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Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:00 am
by rmax
I am back using Lotus Notes again. I can only think that it was designed by some mad-man. I know Cuttler's great idea was replication, but it does not excuse something that GUIS is so quirky it is impossible to work with. I am not an Apple Fanbois, but I can use their interfaces quite happily, and move from MS Outlook to using mail on my phone for example. Lotus Notes is just arcane.Two examples today already:1/ In the mail view I have two blue arrows, one light blue point one dark and one is pointing to the right, the other to left. I click on the light blue arrow, it changes the arrow to a dark colour, and adjusts the other arrow to light blue...oh and it also moves the tool bar 3 pixels. There is no tool tip to tell me what this wonderous thing is, or why it is there.2/ There is a check box next to the arrows of woe Vliew All and View Unread. It is a checkbox that acts like a radio button. What is more is that a checkbox on a toolbar is weird paradigm. Really what is happening is that I am applying a filter on that attribute. The way it is laid out, suggests that it is special behavior.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:06 am
by rmax
Ahh - the blue arrows scroll the second toolbar. Most applications are comfortable with one, but not Lotus Notes. Obviously toolbars for these boys are like the speed of your car, the size of you boat, how many beauty parades your girlfriend has been in.What is irrating is that the two arrows ONLY appear when LN thinks that you may need to scoll the second toolbar. If you don't it disappears [sic]. Yes not just disabled to say there is a feature here that is not appliable in the current context, but no some bright spark thought it would be great to make the tool on the sceond toolbar disappear.Did they not read any books on HCI when they built this?

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:11 am
by rmax
Whatever you do just don't hit F7 if you use Lotus Notes when you are editing a mail. No godammnit, please don't. Everytime you do it I swear a small child is killed.What does F7 do? Spell check??? I wish. It just indents your current paragraph, kills a child, and ensures that you can never ever get the paragraph back to the format before.Don't get me wrong outlook text editing was pretty shoddy as well, this sucks.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:14 am
by rmax
An oldie but a goodieInterface Hall of Shame

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:24 am
by tags
QuoteI am back using Lotus Notes againThey moved us from Lotus Notes to Outlook 2013, yesterday ... Ahhhh

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:31 am
by rmax
QuoteOriginally posted by: tagomaQuoteI am back using Lotus Notes againThey moved us from Lotus Notes to Outlook 2013, yesterday ... AhhhhYou lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky b'stard.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 8:34 am
by tags
QuoteOriginally posted by: rmaxQuoteOriginally posted by: tagomaQuoteI am back using Lotus Notes againThey moved us from Lotus Notes to Outlook 2013, yesterday ... AhhhhYou lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky b'stard.Get Lucky

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 9:31 am
by bearish
One very unexpected feature that I keep on rediscovering in LN is that when you try to copy even the smallest bit of text from a web site into an email, LN insists on bringing any and all information pertaining to that web site (embedded java scripts, advertising matters, etc.) along. This sometimes hangs the application long enough that the only practical solution is to engage the task manager. The only workaround I have found is to copy the text (or whatever) into a text editor and then copying from there into LN.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 9:45 am
by Hansi
QuoteOriginally posted by: bearishOne very unexpected feature that I keep on rediscovering in LN is that when you try to copy even the smallest bit of text from a web site into an email, LN insists on bringing any and all information pertaining to that web site (embedded java scripts, advertising matters, etc.) along. This sometimes hangs the application long enough that the only practical solution is to engage the task manager. The only workaround I have found is to copy the text (or whatever) into a text editor and then copying from there into LN.Edit -> Paste Special... -> Text works directly for this without having to go to the text editor.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 9:54 am
by tags
QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiQuoteOriginally posted by: bearishOne very unexpected feature that I keep on rediscovering in LN is that when you try to copy even the smallest bit of text from a web site into an email, LN insists on bringing any and all information pertaining to that web site (embedded java scripts, advertising matters, etc.) along. This sometimes hangs the application long enough that the only practical solution is to engage the task manager. The only workaround I have found is to copy the text (or whatever) into a text editor and then copying from there into LN.Edit -> Paste Special... -> Text works directly for this without having to go to the text editor.LOL that's right. Sometimes several (a lot of) minutes are required to copy/paste some fancy webpages with Lotus Notes.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 10:57 am
by Traden4Alpha
Condolences! My few experiences with Lotus Bloats were enough to make me want to short the stocks of Lotus' customer list. LN seemed to have a horrible UI that let clueless corporate minions develop groupware apps with even worse UIs.I am extremely surprised that LN hasn't been replaced by whizzy new cloudy-web stuff but then it seems corporations have such ancient IT, they probably can't handle the latest HTML5/Javascript-intensive browser-based interfaces.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 4:23 pm
by DavidJN
My horror story with Lotus Notes was with a client who wanted me to use it to send emails generated from Excel using a VBA macro. Whenever we tried to hit the proverbial send button we'd get a Notes error message window completely filled with nothing but question marks and not only would the local Notes application crash, it would take down the email server.The creators of this monstrousity have never really apologized, have they?

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 23rd, 2014, 4:28 pm
by tags
QuoteOriginally posted by: DavidJNMy horror story with Lotus Notes was with a client who wanted me to use it to send emails generated from Excel using a VBA macro. Whenever we tried to hit the proverbial send button we'd get a Notes error message window completely filled with nothing but question marks and not only would the local Notes application crash, it would take down the email server.The creators of this monstrousity have never really apologized, have they?I have a couple of macros sending emails + attached files with Lotus.Nothing to report regarding Lotus, but xls files published as pdf with Excel are ugly.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 24th, 2014, 2:23 am
by bearish
QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiQuoteOriginally posted by: bearishOne very unexpected feature that I keep on rediscovering in LN is that when you try to copy even the smallest bit of text from a web site into an email, LN insists on bringing any and all information pertaining to that web site (embedded java scripts, advertising matters, etc.) along. This sometimes hangs the application long enough that the only practical solution is to engage the task manager. The only workaround I have found is to copy the text (or whatever) into a text editor and then copying from there into LN.Edit -> Paste Special... -> Text works directly for this without having to go to the text editor.Thanks, Hansi. You are right, and somebody else had indeed pointed this solution out to me before. The first order problem remains, though, which is that you (or, more precisely, I) should be able to just copy and paste text and not worry about the deep underlying context in which it lives.

Lotus Notes Hall of Shame

Posted: April 24th, 2014, 6:38 am
by rmax
QuoteOriginally posted by: bearishQuoteOriginally posted by: HansiQuoteOriginally posted by: bearishOne very unexpected feature that I keep on rediscovering in LN is that when you try to copy even the smallest bit of text from a web site into an email, LN insists on bringing any and all information pertaining to that web site (embedded java scripts, advertising matters, etc.) along. This sometimes hangs the application long enough that the only practical solution is to engage the task manager. The only workaround I have found is to copy the text (or whatever) into a text editor and then copying from there into LN.Edit -> Paste Special... -> Text works directly for this without having to go to the text editor.Thanks, Hansi. You are right, and somebody else had indeed pointed this solution out to me before. The first order problem remains, though, which is that you (or, more precisely, I) should be able to just copy and paste text and not worry about the deep underlying context in which it lives.This is the underlying problem with LN. It constantly delegates responsabilty of context to the user, rather than trying to help the user by understanding the context. An example of this is that when you try and attach a document to anything but the message body, a messagebox comes up to say you can't do this. There are a number of better behaviors that are possible to have designed (and seems to have been solved in a number of other e-mail clients) - just the designers of LN did not bother.