DominoKeys.com

61. Pasting/Creating an Image
Suck Synopsis:
The author is trying to copy/paste an image and runs into Notes difficulty in doing this.

My Rebuttal:
Agreed! That is lame. Notes used to run everything through this 256 color rending thing as part of its normal process. Its been fixed (I think 6+), but it was lame back in the day!


62. Print Preview a Folder
Suck Synopsis:
The author right-clicks a folder name and hits print and gets a weird preview.

My Rebuttal:
Wait… what exactly were you trying to print? An entire folder of documents or the label of the folder?! — If its the former, then go into the view, access the print dialog/menu and select “view.” If its the later, that’s lame!


63. Interlude
Suck Synopsis:
The author does a screen print of error messages from Notes.

My Rebuttal:
All of the messages were valid and made sense for what I assume he was trying to do. I’d tell you for sure, but he couldn’t remember what he was doing when each occurred.


64. Fun with the To Do List
Suck Synopsis:
The author doesn’t like error messages in To Do’s.

My Rebuttal:
Let’s talk about WHY you got these messages:
1. You were trying to take action on a To Do document, without first selecting (read: “Clicking on”) a document.
2. (same as #1)
3. You were trying to UN-do something you hadn’t yet done. As a general rule of … you know, the universe, you can not un-do something that has not yet been done. — Just wanted to point that out because its not just a Notes-thing. Its an every-thing!


65. About Lotus Notes
Suck Synopsis:
The “about” window in Notes doesn’t give detailed info beyond the version and copyrights.

My Rebuttal:
Correct. Notes actually IMPROVES on the “about” concept by allowing each database to have its own unique “about” document. — It also has a “using” document, but I won’t go there because I’m not sure the value of the “about” document is going to set in with this guy.

66. Appointment Categories
Suck Synopsis:
… are useless.

My Rebuttal:
I totally disagree. They are really handy to help manage your time. Let’s say you’re working a project and you want to be able to see how many meetings you’ve had on the topic. Categories are a great way to do that! I just wish that they’d pass down to PDA devices! (But that’s not a Notes problem.)


67. Undo
Suck Synopsis:
There are too many things you can’t un-do in Notes.

My Rebuttal:
You may be right. However, the power of Notes is that the mail functionality is just one application within the Notes/Domino architecture. The ability to tap into that is very powerful. The fact that Notes uses the same application “stuff” (code, elements, etc.) to do email is amazing and an awesome resource for developers. So… most of us just “deal” with the fact that there’s a handful of things we can’t un-do because we like that even mail is playing along with the same rules that we all have to deal with when we build Notes apps.

That being said… maybe they should build a universal undo function. There’s about 999 other things I’d want first, though.


68. ???
Suck Synopsis:
(Another page I couldn’t get to load.)

My Rebuttal:
Try running a DOMINO server? (Of COURSE I had to go there!)


69. Mail Message Bloat
Suck Synopsis:
Attaching files using drag-n-drop produces a different file size than attaching using “Create\Picture.”

My Rebuttal:
The author points out that this was fixed in 6.5.2. However, he fails to mention that Create\Picture is a different type of activity compared to drag-n-drop and/or “attach file.” The differences in how the picture/file is attached/represented on the document is a big part of why the file sizes are different. — Longstoryshort: if you want to send the picture to someone else, drag-n-drop or “attach” it, don’t try other stuff.


70. Stupid Error Messages, Part 5
Suck Synopsis:
(More stupid error messages)

My Rebuttal:
FINALLY! — I was hoping that one of these “stupid error messages…” entries would get to THESE error messages. Yes, these are stupid and I agree that it’d be GREAT if Lotus Notes would be more helpful with these. Maybe create a debugging log, give you a list of the last actions it took, tell you what the form or field name is that it got hung up on … something!

Wow. 70 items into this list and we see eye-to-eye on something. I look forward to what #140 is!


71. More User Frustrations
Suck Synopsis:
(Quotes from more people who also do not like Notes.)

My Rebuttal:
No! Dude! We had something going in #70 up there… we agreed. Why you gotta go back to this one again?! Oh, man. I guess its over. We’re gonna disagree from now on again, aren’t we? Ugh. Alright, well, if that’s how its gotta be…


72. Drag-n-Drop Multiple Attachments from a Mail Message
Suck Synopsis:
Notes doesn’t ‘drag-n-drop multiple attachments well (from Notes to Explorer).

My Rebuttal:
Yeah. Its gotten better in the 6 code-stream. 6.5.x is pretty well ironed out. But it was goofy until then.


73. Print from Print Preview Mode
Suck Synopsis:
You can’t actually print when you are in the “print preview” mode.

My Rebuttal:
Wow. You’re right. I guess I never tried that before, but it would make sense. — Man, something about the #70’s that is making us agree. Scary!


74. Incorrect Use of Ellipses
Suck Synopsis:
The “Print Preview” and “About Notes” menu options shouldn’t have ellipses.

My Rebuttal:
(I saw that one coming in #73.)
Again, dude, I agree. They probably shouldn’t. (Although, if “Print Preview…” worked like you wanted it to, it would need that. So maybe the guys at Lotus are just one ahead of you.)


