Jan Schulz

There are a lot of people who argue for a "personal edition" of notes to get some enduser promotion. In its current form, this won't be a good idea:

Yes, you gain LiveText, nice email-environments like eProductivity and maybe even some personal apps. But I haven't found any apps yet, which will satisfy a casual user! Password store? Keepass is better (ever used strg+v to autopaste a user/pw into a browser window?). Note taking? Personal journals might be eligible, but there are apps like evernote which sound better. And I can't think of any other apps which might be interesting to a *normal* end user!

Any then there are things like this, when you use notes as a pop3/smtp client:

• No Spam handler: you need to setup your own.
• 20+sec startup time and 500MB downloads just to open email (thunderbird is 5 secs away and a tenth that size)
• preferences for email all over the place and much to cryptic for "normal" emailusers: smtp.box, location docs, smtp & pop3 accounts, "replication" instead of "send and receive", File->Preferences overload.
  
• lots of features, which are no use to a normal user: sametime, replication, ID management, ...
• Strange behavior uncommon to other clients: for example no warnings that pasted images are not attached if the email is sent as plain text. You can edit received mails. Folders vs. Views.
  
• I also don't think that the code for POP3/SMTP in the client was much used:calendar invitation don't work: You can't send replys because of a bug in the code (the From is sent to your emailadress and the replicator expects a NotesName -> reported to IBM, reproduced, waiting for action: PMR 67543SGC724, SPR MALZ7Q249V).
  

Notes strength are the easy collaboration features with a client attached to a domain and servers. As a standalone product all these strength become weaknesses because they are too complex for a enduser and to heavy (and in most cases useless) to be convinient.

Some examples: in a company you use connections, replicated doclibraries, KM and CRM Apps to collaborate. But as a enduser without a server? Excel + dropbox. Secure and replicated storage of notes? Textfiles and Dropbox. Webpages or blog on a domino server? much easier with LJ/blogger.com or even some html files uploaded via ftp. Chatting via Sametime? Again not useable without a  server, so I use skype.

So I think that releasing (and promoting) notes as it is now as a enduser standalone tool will result in much disappointment and negative feedback/ publicity.

Maybe if vulcan becomes available and it integrates facebook/Xing/StudiVZ (german facebook clone), doodle, skype, sharepoint, and whatever there is to become a "universal inbox, calendar, todo and contact manager" for everything. And gets a enduser open server in the cloud, so that your data is replicated and secure.

Ok, I admit, I'm pissed off right now. Big time. This is a rant about "not supported here", operating system defaults, Webbrowsers and making it extra hard to use something else... and IBM Support.

I use the opera webbrowser as a system wide default. I set the notes basic preferences in the location documents to opera and links open beautiful in opera.

Now enter the new standard client, version 8.0.2 FP2. Set "Use the Browser I have set as a default for this operating system" in the webbrowser preferences. Set opera to the "operating system default". Click on link. tata. Nothing happens. Fun, a preference, which doesn't work.

Ok, I'm nice, I debug this. Using ProcMon from Sysinternals, I get this:

[more successful (!) trys to get the Browser value]
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","RegQueryKey","HKCR\https\shell\open\command","SUCCESS","Query: Name"
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","RegOpenKey","HKCU\Software\Classes\https\shell\open\command","NAME NOT FOUND","Desired Access: Maximum Allowed"
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","RegQueryValue","HKCR\https\shell\open\command\(Default)","SUCCESS","Type: REG_SZ, Length: 62, Data: ""C:\Programme\Opera\opera.exe"""
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","RegCloseKey","HKCR\https\shell\open\command","SUCCESS",""
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","QueryOpen","C:\Programme\IBM\Lotus\Notes\framework\rcp\eclipse\plugins\com.ibm.rcp.j2se.win32.x86_1.6.0.20090219c-200906101703\jre\bin\null.exe","NAME NOT FOUND",""
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","QueryOpen","C:\Programme\IBM\Lotus\Notes\null.exe","NAME NOT FOUND",""
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","QueryOpen","C:\WINDOWS\system32\null.exe","NAME NOT FOUND",""
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","QueryOpen","C:\WINDOWS\system\null.exe","NAME NOT FOUND",""
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","QueryOpen","C:\WINDOWS\null.exe","NAME NOT FOUND",""
[more tries to open "null.exe" in %PATH%]
"19:21:51","notes2w.exe","1276","QueryOpen","C:\Programme\IBM\Lotus\Notes\framework\rcp\eclipse\plugins\com.ibm.rcp.j2se.win32.x86_1.6.0.20090219c-200906101703\jre\bin\null http:\www.xyz.com/something.nsf/0/id?opendocument.exe","NAME INVALID",""
[and again try this pattern in all %PATH%

This smells like a bug: why isn't notes using the default value in the registry? It looks like Notes is actively searching for Firefox and IE, but discarding everything else. And why is it looking for null.exe in several %path% entries? So I'm a goo citizen and open a IBM PMR and putting in all this information.

What do I get as a reply? A nice standard Mail with "Opera not supported".

WTF?

I won't change my default browser, the productivity hit is just not worth it. Also wouldn't matter, as both IE and FF in current versions are not anymore supported. And:

• Why do you name the preference "default browser of the operating system" if you discard the value and only accept certain values? Why make it extra hard to impossible to use something else? There is a difference between "not supported" and "impossible".
• Why don't you just try to send the link to this value: it's an "operating system default" because every f**** browser (even lynxs et al) understands "browser URL". Especially because you just do that in basic mode.
  
• Why don't you handle the situation, when there is no "default browser" and show an error message? FF3 and IE8 get an Error message, but why not Opera?
  
