As you might have read, I'm working on downloading RichText inline-images and file attachments from a Lotus Notes or iNotes Notebook to my NotesBook App.

I made some significant progress on this topic today and beside some final polishing work, it works awesome! I can embed images into the RichText of notebook entries, and I can attach files like photos, PDFs or even Word documents to a notebook entry in Lotus Notes. Then I tap one button in my NotesBook iPhone and iPad App to download these images and files to my iPhone or iPad.

The download happens in the background while showing the progress in a nice progress indicator. When finished, the inline images are displayed in the notebook entry on my iPhone or iPad, just as in Lotus Notes. The file attachments are in the notebook entry, just as in Lotus Notes. I can tap on a file attachment to view it right on my iPhone and iPad.

Here are some screenies from the iPad version:


- inline images in Lotus Notes RichText on the iPad -


- File attachments, tap on a attachment to view it right on the device -


- viewing a PDF attachment on the iPad -


If the notebook entry changes in Lotus Notes, the files belonging to the entry are downloaded to my iPhone or iPad again automatically, and orphan files are deleted automatically. It. just. works.
Furthermore, there is a size limit to avoid downloading too big files (currently at 10MB, but I will create a setting for this).

And remember, the files are available when the iPhone or iPad is offline, too!  

Distributing company related files to the iPhone and iPad

While playing with these new feature, I realized that this is not only cool for getting the Lotus Notes or iNotes Notebook to your iPhone or iPad. It's nice for distributing all kind of company related content and files to iPhones and iPads, too!

Basically, this will be possible by simply creating a Lotus Notes Notebook application on the Domino server, allow a group of people to access it and pointing my NotesBook iPhone and iPad App to this central notebook. Pretty easy and cheap, only 5.99 per user for the App.

But the downside is, that NotesBook can only connect to one notebook at a time. So I'm thinking about creating a new, extended version of the App that can work with multiple notebooks. What do you think, would that make sense?