Mary Beth Raven is the lead product designer for the "Hannover" project, a redesign of Lotus Notes. She joined the Notes team in 2005. Prior to joining the Notes team she was the lead designer for the IBM Workplace Managed Client and Workplace Messaging. Before joining the Workplace team, she was the Lotus Sametime designer for five years. Mary Beth has a Ph.D. in Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com

Hello Lotus Notes Community,

As of today, this blog about the design of Lotus Notes is moving to:
www.NotesDesignBlog.com

The contents of this blog will remain here for your reference.

www.MaryBethRaven.com  should already be redirected to www.NotesDesignBlog.com

I'd like to thank the developerWorks folks for hosting us for over 2 years. They have been very responsive to our requests.

As a team, however, we decided to move to the new blog for a variety of reasons, including the fact that we'd have more control over the layout and be able to have little side panels for IdeaJam,  and PlanetLotus. Of course, John Lance is also itching to actually use the new blog template that he designed.

We look forward to continued participation of the Notes community over on the new blog.

IdeaJam, Release cycles, and a culture of instant gratification

Over on his blog, Bruce Elgort asserts that voting on idea jam has come to a halt.

And he asks why. The common consensus appears to be that it's because nobody saw that it made any difference with the product.

That might be a completely valid assertion. I cannot remember when Idea Jam went live. I think it was right around the time that Notes 8.0 shipped, or shortly thereafter.

Let's say it was about a year ago. In that case, it was too late to influence anything in Notes 8.0, and we've shipped only a point release, Notes 8.0.1 in the meantime.

We have been trying to get a few things (most notably the number-one voted client thing, the roaming html signature-- or something like it) into Notes 8.5.

 It still takes a while to get something into a release cycle (We are also working on making them shorter/doing other inventive things).

So please do not abandon voting on Idea Jam just yet,  and don't stop responding to this blog, because your feedback can still honestly make a difference.

Reschedule the Lepofsky-palooza to August 6!

Heh. Alan will not be in town on the original date (seems the new job has him traveling already!.. and working hard... he sent me a note about rescheduling at around midnight...)

Please join us onat Flat Top Johnny's on  WEDNESDAY AUGUST 6

Directions: http://flattopjohnnys.com/contact.htm

IBM-ers and non-IBM-ers alike are all invited  HOWEVER, please post a reponse if you plan to come so that we can have an idea of how many people are planning to attend.

(For those IBMers who received an actual LOTUS NOTES calendar invitation, response to that, and not here, please.)

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you there.

You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!

Please join us on Wednesday July 23^rd at Flat Top Johnny's in Kendall Square (walking distance from the Cambridge office) to celebrate Alan's time at IBM and his new adventure. The party starts at 5pm, so feel free to drop by whenever is best for you. Rumor has it Johnny's has Canadian beer on tap, so the fun will probably continue well into the night.

Directions: http://flattopjohnnys.com/contact.htm

IBM-ers and non-IBM-ers alike are all invited  HOWEVER, please post a reponse if you plan to come so that we can have an idea of how many people are planning to attend.

(For those IBMers who received an actual LOTUS NOTES calendar invitation, response to that, and not here, please.)

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you there.

Better large font user experience coming to you in Notes 8.5

Patient  users,

Notes 8.5 will bring Samantha an improved user experience for setting large fonts.

First, as in previous versions, you can go to your operating system and say to use large fonts.  And this will make the font in your title bar and menu bar larger.

Now, in Notes 8.5, there is a new preference, and she can choose to use normal, large, or extra large fonts, as shown in the picture below.  This changes the fonts in the views (including java views) and forms to large font.

I do realize that Samantha has to go to 2 places to set large font, which is not ideal (but it's a little bit friendlier than an ini setting...). And yes, there is a third place that she can go to set the font family-- the preference called "Basic Notes Client Configuration", which has a "Default Fonts" button that lets Samantha choose her default serif or sans serif font. We did not put the new control there because that dialog pertains ONLY to the "traditional" Notes client, where this new Large font preference pertains to both the old and the new java parts of the client.  Also, I wanted to completely replace that default fonts dialog because it is not clear to Samantha which fonts get affected where, plus she cannot set the point size... but we did not get to fix that part in this release.

I've tried to illustrate what you have to set where in the following picture:

We're all in this together....

I wish to extend my congratulations to my friend and colleague, Alan Lepofsky on his new career move from IBM to SocialText.

There has been quite a range of blog entries about what his move means... and what it means (to me, at least) is that  those of us in the CSCW (remember that acronym? Computer-supported cooperative work) community have a collective mission to support and improve how people collaborate-- by giving them new computer tools and capabilities. It does not matter if we work for Lotus, IBM, TeamStudio, Socialtext, Lotus911, SNAPPS, Pavone, Joe's garage, BinaryTree, or whatever...  we are all motivated by trying to use computer technology to help people collaborate.

.. and that's what it is all about. And I think that is one of the great parts of the whole social network "revolution." I interact with Rocky Oliver just as much now that he's with Teamstudio as when he was an IBM employee... and I can say almost the same about Bob Balaban... and I am hopeful that I will be able to say the same thing about Alan Lepofsky. He's a resource -- and a friend -- and when I ask for assistance, he'll provide it... not because he's "an IBMer", but because he  and I are both members of a community that shares a vision of supporting collaboration via computer technology.

Update on the Symphony Icons

We have received feedback that  our family of "yellow circle" icons sometimes makes it difficult to  discern the different ones.

To that end, we are working on new versions of the entire product family, although at this moment, I am not sure how many we will be able to get into Notes 8.5.

However, the good news is that we have been able to change the 3 icons for the 3 Symphony editors (Spreadsheet, Presentation Tool, and Word Processor), as shown in the picture below.