• (Another question is if it is a proper error message if it says "Unable to locate program" like it currently does when I switch to FF3.5/IE8 as default...) 
• Why do you code like this and make it impossible to use current (or at the time of coding: future) browsers?
  
• Why do you search for "null.exe" in the complete system %path%? Imagine someone places a 'del /s /f "%USERPROFILE%"' in such a file... And every user can change the default browser and also the %PATH% values...
  
• Why does the IBM Support only read "opera" and pastes it's default "not supported" text instead of reading the complete PMR and the "null.exe" problem?

Thank you IBM, for giving me another reason to stay with the basic client.

Can someone please tell me this is fixed in 8.5(.1)? Or that someone at IBM makes sure that this will get fixed? And please also in the 8.0.x stream?

Kind regards,

Jan, looking into how to exploit the null.exe to do the right thing...

That's at least the impression I get after reading all the blog postings about xPages and the new 8.5.1 client. Forms, Pages and so on are out and the future UI will be done in xPages for both the notes client and web.

(Disclaimer: I've not yet seen the new DDE and xPages as a design element and also not the 8.5.1 closed beta with client side xPages)

I'm in two minds about this development. My only impression of xPages are the webpages, which came to life in the last month and I find them horrible from a technical viewpoint: no valid HTML, no accessible build in, wastefull source code, JavaScript is needed to get basic functionality. Bah! Thats not one step backward in web development, but several miles in my opinion. Something like replacing something horrible with something new and then only getting half the way and getting the buggy alpha version (=80s html coding with tables and without css) instead of something state of the art (clean css layouts, progressive enhancement, accessible).

On the other hand I'm currently trying to build a translated web 2.0 UI for the notes client and that's a pain. You need one hack after another to get the experience right, some things simple don't work, (re)styling the whole UI is tedious at best (even with CSS or tools like NotesHound or Ytrias suite) and you get a lot of "strange" behaviour (or bugs? I'm too tired to reproduce and report all the small things along I discovered while playing with @Elements in HideWhen and uidoc.refresh from "on event postsave" of another document. First would be that the debugger only "sees" one opened doc...). Even translated GUIs are a big hack and not every element is translatable (the "subaction"-action in the action bar always shows the name, not the label -> looks like a bug; View lables not at all, buttons only by using Client JavaScript).

So getting a new, clean and probably proven development model and interface (I guess, that a browser is used to display client side xPages and not another GUI interpreter) is a good thing, even if I would need to start from zero again with Notes development.

Another good thing is, that this way a "hip" technology gets into notes development: web-development with html, css and javascript. This will lower the entry barrier for new developers coming from that direction, which is especially important for my (student) organisation with new people every two years: now someone with some web developer experience can hack together some new feature without getting to learn a complete new technology (and note sis new, because there is no "personal" use for notes). With some luck they wouldn't even need to code twice, as xPages should work the same in the web and in the client.

And it still go all the great technologies like security build in, replication, ... just with new, better and fresh UIs, which do not look like last century anymore. Finally a wiki in the client! Yay! So one reason less to complain about Notes :-)

So I think, that xPages and SSJS will replace LS and all the "old style" design elements or at least put them into deep maintainance mode. Which is itself the second negative point: I don't believe that all the bugs and shortcomings in the old style design elements will be fixed and so the only way going forward is redoing it all in xPages.

But overall I thing that xPages are great news for lotus notes: it gets rids of the weak point while keeping the strong points.

If the resulting html-code wouldn't be so "old style". Please, IBM, fix that! And you, dear reader, go vote on that :-)

After reading Chris Toohey's Quickpoll about Framesets vs. Web I started to think about rewriting a typical Notes Interface (outline to the left, views on the right) to be more "web 2.0" friendly with a landing page. To complete the challenge, the UI should be translateable and, of course, nice looking. The first problem: the typical landing page has "call to action" buttons: big, shiny buttons with an icon and some text. So, how can you do that in Notes? My tries:

• Buttons: can be translated via onLoad events and "document.forms[0].Button.value = document.forms[0].cfdField_LabelForButton.value", no icons possible
  
• HTML pass thrugh Computed text (=translateable) with <input>s -> just plain ugly.
  
• HTML pass thrugh Computed text with <button>s -> Does not work, as the notes internal html parser does not recognise the button tag
• Notes Table (with nice looking background + rounded corners) and a hotspot -> does not work, as the hotspot can't be set around the table and also because I haven't found a way to vertical center text in a table cell.
  
• Outline with one entry, styled with rounded corners, translateable the UI (lables are computeable), mouse over effects for the text. Only problem: setting width to "fits to content" has no effect, which means that the translations must be as long as the original text (seems to me that this is a notes bug).

Here is a screenshot:


The last one with the styled outline entry seems to be the best idea up to now, but the "fit to content" problem is bad :-(

Anybody with some ideas how to get nice, translateable, hover aware buttons with icons on it in the notes client?

Here is the demo DB...

I remembered that eclipse had an application container (used to be tomcat in eclipse 2.x, if I remember correctly, but should be something else today) to display help. But it looks as if that's not the cause for the firewall warning: When I open help I get another process, which listens on 0.0.0.0:4xxx (x is something different each time). Unfortunately it also listens to all interfaces :-(

Fun: you can get at help via your normal browser (try righ click -> Open in new Window in the help system):

Seems that I really have to try if I can access that URL from a different computer via LAN (and after adding the Firewall exception...)... A complete JSP Container...

Anybody with some experiences with package sniffing and some fun for trying to get at the other process? A normal telnet didn't help :-(