Since then, of course, R5 was released. While many of these ideas apply to releases prior to R5, we thought this would be a good time to look at some more ways to cut development time.

This month I'd like to define some additional components that can, when designed and deployed correctly, be used in almost every Notes application you develop. But before we jump into the design of the additional components, we need to pour a fresh cup of coffee, sit back, and make some decisions about what we'd like our Notes application to look like across the board.

I've long been of the opinion that Notes doesn't encourage or enforce aesthetic application design. You've seen 'em, I've seen 'em -- we've all seen applications in Notes that look like colorblind drunken monkeys designed them. It's not Notes' fault, it's those kooky developers. As an important step in the process of refining a world-class Notes development environment, you'll need to define formal user interface standards for your internally developed applications.

The benefits of UI standards
Standards?!? I can almost hear the collective grunt of resentment from all you developers reading this article. The idea of working under the tyrannical yoke of user interface (UI) standards can be unpleasant; and the idea of developing them can seem a real chore. But once in use, UI standards can have some very real, concrete benefits for your organization.

All of your applications look the same
Well, duh, that's the point isn't it? Well, actually, that's only part of it. If your organization is like most, once you start developing Notes applications, you're going to create lots of them for your users. If all the applications have the same appearance they form a kind of corporate culture, what's often called a "corporate identity". Users want and appreciate a predicable software experience. If they didn't, application suites like SmartSuite and Microsoft Office would probably not be as popular as they are.

If applications look and act the same, training and support costs can be reduced
Training users isn't high on the list of things that developers usually like to do. It's an important part of the application's life cycle though. If you've already deployed five applications that look and act a certain way, when you add a sixth application to the mix, training on that application will probably consist of only the functionality that is specific to the new application.