| Latest 7 Posts |
This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com
Wed, Jul 23rd 2008  160
|
IdeaJam, Release cycles, and a culture of instant gratification
Mon, Jul 21st 2008 88
|
Reschedule the Lepofsky-palooza to August 6!
Fri, Jul 18th 2008 46
|
You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!
Wed, Jul 16th 2008 145
|
Better large font user experience coming to you in Notes 8.5
Fri, Jul 11th 2008 95
|
We're all in this together....
Wed, Jul 9th 2008 125
|
Update on the Symphony Icons
Tue, Jul 8th 2008 130
|
| Top
10 |
For a Notes 8 look and feel just use this template
Wed, Jun 4th 2008 267
|
New Startup Sequence for Notes 8.5
Thu, May 8th 2008 175
|
New icons make lists of e-mail easier to scan in 8.5!
Tue, May 13th 2008 175
|
This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com
Wed, Jul 23rd 2008 160
|
Announcing the Lotus Notes and Domino Wiki
Fri, Mar 7th 2008 156
|
FINALLY! My first-ever actual conference t-shirt made for a woman!
Tue, Jan 22nd 2008 151
|
You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!
Wed, Jul 16th 2008 145
|
A .png dilemma
Tue, Apr 8th 2008 140
|
Update on Notes 8.5 on the Mac
Sat, Mar 15th 2008 137
|
Update on the Symphony Icons
Tue, Jul 8th 2008 130
|
|
|
| Blog Posts |
160
|
This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com 
Wed, Jul 23rd 2008 10:51a Mary Beth Raven
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 h [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
template
community
ideajam
planetlotus
|
88
|
IdeaJam, Release cycles, and a culture of instant gratification
Mon, Jul 21st 2008 9:47p Mary Beth Raven
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 shippe [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
roaming
idea jam
ideajam
|
46
|
Reschedule the Lepofsky-palooza to August 6!
Fri, Jul 18th 2008 10:45a Mary Beth Raven
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 [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
|
145
|
You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!
Wed, Jul 16th 2008 3:04p Mary Beth Raven
As you have heard, Lotus guru, strategist, blogger, favorite Canadian and friend Alan Lepofsky has left IBM after 14 years with Lotus. Although he is not going far away (nobody is far away in this socially-networked world!) We simply can't let him slip out the door without a proper celebration.
Since the commute to Orlando for karaoke and sake at Kimonos would be a bit rough, and insurance wouldn't cover an ultimate frisbee tournament, we have decided to celebrate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
blogger
office
|
95
|
Better large font user experience coming to you in Notes 8.5
Fri, Jul 11th 2008 10:44a Mary Beth Raven
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 [read] Keywords: forms
ibm
notes
notes client
java
|
125
|
We're all in this together....
Wed, Jul 9th 2008 10:05p Mary Beth Raven
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 [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
community
network
|
130
|
Update on the Symphony Icons
Tue, Jul 8th 2008 11:25a Mary Beth Raven
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. [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
symphony
|
62
|
Back from vacation, and John Lance is just starting his, and string freeze was June 30
Mon, Jul 7th 2008 1:46p Mary Beth Raven
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 (well, except for Kathy-the DominoDesigner-designer muttering to herself).
While I was gone, we had STRING FREEZE for Notes 8.5. This means that all the files with [read] Keywords: designer
ibm
notes
twitter
|
102
|
Roaming Rich Text Signature
Mon, Jun 23rd 2008 5:05p Mary Beth Raven
We're exploring some 'low cost' solutions until we are able to provide a more robust solution to the roaming signature issue. The goal with the designbelow is to provide Samantha with a roaming signature
using the Notes client. It does not address all issues (i.e. DWA will still
have its own signature, no support for multiple signatures, etc.) and there are
some backward compatibility issues. What we need to hear from you, is
whether the gain of a roaming rich text signature in Notes outweighs [read] Keywords: dwa
ibm
notes
notes client
rich text
roaming
template
|
72
|
Need more opinions of a specific aspect of the new sidebar behaviour
Fri, Jun 20th 2008 9:44a Mary Beth Raven
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 de [read] Keywords: ibm
widgets
|
75
|
Symphony Mail merge and Notes: Your opinions wanted about a few details
Wed, Jun 18th 2008 9:45a Mary Beth Raven
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.
One of the options available to Betty after composing the document is to send an email using Notes. The information that will be provided for the email (To [read] Keywords: document
ibm
notes
symphony
database
email
integration
|
82
|
The Improved Sidebar scalability in Notes 8.5
Tue, Jun 17th 2008 10:44p Mary Beth Raven
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 [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
|
93
|
Styles in Personal Folders
Tue, Jun 17th 2008 11:50a Mary Beth Raven
With the advent of Notes 8.0, we introduced CSS styles in the Inbox. The styles set in CSS override the attributes set in Domino Designer. The question we have for you, is how should we handle personal folders? Right now, there are no CSS styles in the personal folders, so the look of these are controlled by the settings in Domino Designer. This has been a problem for some, in that their Inbox style does not match their Personal Folder style. In particular, the look of a 'read' e-mail in th [read] Keywords: designer
domino
ibm
notes
notes client
css
development
|
80
|
Notes Client 8.5 beta users: I am looking for feedback about the sidebar
Fri, Jun 13th 2008 11:25a Mary Beth Raven
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 [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
notes client
twitnotes
|
You can rent this space for 30 days. Interested?
|
71
|
A great big thank-you to the organizers of ILUG 20008
Tue, Jun 10th 2008 7:09a Mary Beth Raven
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 th [read] Keywords: ibm
ilug
lotus
notes
community
|
107
|
ILGUS 2008 comes to a close
Fri, Jun 6th 2008 11:11a Mary Beth Raven
The closing sessoin of ILUG is commencing. There's still a lot of energy-- one sponsor is throwing out "stress ball brains" and people are having fun.
