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31. Sorting Mail Message
Suck Synopsis:
R5 mail template icons for switching between mail, calendar and to-do do not look like they are clickable and the mouse over text uses the word “frameset” which is confusing to non-technical people.

My Rebuttal:
Notes keeps mail, calendar and to-do documents in a single database, which makes it easy for administrators to keep track of. Users then, need to be able to easily switch between these items within the one database, thus the icons in question. Personally, I think the R5 ones were better than the way the 6 version does it, but it takes up less space in 6… so … whatever. I’m not sure how it can be said that the R5 icons don’t look “clickable” since the active one has a different appearance and there is a mouse-over tip on the messages. Oh, and “framesets,” while technical, is also a fairly easy term for people to intuitively understand.


32. Screw You, Lotus Notes Style
Suck Synopsis:
The author clicked on something somewhere that he wasn’t authorized to and Notes returned a pop-up message, telling him that he was not authorized.

My Rebuttal:
Not sure why I’m going to bother with this one, but… When you click on something (which, btw, it’d be really nice if you’d remember what you clicked on before you complained about it) you don’t have access to, it makes sense that the application would tell you.


33. Deleting an Email Message, Part 2
Suck Synopsis:
R5 required you to hit F9 once you flagged documents for deletion to actually delete them, but once you did that, there was no way to retrieve the document (from the trash).

My Rebuttal:
The author acknowledges that this was fixed in version 6. However, I’m not sure the R5 complaint really makes sense. If you mark something for deletion, and then confirm that you want to delete it, why should Notes make you go into the trash and delete it there as well?! — It was similar to the difference between dragging something to the recycle bin and hitting SHIFT+DEL when getting rid of a message.


34. Attaching a Shortcut
Suck Synopsis:
When attaching a shortcut to a mail message, Notes attaches the file the shortcut points to instead.

My Rebuttal:
Fixed in 6.5.2. (I couldn’t get mine to do it, and didn’t bother to try.)


35. Breaking the Bank
Suck Synopsis:
Lotus Notes is expensive.

My Rebuttal:
Seriously?! Personally, I think Lotus Notes/Domino is a heckuva deal. The licensing (while ever-changing) is flexible based on what you want to buy. There’s options for people who just want to use mail or webmail (which, I’m thinking might be a good fit for this guy) as well as Notes clients, Developer clients, etc. And of course you have to pay for the Domino server. You have to pay for Exchange server or any other inferior mail client. — That’s just a silly comment.

Its also important to point out that not only do you get mail functionality with Notes/Domino, you get an embedded and extendable security structure (often overlooked for how valuable that is), a web server and, oh yeah, an application server that easily integrates with most of the other stuff you have out there! And that’s just the one sentence explanation of Domino.

36. Propaganda: The Total Cost of Ownership
Suck Synopsis:
The article from the Radicati Group about Notes TCO vs. Exchange doesn’t take into account how much time the user wastes figuring out how to do things.

My Rebuttal:
I’d suggest checking out this link. Every last one of the complaints (in the second table of TCO cost break-downs) can be attributed to two failures in the author’s experience that should be addressed:
1. Lack of Notes client training to end-users (any application should have that in a corp. setting!).
2. Lack of a knowledgeable Notes Administrator (in his organization).

Yes, everything he mentions is frustrating, but easily fixable with some time, training and good IT system management. Call me. We’ll fix it.



37. Scroll-bars That Are Not Needed
Suck Synopsis:
Notes displays scroll-bars when it doesn’t need to.

My Rebuttal:
Yeah, I’ve seen that too sometimes. Most of the time, I just refresh or click the “down” scroll bar and it goes away. — I’ll give you that one.


38. You’ve got mail
Suck Synopsis:
When you get new mail, Notes can display a message box with “OK” and “Open Mail…” The problem is that “OK” does nothing and the audible notification is useless if you’re not at your desk.

