Enhance Your Lotus Notes Dialog Boxes and Picklists — Change Background Colors, Sizing, Text, and More

Kenneth Haggman


July, 2010

You can change the look of the dialog boxes and picklists in your Lotus Notes applications, and the way they work too. Discover what’s possible by going through the examples in the demo database accompanying this article. You’ll learn how to implement your own modifications using the database’s script library and how to distribute the necessary files to your users’ machines.

Dialog boxes and picklists are essential to most Lotus Notes applications and, functionally, they do just what they should. What they lack are features to make them more flexible — both in how they look and how they work. In my previous article (“Express Yourself! Change the Button Labels in Dialog Boxes, Picklists, Prompts, and Spellcheckers,” THE VIEW, January 2010), I showed you how to change button labels in dialog boxes, picklists, and prompts. With the help of an external program, it is also possible to make many other modifications to dialog boxes and picklists. In this article, I show you how to:
  • Change the background color of a dialog box or a picklist
  • Programmatically change the size and position of a dialog box or a picklist
  • Resize a dialog box or a picklist
  • Change the button labels in a dialog box or a picklist to any text, including non-ASCII characters
  • Disable or enable the OK and Cancel buttons in a dialog box or a picklist
Using the tools and the code provided in the demo database, you will be able to design dialog boxes and picklists in ways previously not possible. Applications customized using these techniques will look better than before, and your users will appreciate the enhanced experience.

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