The "Customising the look of Notes 8" session (Volket, Paul et. a., notice the proper English spelling of "Customising") went well and was well attended for a 9 am session on the last day.
Then the "Linking Notes to the world with Live text" was also well attended. It was an after lunch sessoin adn the room was warm, so the session was a bit qui [read] Keywords: ibm
ilug
notes
linking
|
94
|
Offline Federated Calendar
Thu, Jun 5th 2008 2:11p Mary Beth Raven
Hi all, John Lance here. You may remember me from such past blog postings as "All Day Long"
and "A Long Day's Journey Into Another Long Day" (In which out hero and calendar designer extraordinaire, the incredibly dashing, handsome, witty, and ever so likeable JACK SPEAR, is caught in a calendar timezone meltdown. Will he and the other operatives of the ELITE organization JCN manage to save the world? Only time will tell....). Moving right along... So, as those of you in the public beta know we [read] Keywords: designer
ibm
mobile
|
267
|
For a Notes 8 look and feel just use this template
Wed, Jun 4th 2008 11:51a Mary Beth Raven
Hey community,
For those of you who want to leverage a Notes 8 look and feel in your templates without building the outline view and action bars etc. from scratch, please note that Chris Reckling posted a Notes template on his InsideLotus blog that pretty must follows the look and feel style conventions that I outlined in the User Experience design guidelines [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
template
community
|
49
|
Gearing up for the UGs
Tue, Jun 3rd 2008 2:44p Mary Beth Raven
It's the eve of DNUG (Deutsche Notes User Group) and ILUG (Irish Lotus User Group). Maureen Leland and I have been corresponding on our various talks-- she's going to DNUG, I am at ILUG. I hope she's having as much fun as I am. (Is it safe to let your boss know you love your job and your user community?)
I'm sitting in the conference hotle lobby with 11 over attendees, mainly business partners. I've met a few new faces-- ok, the faces are not new because I have seen them on their own blogs [read] Keywords: ibm
ilug
lotus
notes
community
twitter
|
49
|
Now that the Notes 8.5 beta is public, we focus on the feedback forum, and on usability testing with external people
Fri, May 30th 2008 9:25a Mary Beth Raven
The Notes/Domino 8.5 public beta is now available. The forum with all the details (download, release notes, etc.) is at http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf .
I and the rest of the design team monitor that forum, and thus, most of the discussoin will move there; this blog might not be that active for a bit because all the action is taking place over on the feedback forum.
We are planning on doing some usability testing with external users. We have plans to go to customer sites to do usab [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
server
|
6
|
8.5 Public Beta 1 is due to be go live around 9am tomorrow
Thu, May 29th 2008 4:02p Mary Beth Raven
Loyal Loti,
The Notes 8.5 public beta 1 is at the moment planned to be available to you around 9 am eastern time Friday morning.
This is not a guarantee, just a heads up, so that those ofyou in, oh, say, Australia, can stay up late and keep pushing the refresh key on your browser so that you can win a beer from your geek mates for being the first one to download it... that kind of thing. [read] Keywords: notes
|
87
|
I am in "public beta 1 Central Triage" meetings daily...
Wed, May 28th 2008 4:28p Mary Beth Raven
The "Central Triage" meetings have been going on regularly for quite some time now. That is, each area has local triage meetings to triage bugs, and then we we get close to things like public beta, we move to a central triage, where representatives come together . We are right now talking about one team (the "single log on"initiative) who managed to get thru this central triage beta process so far without any bugs! Their manager is checking into that to confirm it-- would be cool, and fun t [read] Keywords: ibm
ilug
bug
|
43
|
I am ILUG-bound, are you?
Tue, May 27th 2008 9:10p Mary Beth Raven
It's one week until BOTH the Irish Lotus User Group (ILUG) and the Deutsche Notes User Group (DNUG)conferences. Which one are you going to?
Both will be excellent.
Last year I had the privilege of presenting at both. This year, ILUG asked first, so I'm going to ILUG.
DNUG speakers include Kevin Cavanaugh, Brent Peters and Bob Picciano.
