Beyond The Yellow Bubble

For the past six and a half years my job has been to work with and get as much as possible out of the Notes 6.0 client.  I work as an independent contractor and for some reason every one of my clients since lates 2002 seemed to be using this one release.  If things go to schedule the last of the workstations I use will soon be upgraded to Notes 8.5.0 allowing me to start work on my first (paid)  XPages project on Monday.  This is one of the reasons I will be releasing 1.0 of the .Domino Framework in two weeks time.  I no longer have the motivation or need to expand on the capabilities of Notes 6.  So in addition to building applications for Notes/Domino 8.5. I plan to start work almost immediately on .Domino Framework 2.0.  This version of the framework will be targeted at Notes 8.5.1.  Not yet released, but in my opinion its the 8.x release most targeted at  Notes Client development (DDE LS Editor, XPages for Notes client etc.)  I blogged about my disappointment with 8.5.0 previously.  Don't get me wrong, 8.5.0 is a great release.  It seems to be the most stable and best performing of the 8.x releases.  What concerns me is that just as many of the clients I have worked for seemed to get stuck on Notes 6.0 I am hoping they dont also get stuck on 8.5.0 preventing me from getting to the cools things I want to use in 8.5.1 and beyond.  Notes 6.0 has served me well and I do have a few misgivings about the slowness of Domino Designer 8.5.0 but I am really looking forward to getting my hands dirty with 8.5. development.  Xpages here I come......