Things I Like about the Notes 8 Beta
In no particular order, I like:
Technorati Tag: notes8beta
- On wide screens (my home MacBook Pro and office Dell M90, for example), the preview pane on the right really does work very well.
- HTML messages load FAST! Really, really fast.
- Images in HTML messages are disabled, but you can click a link to see them - just like Gmail or Thunderbird. Excellent.
- Productivity apps are really good. I'm almost ready to remap my file associations away from MS Office, for real. I HAVE remapped my file extensions away from MS Office. Bear in mind, I'm a pretty low to normal Office user, not a spreadsheet warrior. I read a lot of documents and spreadsheets and create a few. So far I haven't needed Office since I installed the beta of Notes 8. I bet at least 90% of the installed Office base is just like me.
- The built-in browser works better than in previous versions. To the point where it's usable, even though it isn't Firefox. Since it's the same version of Internet Exploder, I have no idea why that would be. But it's so much faster loading that I'm actually willing to click on links now instead of always copying and pasting them into Firefox.
- They call it a Mail Message instead of a Mail Memo! Yes! Thank all the gods I can finally stop justifying that terminology quirk.
- Message UI is VERY pretty (I would NOT have guessed that Orange would be a good color choice for the Sender's name, but it is).
- Previous messages have very nice looking section structure to them.
- Also in Messages, convenient, easy access to additional fields (BCC, Sign/Encrypt), but you can HIDE them easily, too.
- Type-ahead in name fields is AWESOME - you have to use it to understand how usable it is. The way it learns who you send messages to most often is very cool. I get my boss' name in one letter. And it's not an uncommon letter.
- Search in Open List is fabulous (but needs filename/path and servername to show in results, if only for us admin/dev types).
- Advanced menus - just the idea is great, though everyone will have a slightly different take on what should and shouldn't be in what menu for whom.
- Show thumbnails - a little mini Expose for Notes.
- Saved searches!!! Very cool, and very useful.
- No problem running 8 mail template on 7 server.
- Even better, no issues running 8 mail template on 7 client, which means I can keep both 7 & 8 and use my production mail database in both. The 8 template in the 7 client actually looks prettier than the 7 template, too.
- New views in Calendar actually look modern!
- inline spell-check is cool.
- Themes! There's serious potential here. That's a whole 'nother post, but dang, that Operating System theme is FUGLY! Is there a message to M$ there, or is it incomplete?
- "normal" selection techniques - shift-click, ctrl-click - in views. It takes about 30 seconds to get used to this, and I'm so glad it's there.
- Database renamed to Application - this takes some getting used to, and I'm gonna struggle with it a bit, as will all long-time Lotus Geeks - but it is the right name.
- I love the preference that allow me to refuse to let someone recall a message that's been delivered to me (what do you mean, control freak?).
- File, Make Available Offline - fantastic!
Technorati Tag: notes8beta
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Posted by Mary Beth Raven At 06:52:08 AM On 08/20/2007 | - Website - |