My Rebuttal:
Yep. See… the “OK” button makes the popup go away as if you’re saying “OK, thanks for letting me know, now go away.” If you wanted to say “Oh, thanks, let’s go ahead and OPEN my MAIL…” then you should press the “Open Mail…” button.

As for the audible notification not doing anything unless you’re at your desk… yeah, that’s right. It doesn’t. Might I suggest a mobile Notes application and a Treo?


39. Copying a Mail Message
Suck Synopsis:
When Notes copies a message from one folder to another, it creates a shortcut to the message, not a copy.

My Rebuttal:
First… the only way I’m aware of copying a message into a folder is using copy/paste functionality. Second… if you do that, it does make an independent and unique copy that isn’t tied to the parent. — Am I missing something? What just happened here?


40. What Just Happened?
Suck Synopsis:
The author clicked the doclink beside the subject line of an email and got an error saying that the document had been deleted and didn’t understand what happened. Another time (clicking the same icon, in a different message) he got a pop-up stating that the doclink database cannot be located.

My Rebuttal:
While I agree that the doclinks beside the subject line are confusing 50% of the time and unhelpful 85% of the time, its not for these reasons.

The message “document has been deleted” is straight-forward: “the … document… has been (as in, in the past) … deleted.” End of story. Whatever it was pointing to isn’t there because it was deleted.

The message “The DocLink database cannot be located” is a bit more vague, but still tells you that the link references a database that can’t be found. It could be because you’re working off-line, or because the database (probably another person’s mail file) doesn’t exist (maybe they were fired), or because it was moved to another server.

So no, the messages aren’t bad, but the functionality does leave something to be desired. I’d suggest looking at some of the early Hannover stuff… it looks like Lotus found a clever way to deal with all that. I hope.

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21. Sorting Mail Message
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t allow people to sort by subject.

My Rebuttal:
They do now in Notes 7. Yes, they probably should have done so before now… but now they do.

22. Checking Your Inbox for New Mail
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t have a “check for new mail” option and instead relies on “refresh.”

My Rebuttal:
I’m usually the first one to harp on Notes for the way that new mail is notified. The coolest thing was the icon that changed back in the Windows 3.1 days (yes, I used “cool” and “Windows 3.1″ in the same sentence).

Today, Notes throws a little icon next to your clock when you have new mail. It also (usually) displays new messages right in the view without requiring you to “refresh.”

The author’s complaint was updated to admit that Notes does provide a way to check if you have it open. - However, you can control how Notes alerts you in the Preferences area. Also NotesMinder (nminder.exe - found in the “notes” folder/directory on your computer) is still an option for people who want to have new mail alerts sent without even having Notes open, much less the inbox.

23. Stupid Error Messages
Suck Synopsis:
User sees an error message stating “File truncated - file may have been damaged” and doesn’t think they should ever get that message.

My Rebuttal:
I’m really starting to see that an upgrade is needed… maybe some training for your Notes Administrator(s) and Developer(s) too.

A search on Notes.net will give you lots of ideas for why this might be happening. In most cases its fixed by a “fixup” and was caused by either an indexing process or by restoring a file from a backup.

The author seems to be less concerned about the error and more concerned about the fact that he GOT the error prompted to him. I agree that providing some options for help (or reporting to an admin) would be beneficial.

24. When Notes Crashes
Suck Synopsis:
Notes crashes and then tells you to log-off and restart Notes again.

My Rebuttal:
Most of the time when I’ve seen this message, its because the user clicked the icon (to launch Notes) too many times. Assuming that isn’t the case here, yeah, it’d be nice if Notes would allow you to just restart it without logging off (or rebooting). But… its not unique in the fact that it asks you to do that.

25. Changing your password
Suck Synopsis:
Notes tells you your password will expire but doesn’t let you change it right then and there.

