Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-E: “Message Preview Header”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-E we see more Notes slight-of-hand.

Notes provides an email message – I’m sorry, “Memo” - preview function. The preview is separated from the message list by a message header containing common information:

Interestingly the line between the message header and the message itself is draggable. Let’s play!

Let’s drag the line up. Look! You have pixel perfect control over how much of our message header to obfuscate! You may think that such a feature would be useless but wait until you drag it down: you’ll find a whole new definition of useless:

Yes, if you drag the line down you can reveal as much of the ugly texture as you like.

Why does Notes provide such a relatively complex and inappropriate feature instead of a simpler option to suppress the message header? The answer, of course, is to confuse and bewilder users.