For XPages in Notes Domino 8.5.1 we've added a lot of new features, fixed a lot of bugs, and made changes that will to do things better. Some of these changes may not always suit you and in some cases will break your existing application, particularly if you're developing an application with Designer 8.5.1 and using Domino 8.5 server for the runtime. 

An 8.5.1 application might use some new controls or attributes and thus prevent it from running on an 8.5 server. This is called upward compatibility and we cannot guarantee it, as we cannot simply just ignore the new properties. We've added a number of ways to help you avoid these compatibility issues.

Firstly at runtime, you will get an error stating the inconsistency between the versions as the cause of the failure. Then in Designer (see All Properties for all controls), we've added extra text to the property documentation where you will now be able to see with which Domino version the property is compatible. For example, 'dojoTheme' on the XPage root is compatible with versions since 8.5.0.

While 'enableModifiedFlag' will only work with Domino 8.5.1 versions and after.


This helps prevent any bad behaviour, the XPages compiler (within Designer) will tag the pages with the minimum requested server number (8.5, 8.5.1...), based on each control/property used in the page. If it has just 8.5 controls/attributes, then the page is tagged '8.5'. Else, it is tagged with the highest version number found. At runtime, the server is checking if it matches this minimum requirement. If not, it throws an error.


With 8.5.1, we try to guarantee that 8.5 applications will run as is on an 8.5.1 server. Though there are some cases like if your application is taking advantage of a bug that kept some JavaScript data in memory which has some impact on scalability and performance. For this case, we asked the community and we got a clear answer that we should fix it, favouring the scalability against the compatibility. This is what we did, along with a property you can set to revert this behaviour.


Event management has been simplified in 8.5.1 and the 'handler' tag isn't needed as it was in 8.5. For example, take the case of adding a client side alert to a button.

In Designer 8.5 this will generate the following markup ...

 
 
   
   
   
 
 


 

In Designer 8.5.1 we get ...

 
 
 

From a compatibility standpoint, the old tag is still supported on 8.5.1 servers (and will be forever), but Designer is now taking advantage of a new 'script' property when generating the event code. So if you use Designer 8.5.1 on a 8.5 database, if you change an event using the event panel then it generates the new property and the page becomes tagged '8.5.1'. If you change it in the source code, without the event panel, the problem does not appear. So you can still revert your change this way.

 

These are some of the things you should be aware of when you are developing applications for Domino 8.5 using Designer 8.5.1.

Hope this helps.

p.