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Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

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Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

#111
post #91

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.

The sad thing for me is that Notes’ core data model was really solid. As a rapid internal app dev platform it was ahead of its time in many ways. E.g. Microsoft’s sharepoint and power apps still cannot compete in terms of capabilities. IBM just didn’t know what to do with it.

Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

#113
post #40

> “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 apps. One by one they got whittled away until F5 for refresh was left. For that one it wasn't just Windows - as browser rollout took it wider. Has it gone yet? I'm on a Chromebook and it doesn't have F keys so I can't see for myself.

Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

#114
post #113
post #40

> “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…

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

#115
post #113

Earlier 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...

Haha - the number of times I’ve accidentally hit F1 and ended up looking at some variation of ‘page not found’ in Edge…

Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

#116
post #54

Earlier 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.

One thing many people don't understand is that IP was not that common of a protocol in intranets for a long time, too

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

#117

My 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…

What was so bad about the non-Windows interface other than it wasn't Windows? I didn't have problems with using Notes email or developing apps for Notes. It had incredible workflow and database replication features. Blew anything Microsoft had at the time out of the water. When I was forced to start using Outlook, didn't care for it. Still don't think it's all that great. I guess Sharepoint is decent enough now.

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

#118
post #113

Earlier 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...

"Have you ever seen a keyboard where the F1 key is missing? Chances are that isn’t an accident. It’s a deliberate move to avoid accidentally launching the Excel Help menu [...]"

https://excelevate.co/wp/2025/06/11/save-the-f1-key/

Re: Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

#119

Earlier 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…

Lotus/IBM didn't ignore those standards.

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

#120

My 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…

We migrated to office 365 around 2013 from notes, horrible to use compared to notes. The project was supposed to pay for itself with loweered license fees for notes users, then it turned out we had 2-3k apps in notes without any migration plan or budget, so most people still needed a lotus license for years.
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