap size assigned to JVM. Designer 8.5.1 has new feature to monitor and clean up JVM heap size. It's under preferences, turned off by default, called "Show heap status" under General->Preferences. Simply check this box to display a heap size indicator on the lower right corner of your IDE. This indicator displays the maximum JVM heap size and how much of it is being used. Another useful feature of this indicator is the ability to garbage collect the heap. Simply click on the bin icon in the indicator to immediately schedule the heap for garbage collection. It will free up some heap space. There is also a context menu on this indicator. Simply right click to pop it.
4- Better control on Renaming Classes/Variables and adding libraries for Domino Java : There are some extraordinary enhancements has been done for Domino Java functionalities designer 8.5.1. Prior to 8.5.1 writing Java code in Domino was tedious than writing Lotus script but now you will find writing Java code is much easier in designer 8.5.1 . Let's check one by one,
a) Ease in renaming class file and performing find replace : You don't need to open any domino Java agents to do find and replace functions. Prior to 8.5.1 you must need to do find and replace in each class files separately. Also, You don't need to open the code library to rename java file unlike "Edit Project" or code level rename in earlier versions.
b) Ease in adding resources : Unlike opening Java agent and going to "Edit project" option to add new script library , you can achieve in much easier way in designer 8.5.1
c) Ease in adding removing class file : Unlike to other versions you don't need to go to "Edit Project" option to delete unused classes or to copy/paste new class file from other sources .
5- Use breadcrumb navigation in Domino Java : In designer 8.5.1, Java class files list and editor sections are separated in two different threads. To navigate faster in other java classes while editing you can use "Breadcrumb navigation".
My next article on this series will be on Eclipse Perspective, Different types of Eclipse views and Eclipse navigation in Designer 8.5.1.
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