My first entry into SnTT is going to be a very brief one, and as the title suggests it involves adding a side preview pane to the basic (i.e, the non eclipse) Notes client.
Since the release of the Notes 8 public beta, I've heard a few people complain about the fact that the side mounted preview pane is only available in the "standard" client. I've never been a heavy preview pane user, however I'd debated trying it on the side in case that changed my mind. I'm using the basic client mostly at the moment, so I decided to see if it was easy to hack something together. If you want a side preview pane, and you're using the "basic" Notes 8 client, then you can add one by making a quick design change to your mail file. This should also work with the R6.x and R7.x versions of the mail template (I haven't tested it yet, let me know if it doesn't work for some reason!). If you're a developer, this will take you 30 seconds, however I'll go into a bit of extra detail so anyone out there with a designer client can follow along.
Open your mail file in designer, and go to the FrameSets section. Look for the Frameset named 'Mail View Frame', and open it up. Select the NotesView frame, and split this into columns. Next, rename or delete the Frame containing the old preview pane down the bottom ("NotesPreview"). Renaming it is useful if you want to compare styles before removing it completely, but the end result is that it'll be deleted. Note that the designer client will let you name 2 frames the same thing, however your preview will only appear in one of those frames. Next, name your newly created frame "NotesPreview", and set some style options.
The only important thing about this frame is that you name it "NotesPreview". To get the show/hide functionality, select the "Arrows Only" options in the 'Show' section in the screenshot above. The rest is up to you, such as selecting the colours involved in the borders, and the size of the preview window. Save this frame, and return to the design view. Select the properties for the "Mail View Frame" you just modified, and select the design tab. Check the option "Prohibit design refresh or replace to modify" as shown below.
That's it, you're done. Of course modifying the template isn't encouraged etc etc, but it's a simple change to reverse if you don't like it. Simply uncheck the option above, and refresh your design. Also, this obviously doesn't affect Domino Web Access. Finally, if you wanted to take it a step further you could easily modify your mail template to allow the user to configure which option they preferred - this involves changing a few more design elements, but it's pretty easy to do. Shout out if you'd like some more details on that, and I can put something together for you.
I make a couple of other changes to my mail template too. I reduce the font size of the main navigation page down to 9pt, as this fits in better with the overall style, and I hate overly large fonts. This is done by editing the Notesmail Picker 6.1 page, and modifying the properties of the embedded view element. I also like to be able to see my top folders, so I modify the "NotesMailOutline" and just expand the top level "View" entry.
With Notes 8 we're getting closer to a much improved mail experience, but there's still room for hacking out a bit of improvement here and there..