John Head: Symphony 3 beta 3 is out

June 8 2010

Looks like John has found one of today's announcements, and it's a screamer (as in screaming fast)....



You can download Lotus Symphony 3 beta 3, now, with tons of new features and improvements over the earlier beta.  Development progress on UI, fit and finish, and performance has been excellent.  I've been using Symphony 3 exclusively for several months, and it is just a joy on this 100% Microsoft-free desktop.

Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 3 adds some exciting new enhancements. You can now customize the toolbars and arrange them as you like. We've added a one click export to PDF icon that you can add to your toolbar. You now have the option to create toolbars to support your individual work style.
We've continued to enhance the user interface and added more features to the sidebar panels in all three applications. We've added additional animations options to give you more choices and moved frequently used functions to the sidebars so you don't have to search for them. We're also connecting Lotus Symphony to the cloud with a new LotusLive plugin. You will be able to store and retrieve content directly from within the Symphony application to our LotusLive service. Make sure to get the plugin from the Symphony plugin page and sign up for the free 30 day trial of LotusLive.


We still have a little surprise that goes along with this in the DNUG keynote this morning in Berlin.  I'll add something about that later today.

Link: symphony.lotus.com: Lotus Symphony 3 beta 3 >

Ed Brill | DNUG Konferenz, Berlin, Germany Category:  Lotus Symphony  Add/View Comments [10]

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  1. 1  Albert Buendia http://www.slug.es | 6/8/2010 2:31:26 AM

    Ed, it's important to mention that it's a beta but it's available in A LOT of languages. This is not usual. T H A N K S !!

    I downloaded and installed yesterday on my new iMac and it's a jewel. I love the new PDF icon (PLEASE provide it on Lotus Notes 8.5.2 !!!!) and the general improvements. Only 2 minutes to install and opens very fast. I can say Symphony now has a Ferrari engine inside. I hope Notes 8.5.2 can provide this excellent suite built in.

    Muchas gracias por el excelente trabajo.

  1. 2  Henry Ferlauto  | 6/8/2010 10:27:13 AM

    Very impressive. Once Symphony 3 and Office 2010 are both released comparative startup times on various pieces of hardware could be quite compelling. (i.e. Take 3-5 different computers and compare the start-up times for each of the apps. A time lapse video with a table at the end.)

  1. 3  Harris Huckabee  | 6/8/2010 10:59:38 AM

    For many years, I have built "Export to Excel" buttons into my Notes reporting views so that the owners of the tools could slice and dice and tweak and run macros and then share reports with external customers. I am hopeful that one day customers will ask for a link (to a spreadsheet in the cloud) instead of an Excel file attachment in an email. Is it possible to use Symphony macros to export Domino data to symphony/odf files hosted in the cloud? What would be even greater if Symphony apps were web-provisioned like iNotes or a plugin.

    I know I am asking too much, but I like to dream.

  1. 4  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 6/8/2010 12:04:45 PM

    @3 Harris - what you are asking for (taking data in notes w/ user interaction, creating a spreadsheet, saving it to the cloud, and then returning a link that the user can share and/or send is possible today. You just have to think creatively.

    You can mix working with the ODF format directly via the ODFDOM Toolkit, use the web services or APIs of LotusLive, Google Docs, or many other services, and you can manage what you send out. Today, you would do that all in Java. Soon, I think you will be able to do all of that in JavaScript in an XPages application.

  1. 5  skip  | 6/8/2010 8:50:49 PM

    #3 Harris - care to publish the code for your "Export to Excel" buttons? Thanks. Skip

  1. 6  MarvinK  | 6/9/2010 11:53:08 AM

    I haven't been back to Symphony for a while--the lack of support for Microsoft formats was a major turnoff (I don't work in a silo).

    It looks like it can open Microsoft's newer formats. Any chance you'll add the ability to save in that format? It seems like one of the challenges for any MS Office competitor is the ability to as seamlessly as possible interact with those using the most common tools.

  1. 7  ARS development http://www.arsnet.eu | 6/10/2010 12:23:01 PM

    @5 skip

    try internet Business Office Services 2.0 (iBOS)xlReports

    Retrieve current, correct and complete

    Information in real-time

    { Link }

    { Link }

    or from Dominoguru One-click Microsoft Excel (or Symphony Spreadsheets) via XPages and SSJS

    { Link }

  1. 8  Harris Huckabee  | 6/10/2010 2:30:48 PM

    @5 Skip - Those buttons were based on the scripts by Ken Pespisa which I think can still be found in the Notes Developer sandbox. As pointed out in #7, we are looking at new ways of doing things with XPages. Codestore has an older thread that shows how to call an agent from the web that spits html to Excel in a fashion similar to The Dominoguru link in #7.

  1. 9  Håkon Stende  | 6/11/2010 4:26:53 AM

    Will there be packages for ubuntu 10.04 which is lts-release.

    And will there be a 64-bit version for it on ubuntu?

  1. 10  skip  | 6/11/2010 6:02:54 AM

    #7&8 - thanks. Will check them out. The speed is amazing though makes me wish for two things off the bat, a way to set the Save file path and wish that Notes could open this fast. Great job.