Lotus Notes: Spearheading the social/mobile web revolution!
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@MatNewman said:
Tell me you're not that dumb... Why would you sort by sender when you can filter to see only messages from a particular sender? Fucking IBM moran...@Xyro said:
Gmail also does that all
Sort by sender. (as in Full Stop!)
Oh. You Cant!
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@MatNewman said:
@Xyro said:
Gmail also does that all
Sort by sender. (as in Full Stop!)
Oh. You Cant!
Yeah, basically what everybody else said. If the point of sorting by sender is to find a particular email, then you can just do a regular search for it. Search for the sender's name, or something similar to it, and Gmail gives it to you with you having to manually find stuff while silently singing the alphabet in your mind. If the point of sorting by sender is to find out how many people love you in alphabetical order, just use your Gmail contacts. Go to the "Other Contacts" area to see every address who has ever emailed you, or if the person is already in your list, then it's right there sorted for you in alphabetical order.
So what's the purpose of sorting by sender, and how does it solve a problem that Gmail doesn't already solve?
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@Xyro said:
@MatNewman said:
I'm really starting to think that this is one epic troll masterminded by dhromed to drive blackey off the edge...@Xyro said:
Yeah, basically what everybody else said. If the point of sorting by sender is to find a particular email, then you can just do a regular search for it. Search for the sender's name, or something similar to it, and Gmail gives it to you with you having to manually find stuff while silently singing the alphabet in your mind. If the point of sorting by sender is to find out how many people love you in alphabetical order, just use your Gmail contacts. Go to the "Other Contacts" area to see every address who has ever emailed you, or if the person is already in your list, then it's right there sorted for you in alphabetical order.Gmail also does that all
Sort by sender. (as in Full Stop!)
Oh. You Cant!
So what's the purpose of sorting by sender, and how does it solve a problem that Gmail doesn't already solve?
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@Xyro said:
Yeah, basically what everybody else said. If the point of sorting by sender is to find a particular email, then you can just do a regular search for it.
Plus, on the flip-side, sort-by-sent-to always fucks up when you have emails cc'd to multiple people.
I have multiple entries for TO:
Boss
IT
Boss, IT
IT, Boss
it@example.com, Boss
boss@home.example.com, "IT <Remote Office EX>"
dude@it.example.com
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The funny thing is that Gmail uses the same "folders are labels" thing that notes does, but unlike notes Gmail gets it right. An email isn't deleted until its removed from every folder. Instead of, deleting the email from one folder deletes it from all the others.
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@Lorne Kates said:
@Xyro said:
Yeah, basically what everybody else said. If the point of sorting by sender is to find a particular email, then you can just do a regular search for it.
Plus, on the flip-side, sort-by-sent-to always fucks up when you have emails cc'd to multiple people.
I have multiple entries for TO:
Boss
IT
Boss, IT
IT, Boss
it@example.com, Boss
boss@home.example.com, "IT <Remote Office EX>"
dude@it.example.comI guess "boss@home" is your wife, unless your mother-in-law lives with you for the summer, but I don't know why you would write to her and to your Ex in the remote office at the same time, even if you call her "it" to calm down wifey. Trouble trouble.
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@PJH said:
I've never quite seen the point of 'sort by sender'
Gaaah, whoever thought that's a good idea should be taken out and shot. Actually, no, he should be confined to helping users that click one of the non-default sort options, then 3 months later start calling why they don't get half of the messages they're expecting.
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@ender said:
@PJH said:
I've never quite seen the point of 'sort by sender'
Gaaah, whoever thought that's a good idea should be taken out and shot. Actually, no, he should be confined to helping users that click one of the non-default sort options, then 3 months later start calling why they don't get half of the messages they're expecting.His co-worker should be the guy who decided "Sort By Date" should be the default over "Sort By Received".
They could be managed by the Thunderbird programmer who made Sort by Received hidden beneath a few menus.
