Some frustrations of a longtime and daily user

[umarci 1]

• Please allow to double click on the tray icon in Windows  to open the software (like pretty much any other existing software)
• 95% of seetings are "go to your profile on the website" which just seems kind of rediculous.
• Please somehow allow me to disable all the "tasks" funtionality. I use evernote purely for note making, and the clutter from all the Tasks funtionality has really been a strain on the UX, and notably has slowed down the app both on Windows and Android for me.
• Some kind of "last sync was at xx:xx" information. My Android app had for some reason not synced some of the notes I took on my Android app for a few days (does it not sync in the background?) and as far as I know there is no indication anywhere that the Windows app is up to date or not.

These things are frustrating to me as my primary use for Evernote is making a quick note or reminder on my phone when I'm not near a desk, and then having these notes available when using the desktop app.

I personally feel like Evernote is slowly getting a bit bloated with features that are undermining it's original purpose.

I understand that adding more features is important, but I really would like to keep the simplicity of this software functional, new stuff should not get in the way of stuff that was working well.

[PinkElephant 8,802]

1) On the Mac a single click on the dock icon opens the app, as with all other apps. No idea with that crooked other operating system …

2) I would debate the count of 95%, but be it. These settings have always been there, so why change them ? There are informations for account access, allowed devices, invoice and billing, global security settings and the like. These are server functions, not client settings. To me it makes perfect sense you modify them on the server, using a browser.

3) I never use graphics in Excel, how do I remove any trace of diagrams from my Excel install ? Ridiculous ? Right ! What did you say about Tasks ...  ?

4)Take a look at the notes list in Android. As long as there are notes with a green triangle in the top right corner, these notes still need to sync. No green triangle - everything that needs to be synced has synced to the server. Windows client hasn’t got it yet ? Try ctrl-R to force a reload.

Not every user will enjoy every new function. Simple solution: Don’t use it. I have tried (and am still trying) Tasks, but for my day to day I still rely on my Things 3 installation. Does it disturb me that other use Tasks in EN extensively ? No, and it doesn’t cross my use cases. As in my Excel example, that new functions are there does not mean you need to use them. Just ignore they exist, if they don’t fit in your setup. But accept that fellow users make good use of them.

The world is turning with us, not around us !

[umarci 1]

On 11/28/2022 at 7:48 PM, PinkElephant said:

1) On the Mac a single click on the dock icon opens the app, as with all other apps. No idea with that crooked other operating system …

2) I would debate the count of 95%, but be it. These settings have always been there, so why change them ? There are informations for account access, allowed devices, invoice and billing, global security settings and the like. These are server functions, not client settings. To me it makes perfect sense you modify them on the server, using a browser.

3) I never use graphics in Excel, how do I remove any trace of diagrams from my Excel install ? Ridiculous ? Right ! What did you say about Tasks ...  ?

4)Take a look at the notes list in Android. As long as there are notes with a green triangle in the top right corner, these notes still need to sync. No green triangle - everything that needs to be synced has synced to the server. Windows client hasn’t got it yet ? Try ctrl-R to force a reload.

Not every user will enjoy every new function. Simple solution: Don’t use it. I have tried (and am still trying) Tasks, but for my day to day I still rely on my Things 3 installation. Does it disturb me that other use Tasks in EN extensively ? No, and it doesn’t cross my use cases. As in my Excel example, that new functions are there does not mean you need to use them. Just ignore they exist, if they don’t fit in your setup. But accept that fellow users make good use of them.

The world is turning with us, not around us !

Hey there, thanks for your mostly useless and passive aggressive reply!

1) I'm talking about the Windows Tray icons so I don't see the point of bring up a completely different operating system. All other software opens with a double click from the Tray Icon, but Evernote doesn't.

2) If you really want to nit pick like that, there is 5 out of 6 buttons (83.33%) in settings that do nothing other than telling you to go to the website. Its terrible UX design. Specially considering the first buttons opens a 2nd sidebar with another 7 buttons. These 7 buttons should've been the first buttons with a single link elsewhere for all online profile settings. It does not make any sense in it's current state.

3) Completely pointless comparison once again. Excel is extremely comprehensive software with almost unlimited use cases, while Evernote has a very plain and simple primary functionality. I would argue that Tasks and Notes are different things. Devs obviously agree with this since they do try to separate it with the color scheme etc.
Using your example, It would indeed be ridiculous if for example in Excel you could only extract numbers and not be able to excerpt numbers together because there are users that don't need to excerpt numbers. This is what your example is implying. Evernote is trying to be two different things with Notes and Tasks. Either way I am not complaining about its presence in the software, I am complaining about UI elements of it being integrated into Notes when they don't need to.

4) In this scenario, the notes did not sync for several days despite my phone having an internet connection. It may have been a one off, but to me it feels like an error in the way the app times it's syncs. A lot of other software with cloud syncing functionality will often have a small string of text or icon to indicate everything is synced or not.

