IBM did such a great job with Notes 8.0 in improving the overall UI and the Mail database and bridged the gap between Notes and Outlook. Finally it looked like "we" (IBM and the Notes community) were moving forward again with Lotus Notes. While I would have loved to have seen a lot more done for developers in 8.0 I can understand IBM's need to focus on bring the Notes client into the 21st century. I am not sure if it was just me, but somehow I developed an expectation that the needs of the Notes developer would be the central theme with Notes 8.5. As a result I was already looking forward to the release of 8.5 even before I got to use 8.0.
Over the weekend I downloaded the first public beta of 8.5 and almost immediately jumped into the new eclipse version of Domino Designer to see what goodies were there for me to use. There were some obvious signs of a slicker interface as per the Note 8 client. Useful but not really something I was hanging out for. I had heard all the talk about what an eclipse IDE would do for things such as LotusScript so the first thing I did was open up a LotusScript library from the .Domino Framework to see what I could now do. There was a new property box eating up space at the bottom of the screen and.... THAT WAS IT. The property box did not even provide any useful data. It just sat there empty consuming space. Where was the class browser? Where was typeahead for anything but production classes? OK so the new IDE is still not there yet, surely there is a swag of other new development features for me to use.
- X-Pages, these look really cool but I rarely get to do much Web development so this is not a big gain.
- Server-Sided JavaScript, again great if you do a lot of Web development
- Themes, works with X-Pages only, which work for Web client only....
- Dojo, another cool Web development tool (A pattern is emerging)
- New LotusScript methods for NotesDocumentCollection GetAllReadDocuments, GetAllUnreadDocuments, Intersection. Something I guess but I don't recall ever needing methods like this. Where is the constructor for NotesDocumentCollection? That would at least be useful!
- YES , finally an extension to the LotusScript language! Oh, the ability to set the system date and time. In 15 years of Notes development I don't recall ever needing to do that. I thought we had operating systems that managed the clock!
So after all the hype and all the wait I get practically NOTHING to help me build Notes Client applications. It makes me envious of all the Domino Web developers who did at least get something in this release. I can only hope something new appears before the final 8.5 release because IBM have gone nowhere in bridging the gap between Domino Designer and modern IDEs such as Visual Studio. Perhaps we are not important in IBM's plans after all. Which begs the question, why go to all the trouble to revamp the Notes client with 8.0 and then do so little for developers who develop applications that run on that client?
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