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@Lorne Kates said:
Who in turn, reports to a Lotus Notes evangelist.@ender said:
@PJH said:
I've never quite seen the point of 'sort by sender'
Gaaah, whoever thought that's a good idea should be taken out and shot. Actually, no, he should be confined to helping users that click one of the non-default sort options, then 3 months later start calling why they don't get half of the messages they're expecting.His co-worker should be the guy who decided "Sort By Date" should be the default over "Sort By Received".
They could be managed by the Thunderbird programmer who made Sort by Received hidden beneath a few menus.
Has anybody seen one around? They tend to look sickly with a sort of tortured soul look about them. You will always see them carring something labeled "Pig Lipstick", along with sacks of other peoples money.
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@C-Octothorpe said:
Why would you sort by sender when you can filter to see only messages from a particular sender? Fucking IBM moran...
You know "Tim" is in the from address somewhere; Type "from:tim" in the seach box. You get no results. Legendary.
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@MatNewman said:
@C-Octothorpe said:
Why would you sort by sender when you can filter to see only messages from a particular sender? Fucking IBM moran...
You know "Tim" is in the from address somewhere; Type "from:tim" in the seach box. You get no results. Legendary.
Wow that is an incredible bug, I have the same problem in my Gmail account!!!!
Wait a minute, I don't know anyone called Tim but when I try
from:jimit works because a few people I know have "jim" in their name or email address.
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@blakeyrat said:
Gmail uses the same "folders are labels" thing that notes does, but unlike notes Gmail gets it right.
So what you're saying is every program with a delete feature is wrong because when you tell it to delete stuff, it shouldn't? Didn't anyone ever show you the Lotus Notes "Remove From Folder" option?
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@MatNewman said:
You know "Tim" is in the from address somewhere; Type "from:tim" in the seach box. You get no results. Legendary.
I don't understand your discontextual word salad.
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@MatNewman said:
You know "Tim" is in the from address somewhere; Type "from:tim" in the seach box. You get no results. Legendary.
Our ancestors were telling the same legend, shields in hand, camped around a bonfire somewhere in 12th century Prague. The legend defrayed the nerves of those brave soldiers who in the morning would have to face death in the Great Search Box War.
"Legendary".
@MatNewman said:
So what you're saying is every program with a delete feature is wrong because when you tell it to delete stuff, it shouldn't? Didn't anyone ever show you the Lotus Notes "Remove From Folder" option?
No. That is not what I am saying.
What I'm saying is that Lotus Notes is using the wrong metaphor:
1) What Lotus Notes calls "folders" are actually what any other application would call "tags".
2) As a result, when users believe they are moving an email into a folder, what they are actually doing is adding that folder's tag to the email.
3) As a result, users viewing an email in the "work items" folder believe it to be a separate copy from the same email in the "inbox" folder.
4) As a result, users expect that deleting the email from the "work items" folder will not also delete the email from the "inbox" folder. Alas that is not the case.
5) As a result, thousands of pieces of user data are lost daily due to this bug.If Lotus Notes would call their folders "tags", then it would be more obvious that assigning a new tag to an email does not copy that email. Alternatively, if Lotus Notes wants to have folders, it needs to implement folders the same way every other application in the universe with folders has implemented them. (Edit: back to the Gmail example really quick, they implemented tags, but they still made deletion work like it would in folders, that is, they made the email stick around until it was "deleted" from every tag the email contained. Probably because the engineers of Gmail were smart enough to see the implication I made in the last paragraph.)
This is computer science 101 stuff. This is a bug that Lotus Notes has had since at least version 4.5. This is a bug that's never been fixed. This single bug, out of all the Lotus Notes bugs, has lost thousands of emails over the years, has wasted thousands of employees' times, has inspired thousands of people to hate computers instead of love computers.
Lotus Notes is evil. I know you people are thinking I'm going for the hyperbole, but I'm not: I truly believe Lotus Notes is a work of evil.
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@C-Octothorpe said:
I'm really starting to think that this is one epic troll masterminded by dhromed to drive blackey off the edge...
I don't need to engineer a thing for that.