Back from vacation, and John Lance is just starting his, and string freeze was June 30

Loyal customers,

If you follow me on twitter, you know that I was on vacation last week. We rented this house on the shores of Seneca Lake, in upstate New York, with my father, sister, and their spouses, dogs, children. We had a great time.

I have returned just in time for John to take a week off, so our shared design studio is quiet.

While I was gone, we had STRING FREEZE for Notes 8.5. This means that all the files with translated words got packed up and sent off to the translators. After this, it is really hard to change any of the words, because the file has to go back out and get translated again. Very expensive.  So we try not to do that.

Roaming Rich Text Signature

The proposal
If Samantha had previously selected a plain text or an HTML/image file, we will import it for her into a new rich text field.  There will now only be one field for a signature, which will be rich, and it will roam.  Since it's a 'low cost' solution, Samantha will only have a 'lite' rich text field, but that will allow her to add attachments, such as a vCard, and also her picture or company logo.

Questions

1. If you used the Plain Text and HTML/image file as a way to manage 'two different' signatures, you will no longer have this option.  You'll have to change the one signature in preferences or manually enter the 2nd signature (through More > Insert Signature... command).  How big an issue is this?
2. If you go to an 8.5 client (and 8.5 template) and then switch back to a previous client, while keeping the 8.5 template, you will no longer have automatic signature support.  Unfortunately, the Preferences page will make it seem like there is automatic signature support, so this is a concern.   Does anyone have this scenario?  If so, why and how often?
3. If you have different signatures on different machines, we will only retain the signature from the first machine you use with 8.5.  How often do people have different signatures on different machines?
4. You will be able to insert images, attachments, and doclinks.  The actual rich 'text' support available in this dialog is very limited (i.e. only red or blue text, only one font, etc.), so Samantha will probably want to create her 'rich text' somewhere else and paste it in.  We know this isn't ideal. How big a deal is this?
5. Any other issues you're concerned about?

Again, we're trying to ascertain whether this ‘low cost’ solution to roaming signatures is still better than what we have today, given the issues I’ve listed above.  Please give us any feedback on the questions above, and at the end a simple Yes or No would be great too!

Thanks,
Margo and the Notes Template & Core teams

Need more opinions of a specific aspect of the new sidebar behaviour

Colourful Customers,

First, please note that since Paul Mooney and Warren Elsemore gave me the official English dictionary, I have been trying to be sensitive to the spelling needs of  the non-Americans, and have been using the letter "u" more often in my blog posts.

Now to me real question:  In a response to this post about the sidebar, Randy Castle said that clicking on of the little "minimized on the bottom" icons made all of the little titlebars appear. Here is Jamie's response (she's the developer who worked hard to bring you this feature!)

Symphony Mail merge and Notes: Your opinions wanted about a few details

Patient followers:
Symphony is introducing  Mail merge. As part of mail merge,  there's an email feature that integrates with Notes. This feature allows Betty to compose a single document, and insert fields from a datasource (aka list of recipients). For example, the letter would be the same with exception of the greeting and/or address block.

The Improved Sidebar scalability in Notes 8.5

Loyal readers,

In Notes 8.5 the Sidebar will be easier to manipulate. Specifically, it will be easier to:
Drag a panel up or down. However, that still left us with the issue that each panel had a title bar that took up space, as shown in the following picture.

So we added the ability to drag a panel down to become an icon at the bottom, or drag it up to be an icon at the top.

In the public beta , you can drag icons DOWN so that the become an "icon bar" at the bottom.  As of today's build, you can also drag them up, as shown in the screenshot below:

Styles in Personal Folders

1. Keep things as is, with the Inbox (and other system folder/views) different than Personal Folders.
2. If a user performs an Upgrade Folders command, apply the CSS from the Inbox to the Personal Folders, so that the styles match.
3. Always extend CSS files to personal folders, so they automatically look the same as the Inbox (and other folder/views).

Notes Client 8.5 beta users: I am looking for feedback about the sidebar

Hello to the users of the Notes 8.5 beta client:

One of the things we tried to improve in Notes 8.5 was the "manipulatability" of the sidebar panels. So please try out the new sidebar. Specifically, please do one or more of the following:

• Open 3 or more sidebar panels. More is better.
• Drag to make them taller or shorter.
• Check to see if there are any new menu items on the "Panel menu" (the one drop-down menu thing we provide in the title bar of each sidebar panel).

IMPORTANT! If you are using TWITNOTES as a sidebar panel, well,  the new features won't work, so remove twitnotes (You don't have to uninstall it, just remove it from the sidebar, I think). ther emight be other home-grown sidebar panels thta break it as well.

Let me know what you think/what we can improve.

I'll post pictures and details of how it is supposed to work, etc. in a day or so, but before I blog about the details of this new sidebar that you can manipulate more easily, I want you to just play with it.

Thanks,

Mary Beth

Thanks.

A great big thank-you to the organizers of ILUG 20008

As a presenter and "speedgeeker" at the Irish Lotus User Group 2008,  I want to extend my thanks to the  organizers of the event.  I am sure that it was a great deal of work, but it ran flawlessley from my point of view.

I was able to not only present and speedgeek,  but also gather feedback about Notes 8.5 beta from an international audience. That's important to me and the design team, and it was perfect timing since the public beta had just been announced.

I know they are all exhausted (and they must be a little insane because they just announced UKLUG 

So thanks again to Warren Elsmore, Kitty Elsmore, Paul Mooney, Eileen Fitzgerald (special thanks to her hiking recommendations and directions also, the Howth head hike was gorgeous), Bill Buchan, Tom Duff,  Matt White, Julian Woodward, and Rob Novak, and all the others who helped out.

The community spirit was great, and that's why I love my job. Lotus Notes isn't just a software product-- it's a community of people who honestly have fun together!