Want to make your Notes Workspace look like THAT?
by Volker Weber
Florian is a smart man. Everybody is talking about the chicklets this week and how IBM forgot to make them look good in Notes 8. Now he is filling in:
GYWAM 2.0 allows you to freely customize your chicklets (including an alpha channel for freestyle transparency), hinky-minkies (twisties) on any background image of your choice
Give him a few more days to get this out the door.
Comments
By far the most attractive Notes I've ever seen! :-)
The Helpdesk are going to love it when I use a "picture" of a crowded workspace as the backdrop and none of the icons are clickable :P
Does it work with Notes 6.5? And is there a GYWAM 1.x?
Why would he want to get her out the door?
There was a GYWAM 1.x once, yes, but it is no longer available afaik and didn't allow for any transparency (thus also no flexibility regarding the background image, really);
And, yes, GYWAM 2.0 works from Notes 6 to including 8 (both standard and basic edition). Notes 5 would be a matter of a day or two in case anyone would really need it.
Notes 8 meaning at least 8.0 and 8.0.1 and as long as visualization of the workspace is available / stays the same.
@Florian,
Absolutely stunning.....
If anyone ever again says "Notes is ugly", I will show them this.
Though, the non-Notes part is the pretty part. ;-)
>> Want to make your Notes Workspace look like THAT?
NO!
@Ulrich, I apologize for only demonstrating the obvious "fun-part" of desktop-skinning in my examples. In my opinion, being able to apply both an individual touch and corporate identity to the look of any software can be helpful in a variety of ways - beginning with kiosk installations down to working with software every day.
Imagine an IBM branded workspace or one that fits the company you work in. One can certainly look at this from a playground / nerd perspective only (as my examples most probably suggested) or also look at this from the same perspective as company portals, websites and more are designed today: corporate identity.
As Notes is so much more than just a simple email application, it serves as the entry point to just about any information in many organizations as of today - in other words: it's a portal to companies knowledge and daily operations.
From our experience, it is often neglected that the the desktop / workspace / bookmarks actually represent corporate knowledge: They store all information as to how end users are connected, and moreover in many organizations connect themselves to the corporate network and information.
Treating these objects accordingly, also from a usability perspective, should in my opinion also involve their look and feel.
p.s. do you have a background image on your Windows desktop?
p.p.s. imagine the iPod look like the classic Notes desktop
p.p.p.s. does it make more sense from a corporate perspective now? If your company even uses a welcome page today, you've answered the need for a consistent end user experience in the past already; just with a different approach.
@Florian
Right on. You need to go work on the Notes client team.
@Bruce
If you take a look at Florian's Blog you will see Mary Beth contacting him already ;-)