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@Speakerphone Dude said:
Wait a minute, I don't know anyone called Tim but when I try
from:jimit works because a few people I know have "jim" in their name or email address.*cough* bullshit *cough*
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Closed, no repro.
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@MatNewman said:
@Speakerphone Dude said:
Wait a minute, I don't know anyone called Tim but when I try
from:jimit works because a few people I know have "jim" in their name or email address.
cough bullshit coughHmm....I wasn't able to reproduce this originally, but when I put in only a partial bit of the name (e.g., Dere instead of Derek), I got a similar result. I put in Tim, and while there were no drop down suggestions, it found some mails from people with Tim in their name.
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@blakeyrat said:
The legend defrayed the nerves of those brave soldiers who in the morning would have to face death in the Great Search Box War.
Lotus Notes manages to find "Tim" somehwere in the "From" field...
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@blakeyrat said:
If Lotus Notes would call their folders "tags", then it would be more obvious that assigning a new tag to an email does not copy that email
I understand your argument. It's something that once you explain to users during training, they get it. They understand that "Sent" is a query to show you, guess what ... all the stuff you've sent.
The problem is, bugger all people ever train their users on 'Notes Basics', they might get shown how to New/Reply/Forward, but that's it, and therefore you end up with the confusion you describe.
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@MatNewman said:
Lotus Notes manages to find "Tim" somehwere in the "From" field...
It has a great spellchecker too!
Look, I was making a joke. You don't have to reply to jokes.
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@C-Octothorpe said:
Fucking IBM moran...
You'll need to explain yourself more clearly, since I'm apparently a "moran".
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@blakeyrat said:
Look, I was making a joke. You don't have to reply to jokes.
But it was a cool quote, I was just about to mix up some yellow and blue face paint and run around the office screaming about people taking our freedom.
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@ender said:
he should be confined to helping users that click one of the non-default sort options, then 3 months later start calling why they don't get half of the messages they're expecting.
I really like the one's who choose to "show unread only" and then call to tell you that every time they open an email it's automatically deleted.
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@MatNewman said:
I understand your argument. It's something that once you explain to users during training, they get it.
Hey! Here's a thought! Why doesn't IBM fix their broken shit so users don't need training?
Oh wait, I know the answer: because Notes trainers are IBM consultants, so IBM keeps their software shitty on purpose so they can hear that great "cha-ching!" sound when their customers have to hire yet another consultant to train their employees on how to use the shitty software. Fuck IBM.
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@MatNewman said:
It's something that once you explain to users during training, they get it.
Yeah, I remember getting the same lecture during my GMail training.
@MatNewman said:
The problem is, bugger all people ever train their users on 'Notes Basics',
It's the user's fault. Gotcha. I'm too lazy to scroll back a few pages: who called it, with the Linux User Excuses thing?
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@Lorne Kates said:
It's the user's fault. Gotcha. I'm too lazy to scroll back a few pages: who called it, with the Linux User Excuses thing?
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@MatNewman said:
@C-Octothorpe said:
Fucking IBM moran...
You'll need to explain yourself more clearly, since I'm apparently a "moran".
He's not an IBM Moran, though.
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@Lorne Kates said:
who called it, with the Linux User Excuses thing?
blakeyrat:
@blakeyrat said:
They also borrow a few moves from the Linux user playbook
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@blakeyrat said:
@MatNewman said:
From Amazon, first page, searching for Microsoft Outlook in Books:I understand your argument. It's something that once you explain to users during training, they get it.
Hey! Here's a thought! Why doesn't IBM fix their broken shit so users don't need training?
- Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Step by Step
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Calendar, Contacts, Tasks Quick Reference Guide (Cheat Sheet of Instructions, Tips & Shortcuts - Laminated Card)
- Outlook 2007 For Dummies
- Microsoft Outlook: The How-To Guide
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Quick Reference Guide
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Mail Quick Reference Guide
(Cheat Sheet of Instructions, Tips & Shortcuts - Laminated Card) - Microsoft Outlook 2010
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Inside Out
- Microsoft Outlook 2007 Step by Step
First page. There were even a couple I skipped. Apparently Microsoft Outlook users need training too. So: "Why doesn't Microsoft fix their broken shit so users don't need training?"
