Notes has some magic tricks. Caution: could bring on seizures.
Category Workspace Disco
The first magic trick Notes 8.5 has is the amazing appearing/disappearing workspace icons. Every now and again I would notice the icons on my Notes 8.5 workspace would go a little crazy, appearing and disappearing really quickly as I moved the mouse over them. Today I figured out how to do it every time. Warning, if you try this yourself I am not responsible for any seizures that may occur. This video doesn't really capture it too well, but you can see it a bit.
To turn the appearing/disappearing trick off, just click on a different tab and then back.
Next up is the incredible vanishing text entry cursor. To see this one:
1. Open your mail file
2. Choose View, Search this View (do not choose this if the old style Notes Search is already showing, I don't mean the search box in the top right).
3. Now type in some search text, make sure it's some text that is going to find some documents and press enter. I think your mail file has to FT indexed too
4. Now without clicking anywhere else click back in the search text entry and type some more text, voila the incredible vanishing cursor.
I'm guessing both of these effects are caused by Eclipse, as typically anything strange in Notes 8.5 is blamed on eclipse and neither of these things happen if I load Notes 8.5 in Basic mode.
None of these issues are show stoppers, and as far as I know don't cause data loss, but when you start adding up all these quirks, Notes 8.5 really starts to feel like a rough product with some sharp edges. It doesn't feel like a mature product that has been in production for 20 years. I won't say Notes sucks, but I cannot honestly say I get pleasure from using Notes 8.5, I find many of the changes and quality issues very frustrating, some areas of the product appear to have made great progress where as other areas feel like they were ignored and pushed back to later releases, maybe due to lack of resources and an active decision or lack of pride, I don't know.
The first magic trick Notes 8.5 has is the amazing appearing/disappearing workspace icons. Every now and again I would notice the icons on my Notes 8.5 workspace would go a little crazy, appearing and disappearing really quickly as I moved the mouse over them. Today I figured out how to do it every time. Warning, if you try this yourself I am not responsible for any seizures that may occur. This video doesn't really capture it too well, but you can see it a bit.
To turn the appearing/disappearing trick off, just click on a different tab and then back.
Next up is the incredible vanishing text entry cursor. To see this one:
1. Open your mail file
2. Choose View, Search this View (do not choose this if the old style Notes Search is already showing, I don't mean the search box in the top right).
3. Now type in some search text, make sure it's some text that is going to find some documents and press enter. I think your mail file has to FT indexed too
4. Now without clicking anywhere else click back in the search text entry and type some more text, voila the incredible vanishing cursor.
I'm guessing both of these effects are caused by Eclipse, as typically anything strange in Notes 8.5 is blamed on eclipse and neither of these things happen if I load Notes 8.5 in Basic mode.
None of these issues are show stoppers, and as far as I know don't cause data loss, but when you start adding up all these quirks, Notes 8.5 really starts to feel like a rough product with some sharp edges. It doesn't feel like a mature product that has been in production for 20 years. I won't say Notes sucks, but I cannot honestly say I get pleasure from using Notes 8.5, I find many of the changes and quality issues very frustrating, some areas of the product appear to have made great progress where as other areas feel like they were ignored and pushed back to later releases, maybe due to lack of resources and an active decision or lack of pride, I don't know.
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Comments
turn off the textured workspace. you will see a bit of an update to the chicklets (rounded corners) and you will see the new hover-over effect work properly. Not sure if they communicated that well, but all the costmetic work MBR's team did requires that the textured workspace be off.
Posted by John Head At 06:04:15 PM On 05/30/2009 | - Website - |
When the icon is selected it has a pixel high white line at the top of the icon and down the left, the line at the top continues past the cut off corner, and the pink outline is not very nice, makes it look like the monitors convergence is out.
The chicklet drop down for replicas is antialiased for the bluey grey background so it looks bad with rough edges when you select the icon, so does not look good.
The icons corners aren't rounded, they're cut at 45 degrees, if this was a fine piece of carpentry I would assume the carpenter only had a circular saw.
If users aren't supposed to use textured workspace then why is the option there?
Maybe you like it, not me particularly for the reasons stated above.
Posted by Carl Tyler At 06:13:06 PM On 05/30/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Rob Novak At 07:15:40 PM On 05/30/2009 | - Website - |
mac mac mac.
;-0
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 09:00:26 PM On 05/30/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Carl Tyler At 06:39:39 AM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
An interesting one in 8.0.2 was that the icons in the open menu would become out of synch after a while. They would litteraly shift from one bookmark to the next. Restarting notes fixes the issue!
Posted by Patrick Picard At 12:12:45 PM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
I hate the workspace, always have. I use the Open menu type-ahead and the replicator tab for all of my db navigation. They can shitcan the workspace for all I care. To me, the only options are a complete redesign and rebuild or to kill it completely. I don't think either will happen in the short term.
I have 8.0.2 and a code drop of 8.5.1 on my two primary machines. Both experiences are better than anything I had in 7.X. Sure, there are quirks - always have been in Notes. The only thing I would add is that if you want this fixed, you need to get a bug report logged - either thru support, the BP Forum, or the DP/Beta groups. Everything needs customer weight.
Posted by John Head At 12:17:29 PM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 12:38:09 PM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
From the number of times people have blogged about workspace and how Lotus should improve it, the majority always appear to prefer keeping it. Bookmarks work well for some people, but I think the workspace works better for the majority.
If IBM can't put resources on Workspace then indeed tell people this is not our way forward and remove it. But be aware when you have to train users on a new interface, you give them the opportunity to be trained on a whole different product.
Posted by Carl Tyler At 05:04:10 PM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
"But be aware when you have to train users on a new interface, you give them the opportunity to be trained on a whole different product."
Did Microsoft cause customers to move off Office 2007 because of the Ribbon? I have no seen a single case of this. People are considering alternatives because they want to go mac, its too expensive, and the alternatives are catching up. But just because the Ribbon fustrates folks - I don't know of any case where that is true.
Posted by John Head At 05:10:40 PM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
If I was in IBM sales, and wanted to push Symphony, I'd be always pointing out that they're going to have to train users in the Ribbon, add to that the license cost, and with Symphony you only have the training cost.
Posted by Carl Tyler At 05:14:39 PM On 05/31/2009 | - Website - |
We're back to the 'IMAP interface looks like crap because no-one is supposed to use it. Remember how that went ?
If its in the product - it should work. All the time. For everyone. Else its a support nightmare.
---* Bill
Posted by Bill At 03:09:32 PM On 06/01/2009 | - Website - |
I tested this on 8.5 and while I could get the shimmer effect it disappeared if I changed tabs or window.
While I am workspace user myself, most users new to the notes client don't use it unless shown it exists. The Open button and "Type to find" tend to be preferred.
Personally if the "Type to find" didn't require I click on the open button I would switch over completely to that.
Posted by Simon O'Doherty At 05:17:03 AM On 06/02/2009 | - Website - |
{ Link }
Posted by Mike McP At 08:52:40 AM On 06/02/2009 | - Website - |
Notes sucks so bad it's not even funny.
It's'truly ugly. There's'legion of bugs (menus crashes regularly,
Notes freeze sometimes up to several minutes while nothing special
Is done and CPU usage stay at 0%, it constantly mess with Windows Clipboard
Without reason or warning, it is horrendousy limited and many many more).
But the best comes from Domino Designer wich truly
Sucks donkey cocks. I won't list its bugs and inconsistencies here
As it would take hours.
Cheers,
Francois
Posted by francois At 05:27:52 PM On 04/25/2011 | - Website - |