Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-K: “Notes Takes a Moment to Go Pants-crapping Crazy”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-K we see how it’s unpredictability is a danger to children and pets.

There’s an “Actions” menu in Notes.  In it there’s a promising option called “Fax Address Helper”.  I like help.  With Notes I often need help.  So I click on it.

Whoa!  What the hell is that?  A mostly blank window with an off-centered blob of red text?  Some serious sh*t must have gone down, eh?  This error message must be especially important for Notes to make such a spectacular departure from all user-interface guidelines, right?  Right?!  Wrong.

The message clearly states that “You must be in a mail memo to use this feature…..” (the five periods must be for extra-special, super-duper emphasis).  A normal application would have simply greyed out or removed the “Fax Address Helper” from the actions menu when you were not in a memo.  Not our defendant however: Notes would prefer to deceive.

The rest of the content gets even better.  We get an “OK” button (already highlighted as the default) but are instructed not to click on it.  If we do so, we’re told, our highlighted item will be marked “unread”.  This means a developer spent time adding a note to this message rather than spending the time fixing the problem.  That makes sense.  Lots and lots of sense… if you’re evil.

Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-J: “Folder Tree”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-I we see evidence that perhaps Notes maliciousness may in fact be the result of psychosis.

Notes loves to mix-metaphors.  It loves it so much that it will often mix them multiple times on the same element.  Consider the folder tree.  This is the most fundamental, most basic navigation tool provided by Notes.  And it gets things horribly wrong.

Note that most items represent a physical metaphor: folders, toolbox, trash can, etc.  Many of these items carry that metaphor forward into the usage of the element.  Click on “Tools” item and the little toolbox opens.  Click on a folder and the folder opens?  Well, most of the time.  Notes confuses and distracts us in this case by only “opening” folders which contain other folders.  Folders that contain only memos are left closed even when clicked.  Why?

Furthermore note that the icon for “Views” represents a windows preferences dialog.  Note also that when selected it opens like a folder  Dialog boxes don’t open like folders in the real world, do they?  However other physical items like the trash can never open.

The only logical excuse for getting something so basic so fundamentally wrong is pure malicious intent or mental illness.

Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-I: “Notes Confirming Things that don’t Need Confirmation”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-I we see how Notes wastes your time by managing your time.

Try this in your Notes calendar: click an entry.  That entry will be highlighted as expected.  Now click it again.  Fun game: what do you think will happen?  Good software will do nothing – a single click is “highlight” and as the item is already highlighted there’s nothing more to do.  Poor software might (wrongly, but at least somewhat sensically) actually take action on the item – open it, present a context menu, etc.  Notes says “Nuts to that!”  When you click on an item already highlighted Notes assumes that you want to edit the item.  But it doesn’t let you.  Instead you get the following confirmation message:

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Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-H: “Useless Errors”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-H we see how Notes tells you that’s something wrong by telling you nothing.

You know when you do something that you’re not supposed to do?  Or when the application encounters a problem?  You get an error message.  In a good application you get information that will help you to fix the problem.  In a poor application you might get something less than useful.  However as applications age and become more mature this aspect tends to improve (being something that most developers don’t give much attention to in initial versions).

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Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-G: “Nostalgia for Old Versions”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-G we see how Notes is unable to commit.

“Notes isn’t JUST an email program,” its proponents will crow, “it’s a full-featured highly capable application platform!” Of course it is. The idea that email is really just an afterthought and not a core competency seems somehow positive, almost comforting to them. It probably also explains why Notes often forgets what version you’re actually using and takes you down little walks on memory lane.

My current email toolbar looks like this:

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Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-F: “SmartPad Posting Options”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-F we see more of Notes contempt for your children and values.

There’s an “Actions” menu in Notes.  In there there’s an ambiguous little item called “SmartPad Posting Options”.  It sounds promising, doesn’t it?  I like smart things.  I’d love to see something smart in Notes.  In reality it’s just another example of Notes fraud; click it and you’ll see:

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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:

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Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-D: “Workspace Configuration”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-D we see how Notes tricks you, like used car salesman, into thinking it’s actually going to help you.

The Notes Workspace. Versatile as a brick and almost twice as smart. When you open it up all of your database shortcuts are presented for you:

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Lotus Notes Tribunal, Exhibit 001-C: “Cannot Drag and Drop out of Trash with Soft Deletes Enabled”

Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity.  In exhibit 001-C we see how Notes inflicts purposeful psychological damage.

You accidentally delete something (easy to do in Notes). So you open the “Trash” folder, find your item and drag it back to the Inbox. Then this appears:

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