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@boomzilla said:
@MatNewman said:
@Speakerphone Dude said:
Wait a minute, I don't know anyone called Tim but when I try
from:jimit works because a few people I know have "jim" in their name or email address.
cough bullshit coughHmm....I wasn't able to reproduce this originally, but when I put in only a partial bit of the name (e.g., Dere instead of Derek), I got a similar result. I put in Tim, and while there were no drop down suggestions, it found some mails from people with Tim in their name.
This is not a bug, this is a design decision (search entire word, not characters) because anyways the auto-completion will fire up when you start typing.
I really hate partial finds in search because when I want to see emails from Tim, I am not interested to have the results polluted by emails from "Latimer". If I want to find emails from Latimer and I am too lazy to type his name, after a few characters I can pick him from the auto-completion drop-down.
Google products have some issues but they are well-designed for search.
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@nonpartisan said:
First page. There were even a couple I skipped. Apparently Microsoft Outlook users need training too. So: "Why doesn't Microsoft fix their broken shit so users don't need training?"
Microsoft should do that.
Should I post the Cassandra image every time some loser posts an argument I said they would like 2 days ago? Because I can.
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@Zemm said:
The first non-IBM Moran I thought of was this one:@MatNewman said:
@C-Octothorpe said:
Fucking IBM moran...
You'll need to explain yourself more clearly, since I'm apparently a "moran".
He's not an IBM Moran, though.
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@MatNewman said:
cough bullshit cough
The search box actually GIVES YOU all the possible Tims who have contacted you as you type his name. Can Lotus do that?Also, is that a recent screenshot..? Because when I search for "from:ambiguous-name" it works fine for me, showing all possible matches. I can even do "from:e" and to find a ton of e-cards and people with E. as their middle initial. You might want to double-check your source.
(Further, why is that image hosted on googleusercontent instead of your personal web server..? Is it even yours?)
I've asked you to show me features that Notes has that other PIMs don't, and specifically to convince me that Notes is better than Gmail. So far, you've come up with "can't sort senders alphabetically" and "possibly an old version didn't handle ambiguous names correctly maybe" ... Is that really the best that Notes has to offer?
Seriously, what does Notes have that Gmail doesn't?
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@Xyro said:
Seriously, what does Notes have that Gmail doesn't?
Privacy? Lack of adverts?
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@blakeyrat said:
Hey! Here's a thought! Why doesn't IBM fix their broken shit so users don't need training?
Firstly, users are always going to need training irrespective of how broken or fantastic the product is. Cue car and driving lessons analogy.
@MatNewman said:
I understand your argument. It's something that once you explain to users during training, they understand what is actually meant by something mislabelled.
FTFY. You can explain what a folder does (works like a tag) but your explanation of why it's called that and why it appears like that doesn't excuse the poor choice of icon/terminology.
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@nonpartisan said:
@blakeyrat said:
@MatNewman said:
From Amazon, first page, searching for Microsoft Outlook in Books:I understand your argument. It's something that once you explain to users during training, they get it.
Hey! Here's a thought! Why doesn't IBM fix their broken shit so users don't need training?
- Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Step by Step
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Calendar, Contacts, Tasks Quick Reference Guide (Cheat Sheet of Instructions, Tips & Shortcuts - Laminated Card)
- Outlook 2007 For Dummies
- Microsoft Outlook: The How-To Guide
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Quick Reference Guide
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Mail Quick Reference Guide
(Cheat Sheet of Instructions, Tips & Shortcuts - Laminated Card) - Microsoft Outlook 2010
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 Inside Out
- Microsoft Outlook 2007 Step by Step
First page. There were even a couple I skipped. Apparently Microsoft Outlook users need training too. So: "Why doesn't Microsoft fix their broken shit so users don't need training?"
Stop that. You're acting like those people who think that if they find a flaw in the Theory of Evolution, it automatically means that their crazy "intelligent design" idea is true. The fact that Microsoft makes some sucky software does not mean it's okay for IBM/Lotus to make sucky software.
