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Make Evernote more efficient when changing notebooks


mrschwarz

Idea

In the old version of EN, to change a note to a different notebook required one mouse click to drop down the notebook list, and click to desired notebook. In addition the most recently used notebook was on top.

The new behavior requires clicking on a disappearing icon (you need to hover over it), selecting the notebook from an alphabetical list, then click a 'Move' button. The old method was more efficient and easier. The new one requires more work to do the same thing.

What was wrong with the old method that required it to be changed? This isn't a complaint, it's a question of why this design decision was made.

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2 hours ago, mrschwarz said:

This isn't a complaint, it's a question of why this design decision was made.

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The new UI may be less efficient in some details, but it is more efficient when working on different devices. With legacy you really had to unlearn and relearn basics when just switching between Windows and Mac, not even talking about the web client (poor sibling of the rest in the old days).

Since v10 most actions are the same, independent from the OS and client you are using at the moment.

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I think there are probably a lot of questions like that that will never be answered. The UI/UX changes to V10 are numerous and I doubt we'll ever get a break down of any reason for most of the decisions. At least I haven't seen anything like that except for the justification of why it was necessary to move to a unified platform.

Design decisions are kind of a beauty is in the eye-of-the-beholder kind of thing. I really like the look of the v10 UI and think the legacy UI (on Windows and Mac) looks inconsistent and not that great. But I've also seen where some people really don't like the v10 design.

I personally never used the drop down box we are talking about in legacy to switch notebooks. I always used the side bar and/or the Switch To (Mac only I think pre v10) to change notebooks.

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19 hours ago, Boot17 said:

The UI/UX changes to V10 are numerous and I doubt we'll ever get a break down of any reason for most of the decisions. At least I haven't seen anything like that except for the justification of why it was necessary to move to a unified platform.

Given that the naturally written Android, iOS, MacOS and Windows all had 'tweaks' of their own to suit their OS,   and used (forinstance) typefaces that in some cases were unique to that platform,  unifying everything mainly meant that everyone would have something to complain about.  All the special fonts and tweaks went,  as did a few things that didn't translate well to the new environment,  because they just weren't available on all platforms.

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The main reason AFAIK was the proven inability to maintain and further develop the native apps. Before v10 EN was in a stalemate, hardly keeping up with changes forced to apply by operating system development.

It is very easy to see: Without shared code, there were 4 dev teams (probably even more, for backend, web clipper, APIs and the like). No chance to exchange people, the wheel reinvented at least 4 times, very costly, being large, but no economies of scale.

This was IMHO at the core of the decision. It was not a question whether to continue or change - the question rather was to be falling  out of the market over time by not innovating, or to break the spell of the legacy code base.

In my opinion they took the basically right decision - implementation remains a challenge, it seems.

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I completely agree that the UI/UX and design needed to be started from scratch if Evernote was to retain its place in the market. That is the reason, in my view, that the types of UI decisions were made. It was not/never a decision to change from the old process but rather a design decision made for the new platform. Few, if any, of the decisions seem to have been based on how things were done previously but rather on how can they best be achieved in the new environment which had to run uniformly across operating systems. Some of those choices can be shown to be demonstrably less efficient. More often they are just a different process which confuses the muscle memory for the way I previously performed a particular action. I am now rather confused when I very rarely return to Legacy. My fingers want to do things in the v10 method and Legacy seems clunky and unintuitive. It isn't - just different to what I have now become used to.

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21 hours ago, Boot17 said:

I always used the side bar and/or the Switch To (Mac only I think pre v10) to change notebooks.

Yeah. I'm pretty much using the Switch To shortcut in Version 10 to move around notes and notebooks. Really efficient and lets me keep the sidebar shut all the time.

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On 2/25/2022 at 7:00 PM, mrschwarz said:

The new behavior requires clicking on a disappearing icon (you need to hover over it), selecting the notebook from an alphabetical list, then click a 'Move' button.

I agree with your general point and that of other contributors that a number of actions in V10 now need more clicks.

It is worth noting though that the entire action of moving a note can be achieved with the keyboard:

  • alt+shift+M to open the move diaog box
  • arrow keys to select the new notebook
  • enter to select and move

Alternatively the easiest way if using the mouse is simply to drag the note onto the new notebook in the sidebar.

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