Ever since Notes 1.0, Notes developers have largely worked with two simple design patterns to display data in a Notes application.  The first was the standard view in which a data was displayed one line per record with data forced to line up into a fixed number of columns.  In-line editing of a view was a pain at best.  Data from a single record could then be shown two dimensionally on form.  This was much easier to edit.  Mild design relief was provided with Notes R5 and the introduction of the tabbed table and the ability to embed a view on the form.  Outside of that there were a select few people such as Chris Blatnick and Nathan Freeman who could harness clever tricks to break the standard mould.  The rest of us mere mortals just stuck with repeating these two bassic patterns.

With Notes 8.0 and the advent of the standard (eclipse) client, we saw for the first time a new design alternative - the business card layout.  This allowed us to display multiple records with a fair degree of flexibility.  Multiple lines could be used and there was no longer a real need for columns.

With Notes 8.5, XPages completely broke the mould and provided us with new and exciting ways to present data.  Data sources allow data from multiple records to be easily displayed (and edited) on a single page.  The Repeater control gives us a mechanism for taking any number of records and displaying them in a grid like fashion across and down the page.  We see this pattern in applications such as IQJam, LinkJam, and XTalk.

For me this has become one of the most exciting parts of working with XPages as I have slowly developed the concept of what I am choosing to call the dominoCard control.  An example of this can be seen with my Yellowverse Presentations Page.

One of the things I really like is that I am no longer forced to design my application to be optimized for a specific screen size.  Now I can allow the user to select how many cards they wish to display across the screen to suit their monitor and personal preference.

The next really powerfull feature is the ability to combine data from multiple record types into a consistent display.  In the above example consider the card as having five zones - The title, subtitle, photo, body, and footer.  Using OOP I can define a getTitle(), getSubtitle(), getPhoto, getBody(), and getFooter() method for each record type (object).  I can implement logic to only display those zones relevant for that record type and using CSS have the other areas expand to utilize any unused space.  More complex logic can also be added.  E.g. The photo block for a presentation record can be replaced with a Voting block for an idea record (as used in ideajam).

By breaking away from fixed columns I also have the ability to render a large number of views using a single XPage (also demonstrated in the above example).

The potential is huge for collaboration applications in which discussion documents, ideas, questions, bookmarks, chat transcripts, resource files etc could all be combine, sorted and categorized in the manner requested and then presented in a way that is consistent with the screen real estate I have available to me at the time.

Over the coming weeks I hope to display more advanced example of how this dominoCard design pattern can be used to even greater effect.