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@Cassidy said:
Cue car and driving lessons analogy.
You mean like how most cars have the pedals beneath the steering wheel, but Lotus Car has them on the dashboard which is attached to the steering wheel? And how you usually learn to drive a car with four wheels, but with Lotus Car you have to learn how to configure it to use four wheels?Because that's the car analogy I've been picking up.
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@Someone You Know said:
Stop that. You're acting like those people who think that if they find a flaw in the Theory of Evolution, it automatically means that their crazy "intelligent design" idea is true. The fact that Microsoft makes some sucky software does not mean it's okay for IBM/Lotus to make sucky software.
All software sucks. The internal app I'm writing right now for our new VoIP phone system sucks. The unstated premise for Blakey's statement was that Microsoft software does not require training; if he believed all software (or even just Microsoft Outlook) required training, why make a point about it with respect to Lotus Notes? The Amazon results are evidence enough that said premise is untrue, so Blakey's statement was utterly pointless.
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@MatNewman said:
Easy: you're someone who vehemently defends a comparatively expensive product which clearly has many design and implementation defects by saying "at least [useless feature] in Notes works better than a completely free offering such as Gmail, so NAH!".@C-Octothorpe said:
Fucking IBM moran...
You'll need to explain yourself more clearly, since I'm apparently a "moran".
And because you use smilies a lot...
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WRT the training thing...
People will write training books on ANYTHING....
I've searched for training on Notepad... unfortunately I haven't found anything..
I did find this though for MS paint :)
http://www.lkwdpl.org/classes/MSPaint/paint.html
I think the world needs a training manual for proper use of chairs :)
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@nonpartisan said:
@Someone You Know said:
Stop that. You're acting like those people who think that if they find a flaw in the Theory of Evolution, it automatically means that their crazy "intelligent design" idea is true. The fact that Microsoft makes some sucky software does not mean it's okay for IBM/Lotus to make sucky software.
All software sucks. The internal app I'm writing right now for our new VoIP phone system sucks. The unstated premise for Blakey's statement was that Microsoft software does not require training; if he believed all software (or even just Microsoft Outlook) required training, why make a point about it with respect to Lotus Notes? The Amazon results are evidence enough that said premise is untrue, so Blakey's statement was utterly pointless.The fact that all software sucks still does not mean it's okay for IBM/Lotus to make sucky software.
The point is not that Microsoft software doesn't require training. The point is that it is a bad thing if software requires training. Not everything is a comparison between Lotus and Microsoft.
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@Someone You Know said:
The point is that it is a bad thing if software requires training.
No, it is NOT a bad thing! Where do people get these ideas?
To get the most out of any product, people need to be trained in its use. Whether or not this is formalised training by someone else or simply sitting down and reading the sodding instruction booklet, it's training of a kind. It's imparting product knowledge to the user.
I have this real bugbear about people who feel software requires no training whatsoever, that just anyone can pick it up and use it effectively solely by wizard-led activities populated by huge idiot-proof icons, surrounded by floating help screens. I feel substituting training with this bloatware so that the product can appeal to the lowest common denominator is the real Bad Thing.
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@Cassidy said:
I have this real bugbear about people who feel software requires no training whatsoever,
It's not that software currently does need no training (although a lot of systems are very very good, despite all my gripes about Apple, their iPhone interface is really close to this ideal).
It's that we believe all software should not require training. You're talking about how things are. I'm talking about how things ought to be.
@Cassidy said:
that just anyone can pick it up and use it effectively solely by wizard-led activities populated by huge idiot-proof icons, surrounded by floating help screens.
Wow. Please tell me you never design user-facing UIs. Hell, I personally think the wizard was a step-back in usability, although I might in a minority there. The most usable computing (as opposed to cellphone/table) environment I ever used was Mac Classic, and it didn't have wizards.
@Cassidy said:
I feel substituting training with this bloatware so that the product can appeal to the lowest common denominator is the real Bad Thing.
