On the road to Notes 8 beta refresh

April 27 2007

Nice job, Denise Shaw, on the new Notes 8 splash ...


Image:On the road to Notes 8 beta refresh


I spent some time last night updating to this week's Notes 8 build.  Things I notice immediate versus beta 2 --
  • Much much faster and tighter.  The team has done a great job moving the client along in the last seven weeks
  • The preferences have been further aggregated and expanded
  • The new day at a glance format (a summary view) is much more useful:

Image:On the road to Notes 8 beta refresh


We're planning a beta refresh for later in May, and I'm sure you'll be as pleased and excited about the update as we are inside.  I'll keep posting new discoveries over the next couple of weeks.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [32]

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  1. 1  Roberto Boccadoro  | 4/27/2007 10:53:16 AM

    Another nice touch on the Calendar. Month view has coloured entries now.

    RoB

  1. 2  Karl-Henry Martinsson  | 4/27/2007 11:03:40 AM

    Just an idea... What about releasing that splash screen (without the text, and perhaps even in a version without the logos) as a high res background image?

    Would be a nice and inexpensive way of marketing Notes 8... When the version is released, people will already recognize the graphics.

  1. 3  Mike Wissinger  | 4/27/2007 12:11:12 PM

    @2 - I'll second that.

    I also hope there will be a Notes 8 screensaver. I use the Notes 7 screensaver and regularly get comments about it. I'd much rather have that pop up when I'm with a client than a spinning windows logo.

  1. 4  Keith Brooks http://kbmsg.blogspot.com | 4/27/2007 12:14:50 PM

    Very nice Cal. view, I agree with Karl's suggestion and the new screen saver of Mike's.

  1. 5  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 4/27/2007 12:15:15 PM

    A completely new splash? Looks good. Can't wait to see if some of my issues are addressed in the refresh - thanks!!

  1. 6  Roger Hintz  | 4/27/2007 12:22:30 PM

    @3 - I'll third the motion.

    @Ed - How about a link on the Beta download site for the splash and screen saver.

    I'm hoping the refresh clears some of the problems I've had with getting the Linux client up and running.

  1. 7  one Lotus developer http://onelotusdeveloper.blogspot.com/ | 4/27/2007 12:35:10 PM

    1 Word... Nice!

  1. 8  Christer Eklundh  | 4/27/2007 12:51:25 PM

    My birthday is the 14th of may, I hope I get beta 3 that day... :-)

  1. 9  David DeWell  | 4/27/2007 1:04:14 PM

    Ed - I feel for ya man. When you are so busy you are scheduling to watch TIVO. *sigh* IBM need to pony up some money for a personal assistant.

  1. 10  Gerry Shappell http://www.protopage.com/lotusblogs | 4/27/2007 2:26:45 PM

    LOL.

    @2 and others - I was going to suggest the same exact thing. I already tried resampling the image but there is too much distortion at 1280px.

    Thx for the update Ed

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/27/2007 2:32:57 PM

    I've asked for the bitmap...

  1. 12  Norm Van Bergen http://www.symcor.com | 4/27/2007 2:42:38 PM

    Cool image - kinda reminds me of pulled taffy.

  1. 13  David Russell  | 4/27/2007 5:21:02 PM

    The new splash is excellent

  1. 14  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 4/27/2007 5:37:32 PM

    Funny, everyone is focusing on the splash screen - meanwhile I've watched the quality and overall polish of the client improve since beta 2. The new day-at-a-glance implementation is great.

  1. 15  Henning Heinz  | 4/28/2007 2:39:30 AM

    Funny? The splash screen is all most of us have. I am curious how much faster "much much faster" means.

  1. 16  Randall Shimizu  | 4/28/2007 11:00:54 PM

    Ed:

    Is the referesh and other forthcoming betas going to publicly released...?? When I was at the Lotusphere comes to you they indicated that Notes 8 beta 2 was the only public beta before the final version.

  1. 17  Peter Wilson  | 4/28/2007 11:25:09 PM

    I'd actually like a Beta 3 or 4...to iron out all the bugs in this release and improve the performance/memory size.

    Pete

  1. 18  Randall Shimizu  | 4/29/2007 2:15:12 AM

    I wish IBM/Lotus had a public beta of Lotus Quickr...!! They have the Greenhouse site, but they have reached capacity.

