BCD Tech Blog

Nexus 4.03 is now available for download. This version includes all previous changes, as well as these recent fixes and improvements:

• Resolved issue where no message is given if the incorrect password is entered on the “Work with User” page.
• Title attribute now exists on the Portlet Options.
• Nexus now remembers the original location request when handling an expired session.
• Resolved drag and drop issues in Internet Explorer 9.
• Resolved issue where after Portlet Details screen was closed, the pencil icon didn’t work.

Read more…

This is a followup to our October 19, 2011 Minimum OS/400 Release Level Notification for BCD products.

As of later this month V5R4 will be the minimum OS/400 release level supported by most BCD product releases as well as any software updates we create.

The following versions of our products are the last releases that can be installed on OS/400 V5r3:

• WebSmart ILE 9.0
• WebSmart PHP 4.0
• Clover 3.0
• Presto 3.8
• Catapult 7.71
• Nexus 4.03
• ProGen Plus 9.6
• Spool-Explorer/400 4.52
• File-Flash Plus 4.5
• DbGen 2.5
• Docu-Mint 6.6

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Technical Support.

We have published update 2 for Nexus 4. This includes the following fixes:

• Resolved a reported issue where shared content created by a user was deleted along with the object specified for deletion.
• Resolved an issue with the IBM i password expiry warning (intervals were not correct).
• Added an alternate login validation API.
• LDAP authentication can now authenticate users located in sub-trees.

You can download this from the bottom of the Nexus 4 updates page.

Note that Update 1 exists but as it is only applicable to some very specific situations we haven’t listed it publicly.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Nexus Portal 4.0 has been available to new users for a couple of months and was recently made available to existing users to upgrade their Nexus sites. Nexus 4.0 does require a new license key which is explained in step 3 of the upgrade instructions. Here is the list of the key new features:

• LDAP Support: End users can now use the same profile to log in to Nexus as they do to log in to other LDAP supported resources. Site administrators of organizations who use LDAP no longer need to manage separate LDAP and Nexus profiles.

• Improved Cross Browser Support: The end user interface of Nexus has been supported in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome for a while. In Nexus 4.0 the site administration interface is also supported.

• Password Expiry Warning and Updating: Users now have the ability to change their IBM i user profile passwords from the Nexus login screen. Nexus administrators can control the number of days in advance to start displaying the password expiration warning message.

• Improved Password Encryption: Password security is improved with better encryption handling. You can now also set the encryption seed for generating Nexus passwords.

• Improved Installation Process: You can now specify a new library name during the installation which makes it easier to have multiple Nexus installations.

To learn more about Nexus 4.0 please visit the Nexus new features page. Nexus 4.0 can be downloaded from the BCD download page or from the myBCDsoftware customer portal.

As part of our ongoing development strategy and planning efforts here at BCD we are scheduling future internal IBM i system upgrades. This will affect the minimum OS/400 release level supported by BCD products. Our product line currently requires a minimum OS/400 release level of V5R3. As of January 1, 2012 V5R4 will be the minimum OS/400 release level supported by most BCD products and updates released after that date.

As our products continue to evolve and new products are introduced it is generally our intention to keep in step with IBM OS/400 release levels, while also giving our clients enough time to plan for this change. This allows us to develop using current technology and to make this technology available to you in our product family.

IBM discontinued support for V5R3 on April 30, 2009.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Technical Support.

I spend a fair amount of time worrying about performance. Within the Professional Services group I work with one of our clients, MedAxiom, developing an increasingly large and complex web application. Yet at the same I want to improve the user experience by speeding things up. One of the simpler ways to make a site faster is enabling gzip compression.

Gzipping components is one of ySlow’s recommendations and Steve Souders also recommends it in his book “High Performance Web Sites”. It’s an Apache module that applies gzip compression to certain output before sending it to the client. Once at the client, the browser unzips the content and displays it to the user. The end result is we’re sending less bytes which takes less time.

