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Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Wed 28 Jan 2009, 11:17 AM
In Part 1, I showed how IBM's rendering of MIME messages could lead your customers to think you were still running Notes R5, and how our upcoming iFidelity (sign up for the beta) would allow you to send out more professional looking email, rendered as it is in Notes.  In Part 2, I showed how content rendered by Domino on the web was likely to make prospective customers think twice, or more, before buying Lotus Notes, and how CoexEdit could dramatically improve that default rendering.  In Part 3, I showed how rendering is made even worse when the rich text is edited on the web, and how CoexEdit can improve that process as well.  In Part 4, I showed how HTML signatures are prone to some of the same rendering issues (as well as different ones) as we have seen elsewhere.

In this post, I talk about email, and something that IBM even does reasonably with, at least in one engine, although not in the other.  The issue is not simple - how do you translate a tabbed table into an e-mail where you can't use JavaScript?  Essentially, you have to flatten the table out, but exactly how that is done is a matter for discussion.

I decided to use a tabbed table which was part of the fix list posts I used to do in the Partner forum (perhaps I should do those again), but with a nested tabbed table inside it to show how that works.

A few specifics to notice.

1) In Notes client rendering, the tab labels are lost completely, as are the tab background colors if the table is set to alternate row colors as opposed to set explicitly.  Nested tabs are very hard to distinguish.

2) See how in the Domino server rendering, IBM has done a better job, since it includes the tab labels and tab background colors, but nested tabs are still somewhat hard to distinguish.

3) In the iFidelity for Lotus Notes rendering, the nested tab labels are offset further to the right, making it easier to distinguish a nested tabbed table.


Tabbed table in Notes client in rich text

Tabbed table in rich text



Tabbed table in Outlook after being rendered by Notes 8.5 client

Tabbed table in Outlook after Notes client rendering



Tabbed table in Outlook after being rendered by Domino 8.5 server

Tabbed table in Outlook after Domino server rendering



Tabbed table in Outlook after being rendered by iFidelity (beta)

Tabbed table in Outllok after iFidelity for Lotus Notes rendering



Tabbed table in GMail after being rendered by Notes 8.5 client

Tabbed table in Outlook after Notes client rendering



Tabbed table in GMail after being rendered by Domino 8.5 server

Tabbed table in Outlook after Domino server rendering



Tabbed table in GMail after being rendered by iFidelity (beta) - Shows how it is slightly different

Tabbed table in Outlook after iFidelity for Lotus Notes rendering

The comparison in a nutshell

Rendering decision

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