My Rebuttal:
As the author mentions, Notes now DOES offer to let you change the password right away (since 6.5.x). He also mentions that the Notes-generated suggestions are too complicated. … Its a password, it SHOULD be complicated. And its just a suggestion, you can pick your own. Even if you wanted it to be “ihatenotes” (although, might I suggest “1hat3NoT3s” instead as a great strong password).

26. Where’s my Waiter
Suck Synopsis:
Notes prompts you with a dialog box when it can’t connect to the server.

My Rebuttal:
Yeah. It does. This message is clear. Its your administrator’s fault for not keeping the server on-line. Or maybe its your fault for not reading an announcement about scheduled down-time. I don’t know.

27. Changing Column Widths
Suck Synopsis:
Column resizing and preview pane behavior is not remembered after you restart Notes.

My Rebuttal:
That was anoying. But its been fixed in 6.5x and beyond. Prior to that, there was a preference that helped with that problem but seemed to work intermittently depending on the actual build, the database template, the server version and the direction of the wind. Regardless, it works slick now (6.5 and up).

28. Entering a Hyperlink
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t automatically create hyperlinks.

My Rebuttal:
Well, it does and it doesn’t. It doesn’t show you that its created one in-line when you type (ala MS Word). It DOES, however, automatically create hyperlinks when a recipient gets an email message that has one in obvious hyperlink format (with the “http://” and all). — But yes, in-line and obvious would be tres nice!

29. Proportional Scrollbars
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t support proportional scrollbars.

My Rebuttal:
Wow. Yeah, that’d be cool. — Alright, LotusNotesSucks-guy: 2, Lotus Notes: 27.

30. Remark
Suck Synopsis:
Notes has a silly menu that has something to do with a phone system, but its unclear what.

My Rebuttal:
The functionality in question here is not Lotus Notes (default/standard) functionality. Its some third-party application that integrates Notes with the phone system. Its not really Notes fault at all… but those have been historically bad.

2006 might just be the turning point, though. More of these systems are starting to not only integrate with Notes, but Sametime as well, which is probably a better place since Sametime’s all about collaboration and communication. — Stay tuned for more!

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For those of you clicking on this post w/o reading “Part 1″ you might want to do that. If you’re busy and don’t want to, here’s what you’ve missed:

I was reading someone else’s blog who had a link to an article about why Notes is still around, which cited a website from some dude who has 80 reasons why Notes sucks. It was Valentine’s day, so I decided to share the love and pitch in my 2 cents about why Notes DOESN’T suck. Here’s my rebuttal to items #11-20 on his site…
11. Deleting an Email Message
Suck Synopsis:
The dialog box that appears when deleting messages is confusing. (What’s the difference between “delete” and
“remove” from sent?)

My Rebuttal:
The ability to specify if you want to DELETE the document completely from the database or REMOVE it from the sent (meaning you probably saved a copy in a folder or something for reference later) is actually quite powerful to help manage documents in your mail file.


12. Accidentally Starting Notes
Suck Synopsis:
When you accidentally hit the icon to start Notes, you have to click ESC three times to exit Notes.

My Rebuttal: The author of the site acknowledges that this really isn’t a problem anymore, and each version of Notes has a new and improved dialog box to help you out here.

I think its important to point out that Notes has always supported multi-users (IDs) on a single machine and that the behavior of hitting the ESC key is quite handy when you’re using Notes on a machine with many IDs/Users.

Since Notes defaults to the last user who authenticated, its nice to be able to hit ESC and switch IDs without having to know someone else’s password or having to sign on to Windows differently … or however other people do that with other inferior mail clients.


13. Another Unnecessary Dialog Box
Suck Synopsis:
When clicking on an embedded document (possibly without a file extension in the file name) an un-helpful dialog appears.

My Rebuttal:
Hmmm… get the feeling that this guy has a problem with dialog boxes? Yeah, me too. I’m also starting to think that whomever is building their applications uses embedded documents a bit too much (I avoid it whenever possible).

