A groovy little feature that I just stumbled across by accident. If you do a long left click on a folder name, then you can edit that folder’s name “in place” (i.e. not via a dialog box) just as you might rename a folder in the Windows Explorer. (On a Macintosh, use Command->Click).
Trouble is, so far, I’ve only been able to get it work with a Notes 5 mail template (either R5 or D6 server). With a Notes 6 mail template on a D6 server, nothing happens!!
I thought it might be a problem with nested folders, because in the Notes 6 mail template, all folders are nested below “Folders”. But it works just fine with a nested folder in the R5 template design.
I then thought it might be the Show Unread Count on Folders feature interfering, but even with that turned off, it still doesn’t work.
All very strange. Can anybody throw any light on this one?
Cheers,
Subject: “Read Only”
Okay, found it.
It appears that Outlines in Notes 6 have a new “Read Only” property, which was ticked on the Notes 6 design, but (obviously) not in the Notes 5 design. I removed that property, and now I can rename folders in-place in the Notes 6 template.
But now I’m wondering what the repercussions of my doing that might be. All the system folders and views (Inbox, Sent etc) are not compromised. I can’t rename them with the checkbox unticked, as indeed, I couldn’t do in the Notes 5 mail design.
The Notes 6 Designer Help file reveals the following gem:
"If you select ‘Read only’, users cannot edit the outline in place. "
Cheers,
Subject: RE: “Read Only”
In-place renaming applies only to views/folders that are shown by outline placeholder entries. Views/folders that have explicit entries in the outline (such as Inbox, Sent, etc.) can not be renamed in-place, regardless of the read-only setting.
Read-only can be set on the placeholder entries individually, or for the entire outline on outline properties (which will disable in-place renaming for all placeholder entries).
Not sure if that answers your question, but hopefully clarifies how this feature works.
Regards,
Vin Manduca
Ibm
Subject: RE: “Read Only”
Vin,
Thanks for your response. You’ve partially answered my question for me.
But what exactly does it protect me (the designer) from the user actually doing? Apart from renaming folders in-place, of course!
Cheers,
Subject: RE: “Read Only”
That’s it - Read-Only only prevents renaming of those views/folders in-place.
– Vin
Subject: RE: “Read Only”
Vin,
Thanks, once again, for your response.
I’m afraid that I’m still not getting the “why” for this feature! Why prevent users editing folder names in-place? Particularly, why do this on the email template (NotesMailOutline)? Presumably, somebody turned this setting on there for a reason. I mean, you wouldn’t disable a groovy feature like in-place renaming unless you had too, right?
What danger am I in from turning it off, and thereby enabling in-place renaming?
Oh, and if there’s any OpenNTF people reading this, this affects your mail template too.
Cheers,
Subject: RE: “Read Only”
Mike,
The Read-Only property was provided to give designers the choice of enabling this feature or not. If I remember correctly, in-place editing was disabled in mail template for no other reason than consistency with R5 template - since this feature wasn’t in 5.x, it was decided that in-place editing should be disabled by default in the R6 template, forcing designers to explicitly enable it if they wanted to allow it.
I agree that there is not a lot of good reason to disable in-place editing, and I don’t believe you will be endangering anything by allowing it.
– Vin
Subject: RE: “Read Only”
Vin,
Thank you very much. That was just the answer that I was hoping for!
I think Lotus needs to reconsider setting this on the N6 mail template, or should at least, advertise it more to developers. Sure it’s not consistent with R5, but then, new features aren’t, are they! I mean, you could argue that the Folder Unread Count feature should be swiched off by default, because that’s not in the R5 template either.
The irony here is, that in-place folder renaming DOES work in the R5 template, when viewed through a Notes 6 client. That’s how I spotted it, in fact.
Many thanks, again.
Cheers,