I am expecting lots of screenshots and demos of the Lotus Notes 8 beta at Lotusphere 2007
Link to original Hannover Article: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/nhan6dbjwg
Lotus Notes Domino 8 Client Workspace Screenshots
There are screen shots of the new lotus notes 8 workspace Lotus Notes 8 Workspace screenshots. I am pleased that the workspace is being worked on, as despite the attempt to force users to use shortcuts instead the workspace has prevailed in all subsequent notes installations.
New Lotus Notes Domino Person page
There is a new Person/contact page with space for an image. I saw a demo where when you hovered over an email address the image popped up...
There is a way of viewing contacts as business cards with photos, which looked nice. This allows you to incorporate this into new views.
Lotus Notes 8 Supports JSON See Lotus Notes JSON
Lotus Notes 8 has an workspace overview feature which shows all open workspace tabs thumbnailed and allows you to search through them. Cool.
Lotus Notes 8 Non-Eclipse version is planned "Lotua Notes Express" which will be like Notes 7 client, it will not run components.
Lotus Notes 8 mail has a retrieve email option, which Outlook users have asked for, hmmm useful but could bring on sloppy emailing.
Lotus Notes 8 mail has a horizontal line option in the outline so it is like Outlook's navigator.
The Open button can be docked to the left side of notes, and looks good there.
View items can be put on 2 lines to allow for right preview.
New Nwtes Windows can be opened in their own OS window or can be used as in notes opening in a tab or similar windows can be grouped under tab pulldown. Sounds good.
The thread emails works if the documents are in different folders.
Conversation mode shows number of responses and twisty on all messages. Thread messages show that someone might have answered the email already and saves timewasting.
You can delete a thread or conversation in one go. Cool. Less clutter.
Dynamic Person Address Book - keeps colleagues in order that you most use them. Caches 2000 names. Type ahead picks the most likely person. Cool.
In line spell checker with undo. Very smart.
Right click on a name and "View Recent Collaborations" shows all sametime chats or email threads with the person...
New appointments that have not been responded to show up in the calendar in white.
Scheduling, you can temporarily untick an invitee to see if there is a space without one person.
The A-Z navigator sometimes added to contacts dbs is available on a tick box down the left of a view.
Recent contacts from the Dynamic Person Address Book can be viewed in recent contacts folder, and can be used off line.
Contacts can be delegated to allow other users to see them and there is a new replication option for contacts.
You can add people or collaborators to Activities and share the activities.
Lotus NotesDomino 8 Client Icons
There are also new pastel icons. A few of the icons have changed, and I think this is a mistake:
The red cross icon 81 which I use for "Reject" has changed to a soft blue no access sign similar to the red no access sign of icon 80, which is now a soft orange.
The finger with string around it, icon 10, has changed to an alarm clock. I am not bothered about that one.
Person with hand raised icon 160 is now also an alarm clock.
Thumbs up and down 83 & 84 are now tick and a cross - this could be very confusing - WHY WHY WHY?
The lightning bolt has changed to a flower ! What possible justification is there for these changes - ridiculous, if you want to add a flower add a new icon, the icons only got up to 187 before so there is loads of numbers left.
The hippo is now yellow not blue and the umbrella is geen not red. Whoopdedo. Don't care.
This one annoys me: the red hot thermometer is now cold BLUE. Stupidity. Ridiculous. Why oh Why? No reason at all. Stupid. Idiotic.
The green spot,114, is now yellowy orange and the red spot,115, is blue !!!!!!! Unbelievable - are they trying to completely confuse users! Ridiculous! Change for marketing and pastel colours sake only, no thought for usablility or practability or backward compatability.
This has to be changed back, surely, this will be a very costly process to update all of these application views, help pages and documentation. This is the sort of change that will get companies thinking about scrapping Notes and going to SAP or .Net . Whoever proposed these changes should be sacked. Fired. Waste of time.
Pastel shades. OK. I can live with that, but RED means Notify Watch out, Alert, Danger. Changing these to soft blue or soft orange is going to make it all blend in.
The thumb icons are used when you need more than one approval button or icon, why make them the same as the ticks and crosses.....?
More examples
There are come comments and examples and questions answered here at this Domino8 blog . The blog is written in a new Notes 7 Blog template and is quite nice.
Apparently they will nto be handing out Notes 8 beta CDs at Lotusphere, I think this is a shame, as it allows people to show it off back at work etc. It is one reason why I go to Lotusphere to get new demos and releases to invigorate and energise the Notes crowd and the Notes knockers.
I will add any more news here. See my lotusphere2007 entries: Lotusphere 2007 Monday General Session