Friday, April 27, 2007

Vertical Preview Pane

One of the new capabilities that has been featured in Notes 8 mail is the ability to have a vertical preview pane of your message. This feature emulates what has been found in Outlook for many years. As I was developing an interface for our contact management system, I discovered that this capability has been in Notes all along at least Notes 7 and most likely in Notes 6 and Notes 6.5. There are two critical factors to get this to work. First, you need to create a frameset that has two frames that has been split vertically. In the first frame, set the frame to the view that you would like to display.



Next, name the second frame to a given name that you would like. For example, "NotesPreview". Second, in the property box set of the first frame set "Default Target Links in Frame" to the name of the second frame.

As a result, when you click on a document in the view, a preview of the will be previewed in the second frame, vertically.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Lotusphere Comes to You - Toronto

After flying to Buffalo on my favorite airline, Southwest Airlines and driving a couple of hours I am here at Lotusphere Comes to You - Toronto. Last night my brother-in-law took me to an all you can eat sushi restaurant and of course like most things in Toronto it is run by a Chinese family. Unlike other all you can eat sushi restaurants, this restaurant was very good. It was not a buffet. You choose from a menu and they make it when you need it and the price was great compared to Chicago. The place is called Yang's Sushi Restaurant in Markham, ON. So if you are in the area and like sushi you will like it.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Notes and SMB

On Ed Brill's blog link for the past few days that has been a long discussion about Notes and the small business market and whether IBM is addressing this market effectively with the new product offerings that are in the pipeline this summer. The blog has progressed into the discussion about the Notes Basic client which has been a point of long discussion for me in many blogs. If you have seen the Notes 8 Basic beta client, you will find that it is pretty much the Notes 7 client with some improvements. I do not see signficant investment in improving the Notes 8 Basic client in the future. Whether it exist in the future I do not know. I truely understand the direction that IBM is moving forward for Notes 8. It may not address the needs of some small businesses (under 500), but it is a direction that best fits the medium and large businesses that makes up a major of IBM's clients.

As a business partner who focuses primarily on the true small business market, I understand that the direction may not meet the needs of small businesses. Yes, there are the exceptions that might require tools like Websphere Portal Express, but the majority of the small business are not at that stage and could not afford the overall cost. In the small business market, Notes and Exchange is competing against a much faster moving and competitve market than the enterprise market. The reason is that there are much more options for small businesses. That aside, Lotus Notes and Domino still offers to small businesses a significant competitive advantage over other solutions.

It is up to us as Notes users and business partners in the small business community to drive improvements to meet the needs of small business, whether that is involves improving the Notes Basic client or new products and solutions gears towards the small business market.

I would like to hear from individuals in small businesses that are using Lotus Notes and Domino on what improvements that you would like to see in Notes and Domino so business partners like ourselves and others can provide products and solutions that will not only support the continue use of Lotus Notes but also allow it to expand its role in your small business.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Why use Notes, Security

Web-based applications provide great convenience in allowing you to use any computer with a Web browser to access an application. However, it comes at a price. Again it has been announced that there are more security holes in browsers running Javascript,Javascript hole. With everyone building Web applications using AJAX, this announcement may have a impact on the security of AJAX applications. The Notes client may not be as convenient as the Web browser, but I will take security over convenience. In the world of the Web and Web applications, Notes and Domino still provides a better and much more secured solution for companies.

CollabSphere 2022 Presentation: COL103 Advanced Automation and Cloud Service Integration for your Notes/Nomad Applications

Our presentation for CollabSphere 2022. Learn how to quickly add workflow automation into Notes/Nomad applications using No-code tools that ...