Honestly, it looks like a developer and/or training issue here. I get why the Notes dialog box isn’t helpful, but its probably just bad programming on the application.


14. Drag and Drop Text
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t support drag and drop’ing text.

My Rebuttal:
Correct. That’s a decent idea. I see some potential challenges when you get to applications with different field types… but even if it only worked within the same rich-text field, it could be handy. — Why not submit it as a feature request.
LotusNotesSucks-guy: 1 … Lotus Notes: 13 and counting.


15. Canceling a Message
Suck Synopsis:
The dialog box Notes displays when cancelling a mail message is bad.

My Rebuttal:
I don’t think there’s a person at Lotus (or Iris, back in the day) that would be able to disagree. 6.5 was a big improvement and 7.0 is even better. It just takes a moment to think about what the options mean, and then it makes sense.

Whenever I do Notes training, I always include a slide and go through that with people… so they’ve seen it at least once already when they actually cancel a message themselves. — Seems to help.



16. Reinventing the Menu Bar
(note… I am not putting a link to this one on purpose… the page crashed IE for me and has lots of ads, as most of this
guy’s pages do, which screw with your computer. If you want to look, its nyah: http://lotusnotessucks.4t.com/lnEx16.html but don’t say I didn’t warn you)

Suck Synopsis:
The Notes menu bar is different than Microsoft’s (and others).

My Rebuttal:
I started reading this and knew I’d agree. Then I saw his side-by-side comparison of Notes and other app’s menu bars and I realized Notes isn’t that bad after all. In fact, its more like other menu bars than I gave it credit for.

While I don’t think that “Actions” is a terribly helpful name, I’m not sure what it could/should be changed to. … And neither does he. Its a rant w/o a helpful suggestion.


17. Windows Color Scheme
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t adopt the Windows color scheme.

My Rebuttal:
It does. Not sure what version didn’t do it, but it works fine on my machine in 6.5 and 7 running on XP.



18. Publishing Databases
Suck Synopsis:
Notes allows you to publish a database to a library … why?

My Rebuttal:
Seriously? Well, Ok. So that others can be aware of your database and easily find it in a list of databases that are categorized in a way that is helpful to your company.


19. Is There a Ship in Port?
Suck Synopsis:
The dialog box for “No ports capable of calling are in use…” is unhelpful and requires you to go several levels deep into a menu to fix the problem.

My Rebuttal:
Who uses dial-up? And of those people, who uses automatic dialing in Notes? Its an obscure feature anyway that few use. Having to go several menus deep just gives you time to think about how you really should find a way to get access to a high-speed connection.


20. Toolbaritis
Suck Synopsis:
You can’t move toolbars around in R5.

My Rebuttal:
Yes/no. Some you could change and/or turn off by modifying the toolbar settings. However since 6+, you can move them at will. Upgrade.

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Happy Valentine’s Day.

While keeping up-to-date on one of my favorite blog sites ( CodeStore.net ), I noticed a posting about an article about how Notes sucks. In the article, the author cites a website where some dude posted 80 things he hates about Notes.

They’re silly things. So, in honor of sharing the love, I present to you the first in (possibly) a series of rebuttals on this topic.

1. The Logon Window
Suck Synopsis:
When entering your password, Notes displays hieroglyphics.

My Rebuttal:
Remembering the last graphic shown on a successful entry of your password helps you know if you have entered the correct password. Since you can’t see the letters you typed (for obvious reasons), this is handy. Its extra-important since Notes prevents password hacking programs by increasing the amount of time between each attempts. So… if you were mistyping your password (or had caps lock on), the graphic would help you instantly know you were wrong before hitting OK.


2. Clicking a Hyperlink
Suck Synopsis:
The error “This browser is not installed” appeared.

My Rebuttal:
It was a bug that was fixed. Actually, Notes is smart about this as it allows you to specify the browser you want to use in your location document. Notice that it’s not a “preference” but a location document. So if you have a location document for a development mode, you can also point to a different browser. Handy, if you ask me!