ILUG speakers include Alan Lepofsky, Ed Brill, Myself and a few other hard-working and fun-loving IBMers. Notice how ILUG got all the good IBM bloggers
I [read] Keywords: ibm
ilug
lotus
lotusphere
notes
|
34
|
Memorial service for Cynthia Ice, our colleague who was a champion for accessibility
Fri, May 23rd 2008 11:04a Mary Beth Raven
The memorial service for Cynthia Ice has been scheduled for :
Saturday May 31st at 1:00 pm
Fowler-Kennedy Funeral Home in Maynard, Massachusetts
In lieu of flowers, the family has suggested donations may be made in her memory to:
Joslin Diabetes Center
One Joslin Place
Boston, MA 02215
(617) 732-2400
and / or that of her beloved guide dogs Ellery and Cashmere to :
The Seeing Eye Inc.
P.O. Box 375
Morristown, NJ 07963
( 973) 539-4425 [read] Keywords: ibm
|
73
|
In honor of Cynthia Ice, fix an accessibility bug
Fri, May 16th 2008 4:44p Mary Beth Raven
Our friend and colleague, Cynthia Ice, passed away earlier this week.
She was an accessibility expert and tester-- a tireless advocate for
accessibility for Lotus Notes and other products, starting with Notes 5
I believe.
Every blind user of Lotus products, and every salesperson who has to
work with accounts that require accessibility, owe Cynthia Ice a great
debt. Her work is described a bit in the following
article in USA Today.
Her life had great purpose-- to make software usable for [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
bug
|
175
|
New icons make lists of e-mail easier to scan in 8.5!
Tue, May 13th 2008 10:28a Mary Beth Raven
After Notes 8 was released, we began hearing that users occasionally
didn’t notice important items (like meeting invitations) in their Inbox.
But why? Was it
because the icons were too small? Was it
because they were too similar to each other?
Or could we improve scanning by removing icons for mail messages that
had already been read? To find out, we
conducted a timed experiment: 24
participants found target items on 72 Inbox screens that differed from each
other in the icon size, d [read] Keywords: designer
ibm
notes
workflow
|
31
|
I am at in internal IBM conference May 12-14, so probably no blogging <>
Sun, May 11th 2008 10:07p Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: ibm
blogging
|
95
|
What types of things do you want to automatically identify in text?
Thu, May 8th 2008 10:31p Mary Beth Raven
One of our internal teams (LanguageWare-- they provide the spell
checker and some stuff for Live Text, and other stuff) is going to be
taking a full week out to focus entirely on "entity extraction
development" which is geekspeak for "recognizing what a word is"
-- "Hannover" being a city OR a development project, things like
that. So if you have some entities which you really would like to
see included please let us know.
By entities we mean any named thing in text, like projects,
technol [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
quickplace
quickr
community
development
|
56
|
So, Steve McDonagh wants a Lotus song...
Thu, May 8th 2008 10:31p Mary Beth Raven
Over on his blog, Steve McDonagh
was musing about ideas for the name of a Domino blogger band. My personal favorite is "Graceful Degradation".
He also mentioned that we "soooo need a Lotus song".... here are TWO contributions from the Design team!
FIRST SONG: "The Heart of Lotus Notes is Still Beatin'" (To the tune of Huey Lewis and the News "the heart of Rock n roll")
Workspace, workspace, is everything they say
And nothing that I'd rather see
Where else can you stack a half a mi [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
notes
sametime
applications
blogger
outlook
workspace
|
175
|
New Startup Sequence for Notes 8.5
Thu, May 8th 2008 3:28p Mary Beth Raven
The development team is working on improving performance in Notes 8.5.
One of the things they are looking at doing is changing the startup
sequence of Notes.
The new user experience is as follows:
splash screen,
login dialog (unless you have "single sign-on"),
perhaps a progress dialog
and then Client desktop is rendered [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
desktop
development
|
75
|
Great customer visit last week
Mon, Apr 28th 2008 8:04p Mary Beth Raven
Last week I had a terrific opportunity to conduct some end-user
interviews at a ministry of the Canadian Government. I was able
to speak to real users who ranged from Administrative assistants to a
Director General. This was my first set of interviews with a government
agency in my capacity as Lotus Notes designer. Plus is was a "non-US"
government agency where bi-liguaglism is de rigeur.
(The last time I got to do any kind of interviews with employees of the
Canadian Government, I was empl [read] Keywords: designer
ibm
lotus
notes
|
22
|
I am on vacation and John Lance and Carrie Tracy are doing the Admin 2008 Conference in Boston
Sat, Apr 26th 2008 12:03a Mary Beth Raven
Loyal readers,
Despair not if you see no blog entries this coming week from the Notes
design team. I am on vacation in Virginia with my spouse, his mom, and
our 2 kids. trying to educate them about history at Colonial
Williamsburg. John Lance (you may know him from such postings as "Mapping Imported Contacts"
and "My Favorite Party Animals" (tip: monkeys are overrated, bulls are expensive, and goliath bird eating spiders
get you a clear path to the buffet every time (of vital importance for
th [read] Keywords: admin
ibm
lotusphere
notes
sametime
wiki
|
42
|
Another great "Lotusphere Comes to you" comes to a close
Tue, Apr 22nd 2008 4:45p Mary Beth Raven
The last session of "Lotusphere Vient a Vous" Montreal just finished. (Well, there is a 2 hour cocktail/reception in the product showcase, so it's not completely done yet). I heard some interesting new bits of info and received good questions-- in all, it was really good to get out in front of customers after almost 3 months of not doing that (except for one or two special customer visits and the weekly Design partner meeting). It was also wonderful to continue to be thanked by customers for [read] Keywords: ibm
lotusphere
notes
development
|
3
|
"no plans to fix" type bug reports
Tue, Apr 22nd 2008 12:50p Mary Beth Raven
A while ago a blogged that we're in a stage of bug triage, and I go to
the triage meetings. Sometimes I lobby hard to fix certain bugs, and
other times I do not. I do try to balance business value with the cost
to IBM to fix a bug. Now in my case, most of these bugs are usability
bugs. And
let me assure you, I and the Design team are constantly educating the
developers and advocating that "usability bugs are real bugs."