75. Lotus Notes Automation Classes
Suck Synopsis:
Notes automation classes are all capital, hard to understand, and prefixed with “NOTES.”

My Rebuttal:
What?!?! All this time… all these comments… I thought you were just an average Notes client user. You mean to tell me that you know about automation classes and you’ve been complaining about the last 74 items?!?! Dude! I’ve been WAAAY to easy on these responses. I really should go back and start over. Good thing I’m sick of doing this!

Oh yeah, the rebuttal: Eh. No big deal, really. Its kinda nice that they all are prefaced with NOTES, I think.


76. Least Favorite Favorites
Suck Synopsis:
The terminology for “favorites” and “bookmarks” is confusing.

My Rebuttal:
So. Delete them. Create your own. They’re kinda catch-all ones to give people an idea of what’s possible. I’d suggest creating one called “Startup” and see what that does!


77. Sorting Mail Messages, Part 2
Suck Synopsis:
The sorting arrows are confusing.

My Rebuttal:
The direction of the arrow denotes the available over-ride options for the default sort setting. In most cases a single direction will do. If your designer wanted to have both available, you would have seen different icons.


78. Meeting Invitations
Suck Synopsis:
The “Request information…” button doesn’t have a way out if you change your mind.

My Rebuttal:
I vaguely remember that. It must have been a bug that was fixed in 6.x-something because mine works fine.


79. The Cut Command
Suck Synopsis:
The “cut” command on an email behaves as delete does.

My Rebuttal:
I think what he’s proposing is that Notes should grey-out the document when cut, like Windows Explorer. It doesn’t do that, it just looks like it went away. However, if you hit “paste” it returns. — So… its really not a big deal.


80. More Stupid Error Messages, Part 6
Suck Synopsis:
(More error messages and narrative about why they are “stupid.”)

My Rebuttal:
I agree with all of these except the last one. The last message is the “your password expired… do you want to change it…” which gives you a “Yes/No” option. He says its stupid. I say its really nice. It gives you a chance to think about a new password before committing to it. So if you need to get in and do some work, you can and think of a password later (for whatever the grace period is). How thoughtful!

Phew! That’s it. 80 reasons why Notes sucks and 80 rebuttals. I’d say we landed on maybe 5-6 ones that I’d agree with in all, but I wouldn’t say that any of them warrant the label of “this product sucks.”

What DOES suck, however, is this guy’s website. Thank goodness I don’t have to look at that until #81 comes out!

41. The Lotus Notes Workspace
Suck Synopsis:
(Lots of complaints here, you may want to read it for yourself. The short version is that the Workspace is not intuitive.)

My Rebuttal:
The Workspace is a necessary evil… er… element. Its been around since day 1 and everyone who’s had pre-R5 versions of Notes can’t seem to let go (myself included). However, Lotus has done a good job of tweaking this while keeping the old functionality.

The author says that the Workspace should open DBs when you do a single click. That’d be hard for legacy users to get used to. So, Lotus (in 6.0+) started to allow you to display your bookmarks as a workspace. Tada! Now everyone can access Notes dbs in their method of choice.

Its also important to point out that there are usually 3-5 ways to do everything in Notes. Which makes it intuitive to just about everyone. Since R5, you could click on the side toolbar to open your mail with one click, or from the main/home/splash screen, or from the workspace, or from the bookmark bar, or from the lower-right status bar, or … Get the idea? Its handy, powerful and its ready to be used however YOU want it to be used.


42. What’s This Help?
Suck Synopsis:
Clicking the “?” to get “what’s this?” help takes you to the help file instead of showing you context-sensitive help.

My Rebuttal:
I totally and utterly agree. That should be how it works.


43. Creating Objects
Suck Synopsis:
Attempting to create objects is more pain than its worth.

My Rebuttal:
Again, I agree. However, I’m not sure why the average Notes user (who this article is written for) would ever want to try to create objects. Its not intuitive to most end users and probably isn’t what they’re trying to do anyway. — When I don’t understand an option in software, I do the following:
1. Click it, see what happens.
2. Look into the Help file and see if I need it.
3. Ask someone if I need it.
4. Ignore that it’s there until someone tells me I need it.

Feel free to make my process … your process.


44. Interlude
Suck Synopsis:
(The author cites other quotes from people who also think Notes sucks.)

My Rebuttal:
Pick your software package, I guarentee I can google a bunch of people who think it sucks.


45. Reply with History
Suck Synopsis:
You can’t reply to a message and cite a section of the original message. It pulls everything or nothing.

My Rebuttal:
No, you CAN copy/paste a section of an original message. Notes doesn’t automatically note it as a “citing” or “quoting” a message like some PHP message boards might. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an email app do that…. MIGHT be handy, but I’m not going to make that decision without some discussion with other people.


