I've been messing around with Lotus Notes 8.5 here lately and I must say this is a much better release than the 8.0.1 (never messed with 8.0.2) release. The designer client is also nice but I have run into a couple of things that are irrating to me.

• Takes forever to open an application. This might actually be an issue with my machine as I only have 512MB of RAM
• When you highlight a form or whatever in the main perspective/window/whatever and then in the properties that are shown below, select the fields tab and there is no scroll bar and using the arrow key doesn't move the list so you can see what you're selecting. However, highlight the form in the Application list perspective and you do get the scroll bar on the fields tab. OK, was trying to get some screenshots of this but now it seems to work since I highlighted the form in the Application list perspective, so it's kind of flakey
• No custom class browser or type ahead support for custom classes. I thought I had read somewhere that this would be included but I may be wrong
• Have to double-click a design element type (i.e. Forms) to open them up in the main perspective. This is really a non-issue, I just have to get used to it
• The design element types in the application list perspective are in different places and categorized differently. Again, a non-issue, I just have to get used to it

Now there are quite a few things that I really like.

• The properties perspective/frame/window/whatever is very handy indeed. It's nice to be able to see the fields, properties, etc of a design element without having to right-click and pick properties
• Being able to customize the layout is awesome!
• The help system opens in it's own perspective over on the side, a very welcome feature indeed, like I didn't already have enough windows open.
• Highlight two forms in the application list perspective, right click and select Compare/Each Other. Very cool!
• Highlight a form in the application list perspective, right click and select Edit with DXL. This brings up a DXL tree/editor of the selected form where you can edit the items. Another cool feature
• Better support for web services
• Theme support. I haven't messed with this yet but looks promising
• Toolbars seem to stay where I put them

This is really a very short list as I've only been messing with it for a day or two, but my initial feelings are it's a very good release. I'm sure I'll probably find more after I've been using it for a while. The designer client seems to be very robust and offers a lot more features than previous versions, not to mention the eclipse IDE being very nice. I haven't been able to play with XPages yet as I don't have a Domino 8.5 test server yet, but hopefully that won't be too long from now. I'm also anxious to dig into the Theme support and see what's possible there. To say the least I'm excited about this release and I'm looking forward to digging into it deeper, of course as I find new cool stuff I'll report those findings here.