And by and large, the Notes development and QE team has got the message
an [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
bug
development
google
|
28
|
Felicitations au Montreal Canadiens!
Mon, Apr 21st 2008 11:43p Mary Beth Raven
Ce soir, je me trouve dans la ville de Montreal. Et, tout l'equipe des "Boston Bruins" et aussi en ville. Alors, un match d'hockey entre les Boston Bruisn et les Montreal Canadiens vient de finir. Et Les Canadiens ont gagne. Felicitation au Montreal Canadiens! L'hotel est l'autre cote de la stade ou joue les Bruins et Canadiens. Alors, les rues sont replis des voitures, des gens, avec les drapeaux "Canadiens", et qui chant. C'est tres interessant. Apres tout, la raison pourqui je suis venue d' [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
|
89
|
The J. Lance Scale of Bug Stupidity
Wed, Apr 16th 2008 11:09p Mary Beth Raven
HI,
It's not John Lance here. But I'm posting something he wrote.
Here in the Design Studio, today was "one of those days"... the
kind when bugs that we've been lobbying for end up getting marked as
"NPTF." (Officially that stands for "no plans to fix ever"... and I
don't think I can publish some of the other phrases we've made up
for that acronym....). John lightened our day with his scale of bug
stupidity, so I thought I'd share it here. It would be almost funny...
if it's weren't true... [read] Keywords: ibm
bug
|
40
|
Introducing Paul Clemmons, our new draft persona for a DWA user
Fri, Apr 11th 2008 2:31p Mary Beth Raven
We have had several requests from customers to interview users of DWA
-- Domino Web Access, (aka iNotes)-- and create a persona. We also had requests for
us to ensure that we take into account various age groups in our
personas, including younger (university-age or just entering the work
force) users. To that end, our own intern, Drew Condon, has
conducted several interviews of such users and created the following
draft persona.
Please feel free to comment if you are a member of this target [read] Keywords: connect
, connections
, domino
, dwa
, ibm
, inotes
, lotus
, notes
, notes client
, apple
, applications
, database
, desktop
, email
, facebook
, firefox
, google
, laptop
, macbook
, microsoft
, mobile
, network
, networking
, office
|
68
|
Allow Samantha to close the Home page, or not?
Wed, Apr 9th 2008 5:45p Mary Beth Raven
In Notes 8.0 and 8.0.1 we allow Samantha to close the Home page. This
was an intentional departure from previous versions, where she could
not close the Home page.
Some of the reasons were that we'd heard a few customers who wanted
users to be able to do that in order to free up more screen real estate
across the top for other tabs.
Having a non-closeable home page was not a feature that Xpeditor
supported, and the Symphony standalone did not use such a thing,
either. So, that's why Samantha [read] Keywords: ibm
, notes
, symphony
|
140
|
A .png dilemma
Tue, Apr 8th 2008 3:59p Mary Beth Raven
There are two ways to import png data into an Notes 8.x document. One is to directly import a png, and the other is to import png images as part of an HTML. Importing pngs as an HTML is currently not supported. So this is not an issue here. Importing a png directly is partially supported on the current Notes 801 clients by converting it to jpeg. But animation and transparency of png are lost because jpeg doesn't have the features. We can fully support png images on an HTML on 8.5, but then we w [read] Keywords: document
, ibm
, notes
, development
|
79
|
How I got started with Notes
Mon, Apr 7th 2008 9:28p Mary Beth Raven
I used Notes 3.something at "FTP Software" back in 1995. They used it for entering Trouble Tickets.
I hated it. Of course, since it was for trouble tickets, I was already always in a foul mood when I saw it.
And I remember that the first thing it always seemed to do was ask me
what server I wanted to connect to.... and of course I could never
remember.
TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE... our usability lab machines broke a lot.
Eventually we discovered that it was because one of the IT guys had a
crus [read] Keywords: connect
, designer
, domino
, dwa
, ibm
, notes
, sametime
, competitive
, development
, office
, outlook
, server
|
74
|
On your workspace-- do you even pick the menu item "Arrange Icons"?
Thu, Apr 3rd 2008 8:11a Mary Beth Raven
Hey folks,
For you Workspace users out there, open up your Workspace
to any tab, and then go up to the View menu-- see that menu item called
"Arrange Icons"?
It will move all your icons to the upper left-- so that there are no
extra spaces between the "Chicklets" (tiles). (So if the
arrangement of your icons is important, DO NOT PICK THIS MENU ITEM
NOW!!!
How often you you pick this menu item for "Arrange Icons"?
