Xpages: Ibm Oneui VS. Bootstrap

XPages: IBM OneUI vs. Bootstrap

I use oneUI at the day job. There are some very good things about it. However, I'm trying to get my company and all my personal work migrated to Bootstrap. OneUI is not really responsive. Even if that's not a big issue for you the biggest reason to avoid oneUI is the lack of documentation and materials for it. There actually is documentation for oneUI But nothing like Bootstrap - the most popular framework going as far as I know. Heck right here on StackOverFlow over 59,000 questions have been asked on Bootstrap. There's tons of resources like bootsnipp.com. In my opinion it's almost a no brainer that Bootstrap should be used over oneUI if at all possible.

Bootstrap in xpages

Whenever you receive an Error 500, to have a good chance of receiving a correct answer, please follow the instructions outputted to the console along with the error, and look in the logs in IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT folder for more details. "Error 500" means "something went wrong". The logs it points to will tell you what went wrong.

One possible cause, is the OpenNTF version of the Extension Library will also need installing on the server you're running the demo bootstrap application on. If you're using Designer local preview, the location DDE installs the plugins for its own use is not the location Designer local preview requires. You'll need to manually copy the features and plugins files into the required location, which I believe is <Notes>\osgi\shared\eclipse\plugins and <Notes>\osgi\shared\eclipse\features.

IBM XPages Extension Library

ExtLibX has a Bootstrap 4 experimental release https://openntf.org/main.nsf/project.xsp?r=project/XPages%20ExtLibX/releases/A8498784907DA6D386257F6200465E8F. That was a release looking for people to use it and give feedback of anything not working. I think most developers have focused on the Bootstrap 3 codestream because Bootstrap 4.0.0 is still not yet in beta (although 99% complete as of today at https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/milestones).

If you are committed to 4.0.0, I would recommend using that and giving feedback. The componentised approach of XPages makes so much sense and is what other frameworks tend to use, because if the HTML required changes, it only needs changing once for all instances of the component, rather than everywhere for every instance of the old HTML code.

If you're able to clone the repository and run it against a local server, to be able to troubleshoot in Eclipse, even better. (My recent NotesIn9 on OpenNTF Domino API Starter Servlet gives the setup instructions. Following that video, I imported core ExtLib and was able to build it with any other configuration changes.)

XPAGES AND ONEUI REFERENCE

Since 8.5.3 OneUI has been delivered via an OSGi plugin on the server. Most modern XPages applications are being built using bootstrap look and feel instead, which is again in the OSGi plugin for XPages Extension Library on OpenNTF. IBM have also moved away from OneUI for IBM Verse and for responsive XPages have adopted bootstrap. I'm not aware of anyone who has tried to pull those into an NSF, and I would not advise it. You may hit Java security exceptions with some of the code, mapping between resources may not work, and there are an immense number of Java classes and other resources. And if you do hit any issues, you are unlikely to find much help to solve them.

Set one viewport in an XPages Application with a bootstrap theme

With <control> properties in a theme you can use an override="true" attribute to specify that it should override the 'default' value. I don't think you can do that with a <metaData> tag.

What you can do however:

• Create a new Bootstrap 3.2.0 base theme in your application that is based on the Bootstrap3.2.0_flat theme. The source for that can be found in the Extension Library.
• In that theme you then set the correct value of the <metaData> tag.
• In your current theme, you replace the extends="Bootstrap3.2.0_flat" with the name of your the theme you just created/ copied.

(oh and remember that in the latest Extension Library version, the Bootstrap3.2.0 theme has been renamed)

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