Notes 8.5 keyboard funnies
Category Notes 8.5
Yesterday I twittered that Notes 8.5 was driving me crazy. There are a few funnies with this version of the product that do drive me a little crazy. These aren't new features, just features that existed in previous versions of Notes that no longer appeared to work or didn't work consistently.
The first and most irritating was that F9 was no longer working for me to refresh views, I had to always go and select the menu option View, Refresh. The machine I'm running on is a gateway desktop machine, it has a Gateway keyboard with some extra buttons and it has some Gateway drivers to enable the extra buttons. F9 was working fine in every other application, yes even the Notes Nemesis Outlook. I decided to do something radical, I uninstalled all the keyboard drivers for the keyboard and just used a regular Windows driver. Still no luck, F9 still didn't work. OK next step, change the keyboard for a regular Dell style keyboard with no extra buttons. I unplugged the gatteway keyboard and plugged in the Dell (remember when doing this without turning off the power would fry IBM PS/2s), anyway immediately F9 started working again. So who's at fault? Notes or Gateway? Every other apps works so it must be Notes? Or maybe Notes is sticking to some other method of getting keyboard inputs that is a recognized way of working but the Gateway keyboard doesn't? Anyway I've worked around it so that's no longer an issue.
Now on to the other things that are bugging me. Double Right Click to close windows. Now I'll be honest this is probably not a widely used feature in Notes unless you are a long term LOYAL Notes user. At least in previous versions of Notes it was consistent, in Notes 8.5 it's a frigging mess, it works some places and not other places, it's inconsistent and in my opinion if it doesn't work properly it should either be removed or fixed. Places where it doesn't work are mail views ie Java views and mails that have been received from the Internet. I figured out how to fix it for internet mails and that is by selecting the option "disable embedded browser for MIME email" in the Notes preferences. To fix it for Java Views the trick is not use Java Views to read your email. You can do this by holding down Ctrl-Alt when opening your inbox, this will use the regular notes views vs the Java views.
The search box in the top right handside is flaky when it comes to using the enter key in it (even with the replacement keyboard). Sometimes it recognizes the enter key being pressed and other times it doesn't. As far as I can tell, for it to recognise the enter key you always have to delete any text that is in the field and enter it again, or use the search button.
The other keyboard shortcut changes keep catching me out, but I'm slowly learning to adjust.
Yesterday I twittered that Notes 8.5 was driving me crazy. There are a few funnies with this version of the product that do drive me a little crazy. These aren't new features, just features that existed in previous versions of Notes that no longer appeared to work or didn't work consistently.
The first and most irritating was that F9 was no longer working for me to refresh views, I had to always go and select the menu option View, Refresh. The machine I'm running on is a gateway desktop machine, it has a Gateway keyboard with some extra buttons and it has some Gateway drivers to enable the extra buttons. F9 was working fine in every other application, yes even the Notes Nemesis Outlook. I decided to do something radical, I uninstalled all the keyboard drivers for the keyboard and just used a regular Windows driver. Still no luck, F9 still didn't work. OK next step, change the keyboard for a regular Dell style keyboard with no extra buttons. I unplugged the gatteway keyboard and plugged in the Dell (remember when doing this without turning off the power would fry IBM PS/2s), anyway immediately F9 started working again. So who's at fault? Notes or Gateway? Every other apps works so it must be Notes? Or maybe Notes is sticking to some other method of getting keyboard inputs that is a recognized way of working but the Gateway keyboard doesn't? Anyway I've worked around it so that's no longer an issue.
Now on to the other things that are bugging me. Double Right Click to close windows. Now I'll be honest this is probably not a widely used feature in Notes unless you are a long term LOYAL Notes user. At least in previous versions of Notes it was consistent, in Notes 8.5 it's a frigging mess, it works some places and not other places, it's inconsistent and in my opinion if it doesn't work properly it should either be removed or fixed. Places where it doesn't work are mail views ie Java views and mails that have been received from the Internet. I figured out how to fix it for internet mails and that is by selecting the option "disable embedded browser for MIME email" in the Notes preferences. To fix it for Java Views the trick is not use Java Views to read your email. You can do this by holding down Ctrl-Alt when opening your inbox, this will use the regular notes views vs the Java views.
The search box in the top right handside is flaky when it comes to using the enter key in it (even with the replacement keyboard). Sometimes it recognizes the enter key being pressed and other times it doesn't. As far as I can tell, for it to recognise the enter key you always have to delete any text that is in the field and enter it again, or use the search button.
The other keyboard shortcut changes keep catching me out, but I'm slowly learning to adjust.
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Comments
Posted by Kathy Brown At 01:45:51 PM On 04/07/2009 | - Website - |
F5 no longer initiates lock workstation.
Posted by Carl Tyler At 01:49:31 PM On 04/07/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by rajiv thomas At 08:31:59 AM On 04/08/2009 | - Website - |
Of course, that doesn't explain why F9 is NOT working for you, it should and does in my 8.5 install. So does F5 though, if that helps.
Posted by Kathy Brown At 12:10:33 PM On 04/08/2009 | - Website - |
Also in that build right double click works in MIME messages and Java Views. Good Times
Posted by Ports At 12:08:22 PM On 04/09/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:22:21 PM On 04/09/2009 | - Website - |