One a day
Once a week
Once a month
Less than once a month?
How wo [read] Keywords: ibm
, notes
, workspace
|
114
|
All Day Long
Wed, Apr 2nd 2008 1:06a Mary Beth Raven
Hi all, John Lance here. You may remember me from such past blog postings as "Mapping Imported Contacts"
and "My Favorite Party Animals" (tip: monkeys are overrated, bulls are expensive, and goliath bird eating spiders get you a clear path to the buffet every time (of vital importance for those of us that wear extra large Lotusphere shirts)). Moving right along... We're hard at work here in Lotusville making it so that Samantha can subscribe to other calendars from her Notes calendar (i.e. she [read] Keywords: ibm
, lotusphere
, notes
, google
, wiki
|
112
|
Truths Revealed
Tue, Apr 1st 2008 5:38a Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: designer
, ibm
, lotus
, notes
, community
|
64
|
Administering the Sametime Product Suite -- WIll Fred Adams get a promotion, or hire a new person, or??
Mon, Mar 31st 2008 8:36a Mary Beth Raven
With Sametime Connect, Sametime Gateway, the just-shipped Sametime Advanced, and the upcoming Sametime Unified Telephony, how is Fred Adams, our Messaging and Collaboration System Administrator, going to handle all the growth for this product suite? Will Fred Adams get a promotion or be told to hire a new person? Will Ida Engel be the second line support person for all this Sametime stuff, or will the support staff get expanded? In your organization will Fred’s job grow to include WebSphere [read] Keywords: administration
, collaboration
, connect
, designer
, ibm
, sametime
, application
, network
, server
, websphere
|
33
|
Congratulations to Bill Chuck, our Lotusphere speaker coach, on the publication of his new book
Fri, Mar 28th 2008 10:03a Mary Beth Raven
Many of you who speak at Lotusphere have received speaker coaching from
Bill Chuck. This past year, he really helped improve both the talks I
gave-- the first with Matt Hatem about customizing the look of
Notes, and the second with Carrie Tracy about design directions. He was
really supportive and even came to the beginning of the talk with
Carrie, because he knew she was so nervous.
When he's not speaker coaching, it appears that he likes to write about baseball. His new book will be availa [read] Keywords: ibm
, lotusphere
, notes
|
59
|
Welcome to the world, Tyler William Raven! (And t-shirts mailed!)
Wed, Mar 26th 2008 10:17p Mary Beth Raven
Congratulations to my brother Chris, his wife Susan, and big borther
Connor, on the birth of Tyler William Raven today at 9 am! Weighing in
at 9lbs 14 oz and 21 inches long he is clearly planning to make his
mark on the world.
No picture yet (being a public school teacher, my brother is not 100%
up to date on all our electronic life-sharing stuff)... but good wishes
anyway!
Also, all domestic Lotusphere Staff t-shirts have been mailed,
plus one to the high bidder in Canada. I have severa [read] Keywords: ibm
, ilug
, lotusphere
|
36
|
Thanks for your generosity, the '08 staff shirt auction is over, still have a few days for the '06 shirt
Sun, Mar 23rd 2008 8:23p Mary Beth Raven
Lotusphere faithful,
thanks for bidding on the Lotusphere '08 shirt auction for charity. The
auction for those shirts is over. We still have a few more days to go
on the '06 staff shirt (mine).
Lotusphere '06 Denim staff shirt [read] Keywords: lotusphere
|
29
|
One more item for auction for charity: Lotusphere '06 Denim shirt
Fri, Mar 21st 2008 9:44a Mary Beth Raven
Hey folks,
Here's one more shirt that we forgot to actually list on E-bay!
This denim staff shirt is a medium, but in my opinion, it was pretty big, compared to this year's medium staff shirts.
Lotusphere '06 Denim staff shirt
Check out the '08 shirts, too. [read] Keywords: lotusphere
|
41
|
Yes! We will ship Lotusphere staff T-Shirts outside the USA!
Thu, Mar 20th 2008 8:38p Mary Beth Raven
The Lotusphere staff t-shirt auction on E-bay is still going on!
Remember, you cannot get these collector's items in stores. And we
*WILL* ship them outside the USA, so all you Asians, Aussies,
Europeans, South Americans, start bidding!
Here's the list of donors and their shirts that are up for auction on
E-bay. Search for Lotusphere '08 on E-Bay or click the links
below.
Charlie Hill (newly-apppointed Lotus CTO!), 2 smalls, not worn
Sheri Branco, Notes usability, 2 smalls, worn a [read] Keywords: designer
, lotus
, lotusphere
, notes
|
95
|
Announcing the Great Lotusphere 2008 T-shirt Auction for Charity!
Sun, Mar 16th 2008 9:54p Mary Beth Raven
I am pleased to announce the Lotupshere 2008 T-shirt auction for charity!
We have 17 OFFICIAL IBM LOTUS STAFF shirts to auction, and each is listed as a separate e-bay
auction item as a fund-raiser for Doctors without Borders (medecins
sans frontiers).
Here are links to a few, or you can search e-bay for Lotusphere '08. Notice that each listing also shows WHO donated the shirt.
