Lotus defines designs on the Web. (Lotus Domino Designer Web site design client) (Product Development)

Racing to close its competitive gap in the tools market, Lotus will deliver by year's end a standards-based Web site design client called Domino Designer, and IBM is also leveraging a majority investment in tools vendor NetObjects.

Domino Designer will target developers who want to create high-end Web applications that access Domino-specific services such as messaging, replication, workflow, and security, said Peter O'Kelly, Lotus' director of research for business development.

It will feature robust support for Java and will support CORBA objects via the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol. Domino Designer is slated for release in the fourth quarter, along with the Lotus …