3. The Mail Message Shortcut Menu
Suck Synopsis:
Right-click option have “useless” options like “Copy as link.”

My Rebuttal:
“Copy as link” is tremendously handy! DocLinks are very handy tools and unique to Notes. It is also suggested that items like “Properties” be changed to “Document Properties” which is just a matter of semantics… if your on a doc ument (which you probably are) then the fact that it’s a “document” properties is implied.


4. Opening an Attachment
Suck Synopsis:
A dialog box appeared when double-clicking an attachment that states “Changes to object will not be saved in a Read-Only Doc ument.”

My Rebuttal:
While I agree that Notes dialog boxes on attachments are just starting to get more helpful (and have been improved in 7.0 again), this one is most likely for an embedded document on a form marked read-only. Part of the blame could possibly be put on the application developer (if they didn’t find a way to communicate what type of doc ument it is to the end-users) but if it is access rights-related, then the little graphic in the lower right portion of your screen tells you.


5. Sending an Email Message
Suck Synopsis:
Hitting “send” in an email with no one in the “to” field returns an error stating “No names found to send mail to” – instead, it should not show the “send” option.

My Rebuttal:
It’s a clear message. Hiding “send” wouldn’t necessarily clue the user into what was wrong. I think its helpful.


6. The Property Sheet
Suck Synopsis:
The properties box should refer to the mail database as just that and not “database;” the “compact” option doesn’t tell the user anything; “user detail” does nothing; the box has useless information on it (such as rep ID and ODS version).

My Rebuttal:
First, what’s an end-user doing here? There’s really no need. Second, the power of Notes is that even the mail component is a database… explaining that value would be the subject of an entire blog entry. Lastly, what’s an end-user doing in there anyway?


7. Poorly Designed Icons
Suck Synopsis:
The icons in the properties box are not intuitive.

My Rebuttal:
(A) What’s an end-user doing here?
(B) They make enough sense…except for the beanie. That is silly, but we all know what it means by now, so changing it would be even silly-er.


8. Unnecessary Clicking
Suck Synopsis:
The drag-n-drop functionality for files should show an icon instead of having to right-click and select “display as.”

My Rebuttal:
While the site acknowledges that this was fixed in R5, it fails to acknowledge that the support for drag-n-drop between applications was still somewhat new at the time. And the idea of Notes being able to accept d-n-d’s from Windows was a big deal and has improved with each version.


9. Attaching a file to a Mail Message
Suck Synopsis:
Attempting to attach a file while the cursor is in the “To” field returns an error stating that Notes cannot execute the specified command.

My Rebuttal:
I’m… I’m not even going to dignify that one with a response…. Why should it… No, seriously, I’m not even going to go there.

… Why in the world would you think it would allow you to do…
No. No! I’m not going to explain that one…


10. The Attachment Window
Suck Synopsis:
The attachment window dialog sucks.

My Rebuttal:
Yes, it does. It got better with 6.0. And is MUCH improved with 7.0. But it probably could use some work.

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I blog’d yesterday and had the frickin’ thing up for 24 hours before someone pointed out that both the URL were wrong (now fixed) and the code was missing (because I didn’t use the proper HTML character codes in the posting).

It made me realize I had info to share to others. So here we go:

When you write HTML code into something, let’s say: a blog, that renders inline HTML as HTML, you need to be careful. Instead of displaying code, you’ll tell the browser to do something. In this case, it was to change the RSS feed of the page. Woops.

Its easy to fix. Simply replace the HTML (such as a less-than sign) with an HTML Character Code that represents it. When the HTML is rendered, it’ll look at the character code and display what appears to be HTML source code right on the page.

Need to know what codes to use? Yeah, I do too. Try this resource.

There. I was able to blog about something other than The Apprentice, the day after a new episode aired. Phew.

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