I've been through a lot of in-person Lotus training (seven classes, in fact) and have found the instructions laid out in this class to be among the best I've ever followed. The creators of the course were really very aware of how to lay out the instructions so they were easy to understand and easy to view. For instance, in more complex activities, the instructions are tabbed so you can easily move along on the exercise without having to constantly scroll on your screen. Even for someone like me, who is usually pretty addicted to having paper instructions, it was pretty easy to Alt-Tab back and forth between the instructions in the R5 Notes client and the actual activity I was working on in Domino Designer.

One of the biggest strengths of this training program is that the lessons don't make assumptions about what you already might know. Instead, they include instructions that take into account most possible combinations. You simply skip over anything you might already know.

Developing the negatives
The most important thing that this course requires, Grasshopper, is self-discipline. This isn't a course you can cram. In order to get the most value out of it, you must take your time and schedule at least the suggested time for each of the six modules (a total of 16.5 hours). But if you can discipline yourself to schedule the suggested time for each module and retreat into your Fortress of Solitude so you aren't interrupted, the chances are great that you will pass the R5 Application Development Update Exam with flying colors. Provided, of course, you're not rendered helpless by Kryptonite right before taking the test.

There isn't currently a lot of activity in the course discussion forum, but the course is young and this will probably change as more people sign up for it. Discussion forums are notoriously hard to get a lot of people to contribute to. I do feel from reviewing the existing discussions, however, that you can post almost any question and get a satisfactory answer quickly. And you can browse through the introductions people write about themselves to see if there are any other developers with whom you might share something in common.

Helpful hints sprinkled throughout
One of the things I thought as I was taking this course is that it had a lot of R5 tips that were good enough to be used in "tip of the week" emails that I subscribe to. This really made me feel like I had an inside edge. You can see a sample of one of the sets of tips in Figure B.

FIGURE B

The navigation button usage tips in the course are but one of many great sets of tips. Click picture for a larger image.

The lesson developers also included a lot of great warnings that have already helped me to prevent headaches. Here is a sample concerning compacting and Domino database version compatibility:

Note: If a Release 5 client compacts a local replica of a Release 4 database, the database moves to R5 database format and cannot be accessed locally by R4 clients.