Earlier quoted context omitted.
the Eclipse version still had the old DLLs underneath with just a rather superficial Java layer put on top. JVM wrapping compiled C code, yay....
Always fun when NLNOTES crashed but the Eclipse wrapper kept running so things like tabs still worked but couldn't show any Notes tabs however web based tabs kept working.
Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
111–120 of 123 posts
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#112Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#113> “If I want to ‘refresh’ the inbox shouldn’t I press F5? Nope, that will lock the app and require your password to unlock it,” went one of the many complaints collected on Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood’s blog. “How do I send an email? CTRL+ENTER? Of course not! ALT+1, naturally.” I don't know if I want to fault Lotus for that. As someone who juggles between Windows, Mac and Linux on a daily basis, using wron…
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#114> “If I want to ‘refresh’ the inbox shouldn’t I press F5? Nope, that will lock the app and require your password to unlock it,” went one of the many complaints collected on Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood’s blog. “How do I send an email? CTRL+ENTER? Of course not! ALT+1, naturally.” I don't know if I want to fault Lotus for that. As someone who juggles between Windows, Mac and Linux on a daily basis, using wron…
Nobody cares perhaps, but F5 as a refresh key came in the mid 80s (I was told it was a $1m of usability consulting). The midrange AS/400 got [CUA]( https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.1.0?topic=actions-default-... ) first. There were many more F1 for help, F12 for go-back-a-page, F3 for big-exit of app. Green screen stuff (3270 and 5250 where two common wire/frame protocols). The same keys made the jump to some windows…
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody cares perhaps, but F5 as a refresh key came in the mid 80s (I was told it was a $1m of usability consulting). The midrange AS/400 got [CUA]( https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.1.0?topic=actions-default-... ) first. There were many more F1 for help, F12 for go-back-a-page, F3 for big-exit of app. Green screen stuff (3270 and 5250 where two common wire/frame protocols). The same keys made the jump to some windows…
F1 still launches Help in some apps. I don't think I've ever done it on purpose...
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exchange is funny because it's X.400 native internally, even if recently they dropped external X.400 support
Yeah, Exchange is a good comparator because it shows what the mail aspect of Notes might have been like had it been designed in the mid 90s rather than the late 80s. It's hard now to appreciate how different corporate IT was from the free-wheeling Internet world. The unexpected popularity of the web really did change everything.
Plus just how much SMTP sucked compared to other systems and only got enough kludges barnacled onto it in semi-transparent way by late 1990s
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#117My first exposure to Lotus Notes was to work on a migration project that was moving from Notes to "Exchange WebStorage System" (WebDAV) - which was an aborted "go-nowhere" server/service which ended-up being replaced by SharePoint ("Teams Services") - which we had to also re-target mid-project. We faced a situation where we had about 4,000 custom Notes apps to migrate, a small team and an extremely limited time. (and…
As a former Notes user (email, cal, plus apps for expense tracking, etc) - what did Notes in was the horrendous, non-Windows user interface. The second half of the article here is spot on, if anyone bothers to read it. Nice to see those old site ridiculing Notes, Jeff Atwood et al - a blast from the past! As an end-user, I welcomed Notes demise. And don't get me started on its god-awful local/offline sync behavior. O…
Sure I guess if all you cared about as an end-user was email and Windows-like UI, then I guess I understand. But you were missing a ton of other things.
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody cares perhaps, but F5 as a refresh key came in the mid 80s (I was told it was a $1m of usability consulting). The midrange AS/400 got [CUA]( https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.1.0?topic=actions-default-... ) first. There were many more F1 for help, F12 for go-back-a-page, F3 for big-exit of app. Green screen stuff (3270 and 5250 where two common wire/frame protocols). The same keys made the jump to some windows…
F1 still launches Help in some apps. I don't think I've ever done it on purpose...
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
SMTP predates Notes by nearly a decade.
This. Any engineer or manager developing Notes at the time had to be aware of X.400 and X.500, and SMTP. They decided to ignore them. However cool and useful and clumsy Notes was, it was a proprietary walled garden. Lotus and the IBM hawked it, and surely profited. But for the customer it was an expense. Eventually Notes was overtaken by Metcalf’s Law, and the fact that cheaper always wins. That and, you know, Micros…
The Notes directory was based on X.500 - it had the same attributes etc. Notes didn't implement DAP, but then almost nobody did, which is why we got LDAP.
There was an add-on connector for X.400 mail. I remember installing it a couple of times. It was fine, if cumbersome due to the nature of X.400. ;-)
They also didn't ignore SMTP. There was a connector for it for Notes 4.0 and 4.1, and starting with Notes 4.5 that connector was bundled in the box. Starting with Release 5 they retired the connector and moved SMTP functionality to be native in the mail router process, and for security they provided a separate SMTP listener task. Both of these were configured in the Notes Directory via Server Documents and Configuration Documents, just like any other feature of the server. If a Domino server wasn't sending or receiving SMTP, it's because its administrator didn't want it to, not because it couldn't.
It wasn't a walled garden, or if it was the wall was very low. By comparison Microsoft's first attempt to dethrone Notes - Exchange Public Folders - was a completely walled garden. And a very well fertilised one which people avoided due to the smell.
But it's OK, Microsoft then gave us SharePoint. The fact that Microsoft's customers rushed to it tells you how bad Public Folders were. So your comment "That and, you know, Microsoft" is much closer to the truth than protocol support.
(Source: I was a Principle Certified Lotus Domino Administrator for multiple versions, and have used & administered Lotus Notes versions from version 3.33 through to 8.5. I worked at a consultancy and installed many, many implementations of Lotus Notes across a number of topologies. I also had an Exchange Server MCP and worked with multiple versions of that too.)
Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
#120My first exposure to Lotus Notes was to work on a migration project that was moving from Notes to "Exchange WebStorage System" (WebDAV) - which was an aborted "go-nowhere" server/service which ended-up being replaced by SharePoint ("Teams Services") - which we had to also re-target mid-project. We faced a situation where we had about 4,000 custom Notes apps to migrate, a small team and an extremely limited time. (and…