I agree that it is a bad thing. But making usable software doesn't involve bloating it up, so your premise is wrong. (All those highly-usable Mac Classic apps that fit on 20k of disk were so bloated, right?)
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@Cassidy said:
people who feel software requires no training whatsoever
Also, note that compilers and interpreters are software. People who think [whatever language] requires no training end up on the front page here.
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@Cassidy said:
@Someone You Know said:
The point is that it is a bad thing if software requires training.
No, it is NOT a bad thing! Where do people get these ideas?
Some software needs training. You need to learn to use QuickBooks.
However, if you need highly paid consultants to train people to use an EMAIL CLIENT-- in 2012-- then your email software is shit and the UI needs to be razed to the ground and salted.
@Cassidy said:
use it effectively solely by wizard-led activities
[url="http://www.somethingawful.com/d/flash-tub/wizard-flash-cartoon.php"]ALWAYS USE THE WIZARD![/url]
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@blakeyrat said:
1. How many versions it took LN to implement sorting by subject while ignoring Re: and FW:? It's a very basic function of a mail client. Oh, sorry, LN is not a mail client.Lotus Notes is evil. I know you people are thinking I'm going for the hyperbole, but I'm not: I truly believe Lotus Notes is a work of evil.
2. Every time the LN apoligists say: "Oh, your're not using this 6 month old version, this is why everything is fucked up", I think: "I used Outlook from 1997, and it was perfectly working. Not crashing or hanging, not requiring any training, everything was as expected. Then fucking IBM sold LN to our company". Then I switched companies, and Outlook XP and outlook 2003 has been working without any problem.
3.Perhaps because of some miraculous coincidence, Outlook doesn't seem to be misconfigured ever. Why LN apologists do always blame misconfiguration?
No matter how many Outlook books one can find on Amazon, the truth is that Outlook's functions are perfectly discoverable, and it's useable without training. Unless someone is a complete moron.
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@blakeyrat said:
Wow. Please tell me you never design user-facing UIs.
That is correct - I don't. UI design isn't my daily job so I've never really had to excel at it.
What I know about UI design is fairly minimal: I have no real sense of artistic design (many websites I've created have ripped off other people's skins). I understand process workflow and agree with much of what Jakob Nielsen says. I can point out shortcomings in some UIs I've come across and have suggested ways of improving said presentation... but it ain't my bag.
@blakeyrat said:
But making usable software doesn't involve bloating it up, so your premise is wrong. (All those highly-usable Mac Classic apps that fit on 20k of disk were so bloated, right?)
I was more talking about making usable software worse by treating every install as a first-time user by default, adding in tutorials and wizards that appeal to novices but become barriers to more experienced users. I dislike how some apps (and later Windows incarnations) have "user skill level: complete novice that's only just been introduced to the world of computers" by default with their intrusive balloons/wizards/over-verbose settings. Peculiarly, most games I've played don't suffer from this.
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@Cassidy said:
What I know about UI design is fairly minimal: I have no real sense of artistic design
Artistic design has nothing to do with it. Again, Mac Classic apps were (almost universally) butt-ugly. But they were usable.
@Cassidy said:
I was more talking about making usable software worse by treating every install as a first-time user by default, adding in tutorials and wizards that appeal to novices but become barriers to more experienced users.
That's why you don't do that. I'd say that's bad usability design. Word used to do that back in the 95/98/2000 versions and they've moved away from it on the theory that the Ribbon is much better for discoverability. And I think they're right.
@Cassidy said:
I dislike how some apps (and later Windows incarnations) have "user skill level: complete novice that's only just been introduced to the world of computers" by default with their intrusive balloons/wizards/over-verbose settings.
Yes, but those applications aren't necessarily usable. You're confusing some idiot's (or some textbook's) "idea" of what's usable with actual usability. Not the same thing.
@Cassidy said:
Peculiarly, most games I've played don't suffer from this.
Games sometimes have excellent usability design. Sometimes they're awful. Sometimes the in-game experience is good, but the menu system to get there is awful. It's kind of a mixed bag.