This is because we IBMers are having acontest to see whose shirt can
raise the most money! John Lance will be [read] Keywords: designer
, ibm
, lotus
, lotusphere
, notes
|
137
|
Update on Notes 8.5 on the Mac
Sat, Mar 15th 2008 12:12p Mary Beth Raven
A while I go I asked you how
"mac-ish" you want Notes 8.5 on the Mac to be.
Thanks for the responses, I read every one. I met yesterday with our Mac visual
designer (Carrie) and the developer in charge of the Mac theme
(Chris) and we made a few decisions. For example, we agreed to make the status
bar icons monochrome, and center the status message. We also agreed that we
want the selected tab to have the "upside down" look-- that is,
it bleeds into the top. We want to make the toolbar sep [read] Keywords: designer
, notes
, mac
|
34
|
I'll be at Lotusphere Comes to You in Montreal, April 22
Wed, Mar 12th 2008 10:30p Mary Beth Raven
Readers,
I'll be giving one or more talks at Lotusphere Comes to You in Montreal
on April 22. I am also available for--and interested in doing--
customer visits the day before or after.
I can talk about Notes 8 or 801, what's coming in 8.5, our design
process, but mostly I'd like to interview actual Notes users (do not
have to be users of Notes 8), particularly if they use it in French. Je
me debrouille en Francais. Mon grand-pere est ne a St. Cesaire, et j'ai
encore de la famille a Quebec. [read] Keywords: ibm
, lotusphere
, notes
, development
, email
|
108
|
Authenticated Feeds
Mon, Mar 10th 2008 8:25a Mary Beth Raven
We know that Samantha can't add and access authenticated feeds in Notes 8 or 8.01. She actually can do it, but she has to first find and understand how to set up a Notes Account with her user name and password. We don't think many Samantha's have figured this out Samantha will need to have some interaction with Notes Accounts. These can be
found in Notes > Preferences > Accounts, and have been part of
the Notes client for a long time. We're concerned that she might think that 'Notes [read] Keywords: designer
, ibm
, notes
, notes client
, interface
, password
, server
|
156
|
Announcing the Lotus Notes and Domino Wiki
Fri, Mar 7th 2008 8:58a Mary Beth Raven
Yesterday, Chistian D'Alosio blogged that having a Notes and Domino wiki would be a good idea.
We agree.
Here you go:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/
It went live on February 26. Please, use it! Also, several of you have
asked the Widgets and Live text team to start their own blog. For the
time being, we have decided that rather than have a separate blog for
Widgets and live text, if you have questions, etc., please use the
Notes and Domino Wiki.
Enjoy!
P.S. All thanks fo [read] Keywords: domino
, ldd
, lotus
, notes
, development
, widgets
, wiki
|
82
|
Update on the roaming user experience
Tue, Mar 4th 2008 8:14p Mary Beth Raven
On February 18, 2008, I posted several draft dialog boxes concerning the roaming user 'upgrade' experience, which we are trying to improve.
In the comments, you asked for several things, one of which was the
ability to customize the initial dialog that tells users they are being
upgraded.
The good news is....we actually listened! We changed our plan and at
the moment, we plan to give you not one, but 2 customizable dialogs as
part of that experience. We plan to let you customize the first [read] Keywords: admin
, administration
, ibm
, lotus
, notes
, roaming
|
96
|
How "Mac-ish" do you want your Notes 8.5 on the Mac?
Thu, Feb 28th 2008 10:31a Mary Beth Raven
I am working with Chris Majoros and Matt Hatem (Matt and I gave
the "themes" talk at Lotusphere) and Carrie Tracy ( visual designer--
she and I gave the "Design Directions" talk together at
Lotusphere) on a "Mac" visual theme for Lotus Notes 8.5 on the Mac.
In addition to working on the visual part, we are toying with the idea
of reducing the number of toolbar buttons in the toolbars,
because, as you Mas users know, the Mac toolbars are generally pretty
sparse. For example, Mac toolbars d [read] Keywords: designer
, lotus
, lotusphere
, notes
, mac
|
80
|
New preference for Large Icons in the Open List
Wed, Feb 27th 2008 9:21a Mary Beth Raven
Hi Folks,
We are adding support for large icons to Notes 8.5 (in addition to the small ones that ship with Notes 8 and 801).
We plan to have a context menu item on the open list, and a preference.
Figure: Use large icons in the context menu on the Open list. I'ts a "check mark" menu item, like "Dock the Open List"
Here is the preference. Notice that I put it on the Windows and Themes
page. I know that there used to be a preference on the Basic
Notes client Configuration page.
Howev [read] Keywords: expeditor
, lotus
, notes
, notes client
, symphony
|
84
|
My daughter, the "altar boy who just quit"
Tue, Feb 26th 2008 6:46p Mary Beth Raven
This post has nothing to do with Lotus Notes. It's just a peek into the mind and motivations of Mary Beth.
When I was a kid, growing up Catholic in the United States, girls could
not be altar servers. I really wanted to be one-- up on the altar,
helping out, *really* participating at Mass.
My younger brother, Chris, however, was an altar boy. And, of course,
he really was not that interested in being one. So we worked out
a system, the kind that only siblings can create.
