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As a former Notes user (email, cal, plus apps for expense tracking, etc) - what did Notes in was the horrendous, non-Windows user interface. The second half of

As a former Notes user (email, cal, plus apps for expense tracking, etc) - what did Notes in was the horrendous, non-Windows user interface. The second half of the article here is spot on, if anyone bothers to read it. Nice to see those old site ridiculing Notes, Jeff Atwood et al - a blast from the past! As an end-user, I welcomed Notes demise. And don't get me started on its god-awful local/offline sync behavior. Outlook ran circles around it. Hard to believe from todays perspective, sure, but yes, Lotus Notes was so much worse.

tomfakes 23d ago
I was part of the small team that added Exchange Offline mode very, very late in the product cycle specifically to counter the Notes Local Replication story. We were asked for something quick and easy, but decided to put the effort in to make it the correct way for the Exchange architecture. The bulk of that code is still there 30 years later.
- shadowtree 23d ago
  Kudos, as an owner of an offline/sync stack myself - this stuff is so hard at scale. You guys did a great job!
goatlover 23d ago
What was so bad about the non-Windows interface other than it wasn't Windows? I didn't have problems with using Notes email or developing apps for Notes. It had incredible workflow and database replication features. Blew anything Microsoft had at the time out of the water. When I was forced to start using Outlook, didn't care for it. Still don't think it's all that great. I guess Sharepoint is decent enough now. Sure I guess if all you cared about as an end-user was email and Windows-like UI, then I guess I understand. But you were missing a ton of other things.
- jjkaczor 22d ago
  Finally within the last 1-2 years, SharePoint Online in combination with the various other M365 services (and Azure) is "pretty good". Low-code/no-code is available with SharePoint Lists (with some level of JSON customization), but mainly PowerPlatform. But if you need to, you can develop extensions/webparts in JavaScript/TypeScript. While the ability to include arbitrary JS within Pages is mostly "gone" (except I guess for this latest CoPilot/HTML offering - although you are limited in how/what you can do with JavaScript), that means better structure - we will see how the replacement of VBA with "Office Scripts" goes. Then you link in things like Teams, M365 Groups, Loop, "Forms", Planner, Purview and you can get quite the mix of capabilities.

tomfakes 23d ago

I was part of the small team that added Exchange Offline mode very, very late in the product cycle specifically to counter the Notes Local Replication story. We were asked for something quick and easy, but decided to put the effort in to make it the correct way for the Exchange architecture. The bulk of that code is still there 30 years later.

shadowtree 23d ago
Kudos, as an owner of an offline/sync stack myself - this stuff is so hard at scale. You guys did a great job!

goatlover 23d ago

What was so bad about the non-Windows interface other than it wasn't Windows? I didn't have problems with using Notes email or developing apps for Notes. It had incredible workflow and database replication features. Blew anything Microsoft had at the time out of the water. When I was forced to start using Outlook, didn't care for it. Still don't think it's all that great. I guess Sharepoint is decent enough now. Sure I guess if all you cared about as an end-user was email and Windows-like UI, then I guess I understand. But you were missing a ton of other things.

jjkaczor 22d ago
Finally within the last 1-2 years, SharePoint Online in combination with the various other M365 services (and Azure) is "pretty good". Low-code/no-code is available with SharePoint Lists (with some level of JSON customization), but mainly PowerPlatform. But if you need to, you can develop extensions/webparts in JavaScript/TypeScript. While the ability to include arbitrary JS within Pages is mostly "gone" (except I guess for this latest CoPilot/HTML offering - although you are limited in how/what you can do with JavaScript), that means better structure - we will see how the replacement of VBA with "Office Scripts" goes. Then you link in things like Teams, M365 Groups, Loop, "Forms", Planner, Purview and you can get quite the mix of capabilities.