The IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 development team has been hard at work since Lotusphere 2008!!
The GREAT news is that a PUBLIC BETA for Notes/Domino 8.5 will begin shortly (within a couple of weeks, late May or early June), where we will unveil the latest beta versions of the Notes 8.5 client for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Citrix, as well as, Domino 8.5 server for Windows (32 & 64bit), AIX (32 & 64bit), Linux, Solaris, and System i (newly renamed to just i).
Stay tuned for further announcements in this forum as we get closer to the start of the PUBLIC beta for Notes/Domino 8.5!
Subject: DDE?
I wonder, does this beta include Domino Designer in Eclipse beta too?
Frunobulax
Subject: Would be nice to know if…
It would be really nice to know if the following is true or false:
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Designer based on Eclipse?
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Administrator based on Eclipse?
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Widgets / LiveText working on non-Windows clients?
and also what are the differences between the clients on different operating systems? I hate articles about LiveText etc. that doesn’t state that the feature is not working on non-Windows platforms. I know I should read the README, but hey… why not make IBM be pro-active telling what the difference is? 
Subject: most of that info is will come with the 8.5 PreBeta, so take this for what you want
but DDE will be eclipse based and windows only for 8.5. There are not plans for moving the Administrator client at this time. And I am not sure about widgets on other platforms
Subject: Yes, we need proper Eclipse, faster than later 
We have to move forward.