I'm developing with XPages for about two months now, and in the last couple of weeks I do nearly nothing else than developing with XPages. I think about XPages first thing in the morning and last thing before I fall to sleep.

At this moment I am in the following projects:

• An application for web based data entry for a customer.
• Components for our Workflow software so that browser based applications can participate in workflows.
• A big internal project which is currently in Stealh Mode.

And I already have an application for user self-registering (with avatars, password reset and such stuff) in Beta.

I believe one can say that I'm on the way to get really used to XPages :-) So, here is an update to my former opinion about XPages:

XPages will catapult Lotus Domino back to the Web Application Server game. Big time.
Even this first version of XPages in Domino 8.5 are very stable and complete and still a joy to use. Yes, I found bugs. But until now I didn't find any really serious bug which prevents me from reaching my goals. That means this is a complete different story to, for example, Composite Applications (in which I found some serious problems preventing me from getting stuff done).

XPages allow me to develop up-to-date browser based applications with all the bells and whistles users expect today:

• userfriendly UIs
• nice looking
• fast
• with partial refreshes instead of reloading whole pages

And I can do so many things which were nearly impossible in traditional Domino development, like having view columns which lookup data from other views and combines them.

My overall conclusion is: yes we can.

The ages of darkness and misery are over. Now we can provide browser based applications with Lotus Domino again. Now we can do all the Web stuff some customers want. We don't need any other software, Domino does it all.

There are bloggers out there who are eager to publish one bad Lotus news after another, while silently hiding all those good news. Perhaps I am in my yellow bubble, but this time I feel that the good news about Notes and Domino far, far outweigh the bad news. And I believe that XPages will become a very, very big success story for Domino.

Oh, and one last thing: facts are supporting my opinion: the customer which gave us our first XPages project would NOT be willing to solve the requirements with Domino without XPages. He would have taken something else.