FIGURE A

This is the bookmarks section of the new Notes client in action. Click picture for a larger image.

The Web browser within the Notes client is finally usable -- with extensive frames support, support for animated graphics and Java applets, all without the use of the Domino server.

Also new in this version is a headlines page, shown in Figure B. The headlines page is a way for a user to visually see, at a glance, information related to their current day. Users and IS departments can easily modify the headlines via a wizard to display any combination of a user's inbox, to-do list, calendar entries, a Web or intranet site as well as Notes database subscription content.

FIGURE B

The headlines page offers a quick easy way to access your frequently needed information Click picture for a larger image.

Subscriptions, also new in R5, allow users to establish search criteria for documents in a Notes database and be notified when new documents become available which satisfy the search criteria.

While Notes has always offered the best support for disconnected users, the latest version will continue that tradition by offering support for multiple back end-servers as well as connection methods. Location documents are being taken to the next logic level with their evolution into complete configuration environments. By creating and switching between multiple location documents in your Personal Address Book, you could connect to a Domino server at your office, an Exchange server when you go to a customer or client site and a personal POP3 server account when you go home at night.

To continue to shed the mantle of a closed, proprietary email system, the Notes client offers extensive support for all of the important protocols currently in use.

What's the bad news with the client? Not much that we could determine. Lotus is planning on dropping support for all clients other than Windows, and Macintosh . There are no plans to support message retraction after send and there's no integrated virus scanning in the native client application. Otherwise, it's pretty clean.

Server design goals
On the server side, Lotus has four goals for the new Domino server: reliability, availability, scalability and ease of administration. They've worked to achieve these goals by freezing the code for the server side earlier than any of the other parts of the Lotus Notes family of products and performing massive amounts of regression testing. Clustering will now be available to people who access a Domino server via a Web browser for the first time, thereby increasing the availability of Web applications.