I don't entirely disagree with you Jake, but when you say "Depsite what I say about Domino, I do really like it. But I think it's best left to do what it does best." my reaction is simply that we don't always get to choose what we're going to with Domino. Sometimes we are required to make an application work in both the Notes client and the web browser, and sometimes the natural way to make it work in the Notes client is with either folder and subfolders or categories, because the data does naturally fall into some sort of hierarchy. Users of the Notes client are used to navigating hierarchies of folders and categories, and (for the most part) they like them just fine. When you say that categorized views are a pain, I'm not sure if you're saying that just for web interfaces, or also for the Notes client. In the former case, I totally agree. In the latter, I only agree somewhat. Personally, I tend to prefer nested folder structures, but like it or not, categories are a widely-used feature of many Notes client applications, users do tend to be familiar with them, and even when building entirely new applications for an existing user base it's often best to stick with what they are used to. But now take that application as-is, and put it in a browser... and the vast majority of users are going to tell you that the navigation is unfamilar at best, and that it sucks at worst. One of the things that Domino definitely does not do best is automatically translate the navigation UI into HTML that looks good and functions well. This is where, as developers, we have to delve into our bag of tricks and overlay something that is functional and familiar for browser users. The prevalence of breadcrumb navigation on popular web sites pretty much assures that that it will be familiar to browser-based users of our applications, so that leaves it to us to make sure that our bag of tricks is good enough to make the breadcrumbs funcctional.
I don't entirely disagree with you Jake, but when you say "Depsite what I say about Domino, I do really like it. But I think it's best left to do what it does best." my reaction is simply that we don't always get to choose what we're going to with Domino. Sometimes we are required to make an application work in both the Notes client and the web browser, and sometimes the natural way to make it work in the Notes client is with either folder and subfolders or categories, because the data does naturally fall into some sort of hierarchy. Users of the Notes client are used to navigating hierarchies of folders and categories, and (for the most part) they like them just fine. When you say that categorized views are a pain, I'm not sure if you're saying that just for web interfaces, or also for the Notes client. In the former case, I totally agree. In the latter, I only agree somewhat. Personally, I tend to prefer nested folder structures, but like it or not, categories are a widely-used feature of many Notes client applications, users do tend to be familiar with them, and even when building entirely new applications for an existing user base it's often best to stick with what they are used to. But now take that application as-is, and put it in a browser... and the vast majority of users are going to tell you that the navigation is unfamilar at best, and that it sucks at worst. One of the things that Domino definitely does not do best is automatically translate the navigation UI into HTML that looks good and functions well. This is where, as developers, we have to delve into our bag of tricks and overlay something that is functional and familiar for browser users. The prevalence of breadcrumb navigation on popular web sites pretty much assures that that it will be familiar to browser-based users of our applications, so that leaves it to us to make sure that our bag of tricks is good enough to make the breadcrumbs funcctional.
-rich