Notes and Domino 7 is very cool. There are many features that I think will be regarded as essential once folks have been using this version for even a short while (Autosave comes to mind immediately).

But not all new features are greeted enthusiastically. One feature of Designer that is fueling debate is the ability to rename design elements from the design view, without needing to open the element. Bruce has posted about this, as has Chris.

First off, Chris mentions that he can't think of a reason to use the same alias name on 2 design elements. Personally, I find this ability very useful if coding an application that will be accessed from the Notes client and the web client. This allows me to store the documents with a single form name, avoiding the need for form formulae in the views, and I can simply allow the design properties to control which form is used to render the data. That's a bit of an aside, but the point is that there are valid reasons to retain the design element name and alias across multiple elements.

Bruce's and Chris's points about the danger of in-view editing of design elements are well-taken. I happen to think this is a very cool feature, and I wish I could use it now in ND6. However, it would be much more intuitive if the properties were available via a right-button click of the mouse (or an Alt-Enter key combo after highlighting the design element). There's already a Design Document properties box that displays with a right-click. If one could set things like the alias from here (just like setting a database title via the DB properties box), that would preclude accidental renamings, and would most likely flatten a tiny bit of learning curve. I am not at all a fan of needing to edit the Notes.ini file to turn the in-view edit ability on and off, but I would be fine with enabling or disabling this via a Preferences dialog box.

The key to the whole thing is usability. The available parameters in the Notes.ini file are useful, but hardly intuitive. In-view editing is a wonderful feature in the client, so it makes sense to extend it to the Designer. And a means of managing this capability - via mechanisms with which folks are already familiar - would be a welcome enhancement.