46. The Status Bar
Suck Synopsis:
The status bar is useless and doesn’t allow you to do anything with the info.

My Rebuttal:
The status bar is just a report of activities Notes has done while you used it. There’s really no other point than to give you an option to see what its doing. Its helpful, but doesn’t have to be used if you don’t need it… which is why its on the bottom of the screen. Its actually handy and a good UI position!


47. Customizing Lotus Notes
Suck Synopsis:
The way Lotus Notes handles Preferences and Settings is unintuitive.

My Rebuttal:
I agree that its hard to get at modifying all of the preferences and settings for the whole Notes experience, but I think they do a decent job of letting you at all that stuff. The “preferences” menu is dedicated to items that are Notes (client)-wide. “Settings” are unique to the function. And “tools” and “options” are things within a certain part of the application. Calling them all “preferences” (or whatever) would be too confusing. Thus, I think they did the right thing.


48. ????
Suck Synopsis:
(I have no idea… the page didn’t load.)

My Rebuttal:
Must not be running a Domino server!


49. NotesMedic
Suck Synopsis:
Notes crashes and requires a reboot. Cassetica offers freeware to eliminate the need to reboot between Notes crashes.

My Rebuttal:
Yeah, it’d be nice if Notes didn’t require a reboot. However, as a friend of mine once said: “What would you rather have, a car that doesn’t require you to use the service department and to never know if they are good or bad, or a really good service department and you are sure of it based on how many times you’ve had to visit it?” — I’d choose not needing the service department and so does Lotus. Each version is progressively more stable than the last.

But yeah, it’d be nice if that’d just get fixed too.


50. Moving Mail from the Send Folder
Suck Synopsis:
You can’t move a mail document to a folder from the “sent” view (or as he says “send folder”).

My Rebuttal:
You can. There’s a button for it and everything. And Notes takes out the whole “view vs. folder” debacle by just changing the options in the dialog box to “add” instead of “move.” You’re over-thinking this one. Its got the same effect (actually a better one, if you keep thinking about it).


51. Sametime Connect
Suck Synopsis:
The “About” section of Sametime connect has a mispelling and looks goofy because of an indentation in the details.

My Rebuttal:
Yes, the word was mispelled and fixed (I believe in 6).
Indentation: I… so… don’t… care…


52. Stupid Error Messages, Part 2
Suck Synopsis:
He did something (doesn’t remember what) and got an error message he doesn’t understand.

My Rebuttal:
I would suggest that if you could remember what you JUST clicked on, then the message might have more value.


53. Design Upgrade
Suck Synopsis:
The user clicked haphazardly around the Workspace and got a “Design upgrade” message. When he clicked “no” he got a confirmation stating that the design upgrade did not perform and thought it was useless of Notes to give that second error message.

My Rebuttal:
A) What the hell did you click?!
B) I dunno… most end-users would probably think that something like a “design upgrade” is serious and would appreciate knowing that it didn’t occur.


54. Breaking the Rules
Suck Synopsis:
The author is complaining that there is an error message telling him that he can’t move a rule that is at the top of the list to a higher position. He’s also complaining that he gets an error message telling him that he can’t disable a rule that is already disabled.

My Rebuttal:
I have a rule with friends of mine: If I’m being a dumb-ass, you need to tell me I’m being a dumb-ass. Clearly, Notes has the same rule with its end-users.
Solution: Stop being a dumb-ass.


55. The Attachment Window, Part 2
Suck Synopsis:
The user clicked “View” in the attachment dialog box and ran a “.pif” file that had a virus and it corrupted their system.

My Rebuttal:
A) No anti-virus?! Um…. why?!?!
B) Refer to A.


56. Interlude, Part 2
Suck Synopsis:
Another list of people who also think Notes sucks.

My Rebuttal:
You know you can call IBM and log these complaints, right? They’d love to listen and make their product better, explain what’s going on or tell you how to fix it.


57. Breaking the Rules, Part 2
Suck Synopsis:
He can’t set up a rule.

My Rebuttal:
Help file.


58. History of Lotus Notes
Suck Synopsis:
He thinks that the “history of lotus notes” is silly.

My Rebuttal:
As opposed to…?
Is there a product history that is better than the story Notes has? Microsoft is going to add the same “propaganda” to their history of Exchange/Outlook. History is just an account of what happened. Its in the past, so let’s all move on…


59. Double-click Default Inaction
Suck Synopsis:
In the “Go to…” window, you can’t double-click on the name of the folder/view you want to go to, you have to select it and hit OK.

My Rebuttal:
OK, I’ll give you that one. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that.
fyi… the “OK” button is exactly 1 3/4 inches away.


60. Deleting Old Messages
Suck Synopsis:
The method for deleting calendar entries returns an error that is unhelpful (because it says “…remove the selected document(s) from the calendar”).

My Rebuttal:
I forget what version started it, but Notes now has some calendar management stuff to auto-do-this. I don’t think that particular dialog box is confusing. (The following error is a bug that’s been fixed in a later version. Again, upgrade.)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.