March 14th, 2006
Tabbed Window User Interface
It seems that all the rage these days in
Web browsers is to have a "tabbed user interface". With
tabs, users can click back and forth and get access to multiple windows
of information quickly and easily. While I guess this is an exciting
new enhancement for Web browsers, Lotus Notes has had tabs since v1.0 in
1989!
Let's take a look at some of the things you can do with Lotus Notes tabbed
windows.
First, you can open many different databases, or multiple views of the
same database all at the same time. The screen capture below
shows switching back and forth from Inbox to Calendar to Journal.
Second, to close a tab all you do is click on the "X" in the
right side of the tab's title.
Third, you can reorder tabs by clicking on the tab's title, dragging to
the position you want, and dropping. Below is an example of moving
the "Inbox" tab from the first position to the second, and then
back again.
Also, by right clicking on a tab, you can access more advanced options,
such as "Open In New Window", "Open In Domino Designer"
(if you have appropriate access) and "Create Bookmark".
There are also useful keyboard shortcuts available for tabs, such as:
- CTRL+TAB to switch from window to window, and
- ALT+W+#, where # is the number of the window you want to switch to.
Finally, Lotus Notes 7 is adding even more enhancements to tabs, such as a new toolbar Icon for "Close All Open Window Tabs" allowing you to close everything with a single click...
and a fantastic new option called "Save Window State On Exit" that causes the Notes client to re-open all windows that were open when you last exited the client.
I hope this has helped you learn more about the user interface of Lotus Notes... once again a product way ahead of the curve! :-)
