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Mary Beth recently announced that the big workspace modifications will not be making its way into Notes 8. At least, not in the immediate future. She specifically makes reference to the public beta, but I assume that if the new workspace does not make it into the public beta that it will not make it into general release. At least until 8.0.1 or later. I find this to be a huge potential loss.

I by no means what to be labeled as one of the many voices of distention out there regarding Notes 8, because I’m not. I’m a lover, not a hater. I am very positive about it and feel that Notes 8 could be the chance for Notes to regain the email top seat -– don’t forget that for many years Notes bested Outlook in sales. After all, most of the people out there that I know who really know what Notes is and what it can do feel that it is the superior collaboration and email platform. It tends to be the end-users that describe Notes in the negative. When talking with these users, however, one quickly finds that Notes is not failing as an email or collaboration client, but that the user interface is counter-intuitive, confusing, and just plain ugly. In the slick and polished world of eye-candy like Vista and OS X, Notes is the undeniable Ugly Betty of the software world. But it’s not just about looking good, it’s about usability. I can’t even begin to count how many times I have heard users say “Outlook can do this, why can’t Notes?â€? Only to have to explain to them that Notes can do it, just not how they expected it to.

Enter Notes 8. Mostly slick, pretty well polished. Eye-candy, of sorts, in its own right. We’re not talking Apple iPod slick here, but at least as good as Outlook and that is what we really want, right? Well, that and a better UI. After watching this develop through Mary Beth’s blog, I think we’re in pretty capable hands. I expect to see a very usable UI.

But here’s the thing: the Workspace is really the glue that holds all of the Notes pieces together. Its the Notes hub, if you will. Its were you will find all of your Notes database icons. Its the starting point for every action taken in Notes. After all, why do all the admins, developers, and power users change their start page to be the Workspace? Because it is the center of the Notes experience. So what’s the problem? Productivity Tools.

See, with Notes 8 we are now getting the IBM Productivity Tools as part of the Notes package. A word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. How cool is that? You mean I can uninstall Office and regain 1GB of drive space? My iTunes library will be oh so happy. But unless I can have icons on my workspace for the documents that I create in the productivity tools, well then that just destroys the whole purpose of the workspace. As far as I’m concerned –- and I have never heard IBM actually say this -– the reason for including the productivity tools was so that I never have to leave Notes. It becomes a sort of pseudo-OS. I boot into XP, launch Notes, and that’s it. I’m there for the rest of the day. I have my email, instant messaging, word processor, RSS feeds…I’m set. I live in Notes. But that just ain’t gonna happen unless I can put my document icons on the workspace. Okay, that’s overstating it, but is sure won’t be as easy to live in Notes without my document icons on the workspace. I should be able to put anything there. Database icons, all my OpenDocument icons, icons to Sametime conversations, etc. I should even be able to put icons to other programs! Non-Notes programs. Image creating a workspace tab -– or folder, or whatever paradigm they go with -– for each project. All icons related to the project go there. All Sametime chats, all word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents. It would be a organizational dream! And, I think, probably one of the most coveted changes to Notes for end-users.

I’m a developer, so I get it. Some features cause such problems as to simply be too big to fix prior to launch. So you pull it. But there are also certain items that are crucial and that simply don’t get pulled. Certain items that will push back a launch date until they are working. I think this is one of them. Without the workspace, without the ability to “liveâ€? in Notes, without the Notes hub, I think that, pretty or not, Notes 8 is going to look like a bloated piece of software to the end-user because it lacks the glue that makes it an experience. IBM needs to take a page out of Apple’s recent book and simply not release something until it is more than complete and polished to a shine. Screw the release dates and hold the product until it is ready. We’ll wait.