I set up a few benchmarks before enabling gzip so I could get an idea of the effect it has. I used Firebug’s Net panel to load each page five times and record the total size of the page and load time, I then took the average of the five loads.  Here are the results:

I was blown away by the improvement in load times!  MedAxiom has some pretty heavy Nexus pages so that’s where we saw the greatest improvement.  Yet even on smaller pages we still saw an improvement of 15%-34% in page load times.

Setting up gzip in Apache is pretty easy, you can do it by adding these directives to your Apache config in the appropriate place.

# Load the module that performs the compression.
LoadModule deflate_module /QSYS.LIB/QHTTPSVR.LIB/QZSRCORE.SRVPGM

# Compress all output by default.
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Disable gzipping for images and pdf documents.
# Gzip compression has no effect on these types.
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI (gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.pdf$ no-gzip dont-vary

Nexus 3.65 is now available for download. This update to Nexus 3.6 includes all earlier enhancements and fixes, as well as the following recent changes:

• Fixed problem with changing the IBM i password when the QPWDLVL is 0.
• Fixed problem with clicking the Change Group icon when editing a group link in the Groups Link portlet.
• Corrected appearance of print & email links on all ECM documents.
• Includes a copy of NXRTVSITEA. This object is required by Catapult for grab rules that automatically populate the ECM.

Please call if you have any questions!

Nexus 3.64 is now available for download. This update to version Nexus 3.6 includes all previous enhancements and fixes, as well as the following recent changes:

• Corrected a problem where deleting a group could result in the deletion of a user from an unrelated group.
• The maximum password length has been increased to 32 characters.
• Users logged in under the Guest profile will now see the Guest Skin.
• The Home breadcrumb link now returns to the home page regardless of your current page template.
• Resolved issue where the ‘Main Page’ value is not saved when maintaining a user in Manage Users.
• Resolved issue where profile QTMHHTTP did not have authority to the Apache configuration.

Recent Knowledge Base Articles
We’ve also recently published a few Knowledge Base articles you might find useful:

• Article 8685 – After clicking on an ECM folder, how can I have the ECM Viewer display the folder’s include text instead of the folder contents?
• Article 8557 – How can I hide the Nexus Search box?
• Article 8511 – How can I change the sender’s address in the Nexus password reminder email?

Please let us know if you have any questions!

IE 8 has the dubious advantage of multiple rendering engines to choose from via the “Compatibility Mode” options. Personally, I like this feature, but what I’ve discovered is that a lot of users don’t know this feature exists which leads to the problem of them viewing everything in IE 7 mode by having the “Display all websites in Compatibilty View” setting turned on.

I’m not sure if this option is turned on by default on a fresh install of IE 8 or if users turn it on when they setup IE 8 for the first time (and I mean really, who wouldn’t choose compatibility?). The bottom line though, is if a user has upgraded to IE 8 you want to give them the best experience you can by using the most modern rendering engine.

Microsoft gave us a way to specify the rendering engine by using the X-UA-Compatible http header or meta tag. You can use this to force IE 8 to use the IE 8 rendering mode even if the user has compatibility mode turned on. So, if you’re building a new site, why give your IE 8 users the option to render your beautiful css and html in IE 7 mode?

Here’s how to use the meta-tag option, this tag should be at the top of the <head> section of your page:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=8″ />

Or you can set the http header in your Apache config:

Header onsuccess set “X-UA-Compatible” “IE=8″

If you want to limit the http header to a subset of your domain you can use environment variables in Apache:

SetEnvIf Request_URI “/myapp/” is_my_app=1

Header onsuccess set “X-UA-Compatible” “IE=8″ env=is_my_app

The BCD Product Development team has run a series of tests of the following versions of our software at V7R1:

• Catapult 7.6
• Spool-Explorer 4.5
• Exodus 5.1
• WebSmart 8.2
• Presto 2.2
• ProGen 9.5
• DBGen 2.5
• Docu-Mint 6.5
• File-Flash Plus 4.5
• Nexus 3.6 and 4.0

No problems were encountered.

If you have any questions about this, please contact Technical Support.

Search terms: 7.1 V7 R1