  1. 19  Bill McCuistion  | 4/29/2007 3:44:51 AM

    Ed:

    Here's my $2 in your garter belt.

    Let us know when we can touch it.

  1. 20  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/29/2007 7:05:00 AM

    @16, I'm not sure why that would have been said -- we've always planned another public build before release.

    @17 The next public release will essentially be a beta 3, or perhaps a release candidate 1... either way, as I mentioned above, the performance has already been improved since public beta / beta 2.

    @19 I -knew- having Lotusphere Comes to You in Houston down the street from "Treasures" was too much of a temptation...

  1. 21  Bill McCuistion  | 4/29/2007 12:27:10 PM

    @20, Next time LCTY in Houston, why not meet at the IBM/NASA facility? Oh, yeah, that's now the "Boeing" facility.

  1. 22  Bruce Elgort http://www.TakingNotesPodcast.com | 4/29/2007 6:54:15 PM

    @20,

    John Head has repeatedly told me that their was not going to be a second beta for Notes 8.

  1. 23  Bill McCuistion  | 4/29/2007 11:13:11 PM

    @20, I would presume that the (Eclipse) update-site would automatially feed the updates, as usual with Eclipse-applications, and that I can save my $2 for otherwise.

    @22, If this is "as good as it gets", then I'm pretty far from OK. (To sort-a quote "Big Man" in "Pulp-Fiction" following the rape-scene).

    And, OBTW, Ed, I upgraded my laptop memory from 1GB to 2GB, and the Notes-8 (beta-2) client start-up takes much longer, but, once launched, crashes more quickly. Seems the crash-recovery routines make more effective use of additional RAM. <g>.

    I'm keeping the faith, but see bon-fires on the horizion.

  1. 24  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/30/2007 7:34:24 AM

    @22 - Really? Heck, I would have told you there'd be another beta. We knew it would be in May when the beta went public in the first place.

    Were you asking him in January or something?

    @23 - My T60 with 2GB starts substantially faster than my former 1GB machine. Must be the dual-core upgrade. Crashes have been few and far between for me, in spite of the fact that I regularly work in Designer as well as the client. Mostly, what appear to be lock-ups turn out to be modal dialogs that get stuck in the background.

  1. 25  Bruce Elgort http://www.TakingNotesPodcast.com | 4/30/2007 8:10:15 AM

    @24,

    Let John chime in. It was at the time I was giving him my feedback on the Beta which I believe was on or around March 11th. It was Ed who confirmed to me a few weeks ago that there would be in fact an additional beta.

    BE

  1. 26  Wayne Sobers  | 4/30/2007 8:56:27 AM

    The refresh will be interesting. I have standard running on a 1.6Ghz NetVista with 768Mb of Ram. Works very well once its loaded.

  1. 27  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 4/30/2007 3:39:30 PM

    I do not remember saying that Bruce ... we never knew the details of what was going on with the betas after the first release, but there had to be a beta refresh at some point. If I did say that, they you got me on IM while I was playing WoW. My attention is never 100% then :)

  1. 28  Bruce Elgort http://www.TakingNotesPodcast.com | 4/30/2007 3:58:54 PM

    @27,

    My chat transcripts never lie :-). ONWARD!

  1. 29  Bill McCuistion  | 4/30/2007 11:52:02 PM

    @24, Nathan, I boot that laptop every week or so.

    As it turns out, the more I boot it the quickr it gets.<g>

    Reminds me of the old Windows OS days when it took at-least 3 reboots to get anything "fully-installed".

    Glad I'm not on the tier-1 help desk any more.

    Oh, but wait, I am.

  1. 30  Doug Siew  | 5/9/2007 11:01:29 AM

    Mine running on opensuse 10.2 halts pretty often. Always need to do the "kill -9" and restart it. Furthermore, no tabs are shown on the tab bar at the top screen. Hope all these will be fixed in beta 3.

    DS

  1. 31  Goldstein http://www.rosa.com | 5/15/2007 11:53:01 AM

    Yes, nice splash.

  1. 32  Goldstein http://www.rosa.com | 5/15/2007 11:53:58 AM

    Yes, we are really looking forward to get to J2EE and Eclipse! It's the future.

    Will we get a beta 3?