When he served, I [read] Keywords: designer
, lotus
, notes
, outlook
, server
|
21
|
Meet Daisuke Okajima, a Salesperson Persona
Fri, Feb 22nd 2008 3:27p Mary Beth Raven
Group Calendar for Daisuke Okajima
Daisuke works in a sales department of JCN (Japan Communication
Networks), a large IT company which provides IT
solutions. He is in charge of manufacturing companies including car
manufacturers.
Over ten JCN System Engineers are stationed at Honma's IT Section.
Daisuke and his colleague deal with the contract of these engineers,
and also other business with Honma’s IT Manager on SW and HW products.
He lives in Makuhari-city in Chiba with his wife ,and c [read] Keywords: forms
, ibm
, lotus
, notes
, application
, archive
, desktop
, development
, laptop
, microsoft
, mobile
, office
, security
|
46
|
introducing our Japanese user researcher and designer
Fri, Feb 22nd 2008 2:29p Mary Beth Raven
The Lotus Notes design team is mindful of the fact that our users come from all over the world and speak many languages.
To that end, we have been working intermittently with two IBM
colleagues from IBM Japan to help us understand Japanese users and how
Lotus Notes is used in Japan.
Please allow me to introduce Ikuko Okamoto (the lady in the photo
below) and Masataka Yamazaki (the gentleman in the photo below).
Ikuko is a user researcher who conducted several interviews of Japanese
use [read] Keywords: designer
, ibm
, lotus
, lotusphere
, notes
|
97
|
Template Customizatoion
Tue, Feb 19th 2008 2:33p Mary Beth Raven
Is it
painful for your organization to deploy new versions of the Lotus Notes Client,
because your IT department has customized the Mail template?
We want to
understand what your template customizations are and the reasons behind
each. For example, “Do you customize
your template to show Last name, First name in the Inbox? If so, why do your users need/want this?”
Roughly how many customizations
do you make to your mail template?Do you make the same
customizations for all your use [read] Keywords: designer
, lotus
, notes
, notes client
, template
|
83
|
Request for opinions about the "roaming user" upgrade dialogs
Mon, Feb 18th 2008 9:06a Mary Beth Raven
As many of you know, we are improving the roaming user experience so that it's supported in the standard client.
We are creating some user policies so that Fred the Domino admin can specify that Ted Amado (our roaming user) sees NO roaming user upgrade dialog boxes at all-- it just happens.
Fred can also specify that Ted does see dialogs, and we want to improve on the existing dialogs.
Here are some draft dialogs. I am on the fence about how much to tell
Ted in these dialogs. On the one h [read] Keywords: admin
, domino
, ibm
, lotus
, notes
, policies
, roaming
, server
, workspace
|
52
|
I made it home from Laguardia 
Wed, Feb 13th 2008 5:54p Mary Beth Raven
Now that I know Jim Casale lives 15 min from Laguardia, I'll never be
stuck there again, cause I can be stuck as his house for dinner
I did make it home eventually. I managed to get a standby seat to Logan
in Boston, and then hired a shuttle van to drive me to the Manchester,
NH, airport.
Once there, I scraped the snow and ice off my car and drove home by 4am.
Turns out that was better than Sandesh's experience. I thought he'd
made it home, but over in the other terminal, all his AA fligh [read] Keywords: |
52
|
Questions about the Gridded Bookmarks
Wed, Feb 13th 2008 5:12p Mary Beth Raven
I'm working with Matt Hatem and other developers on the re-designed
Workspace.
(Since I made that posting, clearly some things have changed,
like we call the Launcher the "open list" and our plan for the "type to
find" feature is that it will mimic the one you see in the Notes 8 open
List)
I know that in the past, IBM provided not only the Workspace,
but also a "Gridded Bookmarks" feature-- at least that's what we called
it internally. In Notes 7, you get to the "Gridded Bookmarks" by
rig [read] Keywords: document
, domino
, ibm
, notes
, applications
, database
, workspace
|
86
|
Working on workspace while stuck in Laguardia 
Tue, Feb 12th 2008 8:51p Mary Beth Raven
I had a customer visit today on Madison Ave., New York City. I
went with Sandesh, the deveopment director. He flew in from Boston on
American. I flew in from Manchester, New Hampshire on U.S. Air. He's
home now. However, due to some snow, I am now stuck at
Laguardia ariport. The current prediction is that my 6 pm flight
will leave at 11 pm. If if doesn't get cancelled.
I know, John Lance, I should have listened to you. You told me to take the train.
It's going to be a long, cold night. S [read] Keywords: workspace
|
68
|
My kids and I decorated our newly finished basement today....
Sun, Feb 10th 2008 8:22p Mary Beth Raven
It was my 12-year-old's idea to 'splatter paint' a painting. We
had a blast. I made us wear not only painting clothers, but also shower
caps. At first, the girls thought it was stupid... but as we got
"into" flinging paint across the room, they understood why I made us
put up plastic on the ceiling...here is our masterpeice... [read] Keywords: |
35
|
Ok, I'm only 74% addicted to blogging....not sure if that helps or hinders my performance review...
