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EN web interface and how to ink notes on Win10


lorenzo.btt

Idea

Hello all,, 

Since I know something that EN devs don't, which is that there are many people anxious about being able to ink existing notes on their notetaking app of choice, I'll cut the long story short but there nonetheless are a couple of things I must write before getting to the focus of my post so bear with me: 

1) Evernote for Windows 10 litteraly s***s big time on touch-enabled devices. Both UWP and WIN32 versions of EN are simply not ready for touch. Their interface is clunky and counter-intuitive in that, for one, dragging inside a note with finger/stylus will not scroll but highlight content. Tiny sidebars are a terrible way to implement scrolling, it is impossible to use it with fingers, stylus/pen are recommended but, even with those, just getting to the bottom of a page is frustrating at the least.Text-modification icons are so small that unless one uses a stylus it will invariably be overkill to try and activate the right function. Ditto for note-modification icons: Too small, too close to each other; obtaining the desired result (e.g. trashing a note) upon first attempt is pretty much an hit-and-miss thing. Menus are ridiculous. Impossible to use with a finger. The list goes on but you get the picture...

2) Against any logic Evernote's web interface works much better, it behaves as it should regardless of the fact that it is being handled through finger, stylus, mouse pointer.It offers a set of icons and shortcuts which feels like is has been pondered over and organized with a sense of logic that the standalone app still has to reach to. It is even way faster than the app which probably suffers from bugs related to its underlying code ridden with stuff inherited from previous portings, that nails it down and brings hiccups and undesired behaviours that I personally find unnerving. Yes I have been trying to reinstall, yes I have tried various versions (even betas), but the general slowness and feeling of clunkiness did not go away. 

3) I am one of those which thinks that not being able to ink an existing note "à la Onenote"  on Evernote is a wasted occasion. As such I have come and gone to/from ON/EN a number of times but never was able to settle as a happy camper. EN cannot ink a file like ON does, but this is pretty much the only aspect in which MS app outshines Evernote, while it is utter ***** in every other aspect. On is ridden with many image scaling, text formatting, general rendering problems that make opening a file with it an unpleasant experience. Don't get me started with ON's syncing woes, all related to OneDrive which never worked since inception etc. etc. 

All the above said I was still searching for the perfect solution. Enter Microsoft Edge.

As you know Edge has got this nifty pen icon which allows you to use a pen/stylus to ink whatever page/file/image Edge can display. Once on a page/image/file simply click on the pen icon and a menu will appear on the upper part of the browser window, to let you write, draw, underline, highlight whatever you want to your heart content. 

Once you are finished annotating/drawing/underlining/highlighting, simply use the "cut" function to select the area you have modified, copy and paste on your favorite html/pdf/image editor. Save from there and import your file in EN. So simple so nice. 

Of course this is a workaround but since I have been trying to use a million of those I feel that this is, so far, the fastest way to proceed. 

Of course (2) you might do the same thing and just paste content onto the Evernote standalone app but, as per above, the standalone app is to this day a botched version of EN's web interface, and the result will be quite disappointing. 
Your mileage may vary.

Hope this helps. 

 

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42 minutes ago, lorenzo.btt said:

Evernote for Windows 10 litteraly s***s big time on touch-enabled devices. Both UWP and WIN32 versions of EN are simply not ready for touch.

FYI - there is no UWP app. There was, but it was horrible and mercifully discontinued last year. The one in the app store is the Win32 app wrapped in the Centennial Bridge, which just lets developers put their Win32 apps in the app store with minimal effort, because for darn sure no developers are putting any effort into UWP.

 

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