Workflo Systems - Products - Workflo!Web Library
The Workflo!Web Library is a tool for developing an easily maintainable site with Domino. It allows you to store design elements like graphics, Java applets, sounds, URLs, navigators, and framesets in a central database. These pieces can then be brought together using flexible forms to create complex and easily managed pages. This site was created almost entirely using the Web Library. The Web Library includes the following features:
Built in Web Page Library
You can use the Web Library to store your Web Pages as well. Pages created in the Web Library can be linked to directly from Links and Navigators without having to type any URLs. You can create documents in Notes Rich Text, or as pure HTML documents. Background images can be selected straight from the Library. You can use a Notes View as a navigator by inserting the view into a Web Page and targeting all the links to another frame*. The Web Page also has built in security, from exclusive editing access by the author, to being publicly viewable across the Internet. And, of course, Pages can be named, titled, and categorized for ease of access.
Graphics
The Web Library allows you to store all the graphics to be used on your site in one place. Not only that, but they can be descriptively named, categorized, and viewed within a Graphic document. You can customize what the graphics will look like to a browser without having to write any HTML. And you can create Dynamic HTML links to your graphics, so that if the HTML to display it changes in the Library, all the places that it is used change as well with having to edit each document.
Prefabricated Links
The Web Library allows you to do some repetitive design tasks just once, in one place. Links are an example of this. The Web Library allows you to take a graphic or piece of text and make it a link to a URL or any element from the Library. Once a link is built, it can be used as many times in as many places as you like. The best part is, if you decide to change the link, you only need to do it once and every instance of it is changed automatically*. The entire look of your site can be changed in no time. Links are also designed to work with frames.
Flexible "Miscellaneous" Documents
If you have some type of information that you want to include on your site that doesn't fit anywhere else, chances are they will fit here. The Miscellaneous Document was built to handle anything: HTML, JavaScript, sound files, video files, text, graphics, anything! Any file or piece of text can be included in this document and then manipulated to appear the way you want it to on the Web.
URLs
It can be a pain when a site you link to changes their URL. It could mean searching through all of your pages for the old URL and changing it. With the Web Library, you change the URL in one place and anywhere it is used is changed automatically*. URLs can also be named and described in detail to help you remember where they point to.
Frames Wizard**
The Web Library includes a unique feature that makes working with frames simple. You can create framesets by using a "wizard", a process which takes you through some simple steps and asks you how you want things to look, or by using HTML directly. Of course, these framesets may now be used many times over as the framework for your site. Changing the frameset will change every instance of its use in your site. If you want to make a frame smaller or add a border, make one change and every use of that frameset is changed.
In addition to this, you may also create a "Document Set" which is a set of documents or pages that directly correspond with a frameset. You can choose which document goes in which frame of the chosen frameset. Instead of redesigning the frameset for each set of documents, you use the same frameset over and over, simply substituting different sets of documents.
The frame sets and document sets work together to make managing a frames-enabled site easy. You may never have to edit more than one document to make the change you want.
Reminders
How many web sites have you seen web sites that have information that is out of date. Or perhaps their quarterly newsletter is from 6 months ago. More than likely, the person responsible for maintaining this information has forgotten that this information needs to be updated. The Web Library has a useful new feature to solve this problem. All types of documents in the Library may be given a reminder date. When this date is reached, the document appears in a separate view and a message appears when you open the Library, reminding you to look at those pages. Now, instead of losing track of date-sensitive information, you can keep on top of it an never be out of date again!
Advantages of the Web Library with Domino R5
With the many new features introduced into Domino with version 5, some may question the usefulness of the Web Library. Even under R5, the Web Library still has many useful features:
- The Site design can be done exclusively from the standard Notes client. In R5, you need to have the Domino Designer installed and constantly be switching back and forth between the Client and the Designer. With the Web Library, everything can be created and manipulated from one client.
- Graphics can be sized in pixels. R5 sizes images by percent of original size. This doesn't help if you need to stretch a graphic to be an exact size.
- Site elements can be named, described, and categorized by type or section. R5 lumps all pages, framesets, graphics, etc into one long list, making things hard to find.
- Most sites are made up of more than one database. Elements stored in the Web Library can easily be used in any database on the site. For instance, one graphic from the Web Library can be included on pages and forms in multiple database on the site. Images stored as R5 Image Resources can only be directly accessed from that database. To use a graphic in multiple databases would require multiple copies of the graphic, increasing load times and hindering maintainability.
- Links can be used to store elements that are repeated throughout the site. These elements can then be used over and over, but need only be edited in one place.
- Reminders remind you to update pages at a later date, so your site stays current.
The Web Library is a tool. Use it for what it is designed for, making your site easier to maintain. If there are features in R5 that you like, use them. But the Web Library is still a useful tool, or we wouldn't still be using it ourselves under R5.
Pricing
Now available free of charge
* when using Notes 4.5, these features operate under some restrictions
** the frames wizard was adapted from a template publicly available from Lotus