Sun, Feb 10th 2008 7:33p Mary Beth Raven
74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You? [read] Keywords: blogging
|
66
|
Feed Reader in the Mail Navigator
Thu, Feb 7th 2008 6:26p Mary Beth Raven
We’re looking to improve the
Feed Reader in a future release of Notes.
I know one of the hottest Feed Reader issues is authentication, and
we’re definitely investigating that area and will be looking for input on that at another time.
A design change we’re investigating is integrating the Feed Reader into the Mail navigator, so that
the feeds can be viewed, previewed & managed like mail. Initially, this design poses 2 large
questions: 1. How do you want to manage your feeds? Do [read] Keywords: notes
|
71
|
Link to the "Customizing Notes with .CSS" Lotusphere talk
Sat, Feb 2nd 2008 1:27p Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks,
You can get to the final version of the Lotusphere 2008 talk that I did with Matt Hatem
AD 204 "Customizing Notes with CSS" by going here and looking for the file name AD204_Final
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/attach/Home
We're still working on getting your the Css inspector plug-in that he demoed. [read] Keywords: ibm
, lotusphere
, notes
, css
|
40
|
Link to my "Design Directions" talk from Lotusphere
Sat, Feb 2nd 2008 1:04p Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks,
You can get to the final version of the Lotusphere 2008 talk that I did with Carrie Tracy
on "Design Directions for Notes and Sametime" at the following link.
Please note that I had to divide it into 3 parts... so look for all 3.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/attach/Home [read] Keywords: ibm
, lotusphere
, notes
, sametime
|
50
|
Please give us your constructive criticism on the UX Lab at Lotusphere 2008
Thu, Jan 31st 2008 4:53p Mary Beth Raven
Lotusphere 2008 attendees:
Please help us improve our User Experience lab for next year's
Lotusphere. This year, the User Experience (UX) lab (most
folks call it "the usability lab") was in Asia 4 -- the biggest and
best location we've ever had.
We were running usability tests of most of our products- Notes,
Connections, Quickr, App dev tools, and we even had an "explore
the landscape" area where you could use Outlook and Notes side by side
and tell us what you thought.
If you visited [read] Keywords: connections
, lotusphere
, notes
, quickr
, outlook
|
115
|
Here's how to get the documentation for the "My Widgets" feature in the 8.0.1 beta
Thu, Jan 31st 2008 10:44a Mary Beth Raven
I know that some o fyou have been playing with the "My Widgets" and
Live Text in the recent Notes 8.0.1 beta. We have now posted the
documentation.
You can obtain the beta version My Widgets documentation as below:
1. Go to http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp.
2. Open the "Domino 8.0.1 Administrator Beta Help" link in the navigator panel.
3. Open the "Configuring and using My Widgets" section of the table of
contents -- My Widgets documentation (overview and [read] Keywords: admin
, domino
, ibm
, notes
, widgets
|
74
|
We will be uploading Lotusphere presentations and the CSS inspector plug-in in the next few days....
Tue, Jan 29th 2008 2:49p Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks,
The Lotushere talks files are too big to post on this blog so I can't post them. But I'm working on a solution.
Matt is working to get his CSS Inspector plugin posted on developerWorks-- but he's been out sick the past 2 days (all that talking must have tired him out....
But we'll get it all to you soon, I hope!
Also, stay tuned for the great "Lotusphere staff t-shirt auction" on ebay. Members of the design team are donating their Lotusphere staff t-shirts (some worn, some not, some [read] Keywords: lotusphere
, css
|
121
|
You have all been too kind...
Fri, Jan 25th 2008 1:51p Mary Beth Raven
Customers, business partners, and other IBMers,
This was a great Lotusphere. You have all been very nice and kind to the design team. I was a little concerned that lots of people would come to the lab all irate, with LONG lists of thngs that they don't like about Notes 8 (I KNOW you have them). Yes, you came to the lab with your lists, but overall, you were patient, kind, and understanding as we discussed the lists.
Also, thanks for all the thanks. It was great for us to hear you tell us to ke [read] Keywords: lotusphere
, notes
|
58
|
Introducing our newest persona: Michaela Zelber, Web developer
Tue, Jan 22nd 2008 12:01p Mary Beth Raven
This is a DRAFT persona. If you are a web developer (or can get one to read this) please feel free to post comments on whether this persona is accurate. Or come to the UX lab in Asia 4 at Lotusphere and talk to us about her.
Michaela is a Web Developer for Renovations. She actually has 2 jobs - during the day, it's her responsibility to put content on the company's internet and intranet sites, and make it look elegant and professional. And on the weekends, she free-lances in website development [read] Keywords: connect
, domino
, javascript
, lotusphere
, ajax
, css
, database
, development
, dhtml
, eclipse
, email
, enterprise
, facebook
, firefox
, myspace
, mysql
, network
, networking
, oracle
, php
, xml
|
151
|
FINALLY! My first-ever actual conference t-shirt made for a woman!
Tue, Jan 22nd 2008 10:40a Mary Beth Raven
Congratulations to Lotus+911 for giving me my first-ever actual LADIES conference shirt. I had to bleed yellow to get it, but it was worth it [read] Keywords: lotus
|
30
|
"Atlantic" is in the UX Lab at Lotusphere! | |