I'm sorry but your comparisons are somewhat childlike and I'm really questioning the point of your reply other than to downplay my own personal feedback to Evernote, but for which reason I'm not sure? You can disagree that's fine, but your odd comparisons, unnecessary complaints about my choice of operating systems and condescending remarks seem really questionable to me. So Tasks don't cross your use cases, great! They do in mine. I'm also not complaining about other people using them at all. My concerns are with UI elements of it being integrated into notes when they do not need to be. "Not using" the features doesn't remove the intrusion of the UI.

I feel like I'm back in 6th grade arguing about the superior operating system. Was hoping to be met with some more professionalism on a note-taking software forum but alas.

My main purpose with this post is for Evernote to take my feedback so I hope it reaches them and I'll leave it at that.

 

[PinkElephant 8,802]

So many words just to get disappointed again: The forum is user2user, be warned there are some characters lurking around here ….

To reach EN, you can use the feedback function build into the clients, or issue a support ticket. I am convinced they will appreciate the count done on the number of settings menu items. Nothing beats a strong statistic these days.

[Boot17 1,538]

1 hour ago, umarci said:

My main purpose with this post is for Evernote to take my feedback so I hope it reaches them and I'll leave it at that.

If you just want to send Evernote your opinion and not get feedback from other users, then submitting feedback through the Evernote clients is the way to go.

Greater than 99% of comments on this forum are made by fellow users. I'm sure Evernote staff see some of them, but not all of them.

Regarding the Settings redirecting to the website. That does seem curious (but not much of a bother to me personally), I wonder if it's just a temporary place holder as they are planning on adding it into the app. Either that or (more likely), lots of people have no clue how to access that information (I've seen lots of questions about it in this forum) and so this acts more of a shortcut/quick link and Evernote really wanted to spell it out for them.

[PinkElephant 8,802]

Just to mention it: The Tabs that will not directly offer options in settings will redirect with a single click to the account page on the web.

These are all settings that take effect on the server, whereas the settings that can be reached directly are inApp-settings for the client.

So it makes sense to have them all in one place, as it makes sense to redirect to the web pages for the general account settings. This is not a bad UI, it is a good UI, because it offers one click access without unnecessarily doubling the web functions into the app.

[Magnus Møller Petersen 14]

8 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Just to mention it: The Tabs that will not directly offer options in settings will redirect with a single click to the account page on the web.

These are all settings that take effect on the server, whereas the settings that can be reached directly are inApp-settings for the client.

So it makes sense to have them all in one place, as it makes sense to redirect to the web pages for the general account settings. This is not a bad UI, it is a good UI, because it offers one click access without unnecessarily doubling the web functions into the app.

No sure whether or not I would call it good UI, but it's nice that you have the links to go to your account for all the other settings. Eventually I guess some settings will be part of the app.

But speaking of the UI in the settings. Visual elements are not aligned / sized similarly, and that just seems lazy to me from a development and design perspective. I've attached an image showing this.

There are similar cases on the mobile app as well.

That said, I love to have tasks in Evernote. Apart from the visual element weirdness, then the sync between devices is slow. In particular with tasks (eg. if I create a task on mobile, it takes forever to show up on desktop). I've reported this several times using the feedback functionality.

[PinkElephant 8,802]

The left panel holds text only, with a unified spacing, like for paragraphs.

The right panel holds all sort of stuff, including miniature thumbs, 2-row text, text selection fields with a frame etc. Anybody who ever placed 2 text frame boxes for example in PowerPoint side by side and startet to fill them with different content knows that aligning the text line by line is a struggle in itself.

I don‘t think alignment is even on the board when developing the settings pages. Of course, one can make a drama out of everything, or express a deep believe that not perfectly aligned visuals means an equally misaligned code underneath.

Others (like me) are happy the settings pages are filling, step by step, and rather don‘t care about irrelevancies in the layout.

[Boot17 1,538]

10 hours ago, Magnus Møller Petersen said:

But speaking of the UI in the settings. Visual elements are not aligned / sized similarly, and that just seems lazy to me from a development and design perspective. I've attached an image showing this.

I think this is true in general, but I'd give it a pass in the Settings since these are hardly ever looked at.

Kudos for noticing it though. I generally notice things like that, but I didn't notice it in the settings.

10 hours ago, Magnus Møller Petersen said:

That said, I love to have tasks in Evernote. Apart from the visual element weirdness, then the sync between devices is slow. In particular with tasks (eg. if I create a task on mobile, it takes forever to show up on desktop). I've reported this several times using the feedback functionality.

Same here.

[umarci 1]

On 11/29/2022 at 9:32 PM, PinkElephant said:

So many words just to get disappointed again: The forum is user2user, be warned there are some characters lurking around here ….

You love to write argumentive pargraphs yourself but don't seem to enjoy getting them written back to you. Really curious what you think to be achieving here, arguing just for the sake of arguing. On top of that, your childlike attempts of making my valid points look bad....really makes me question your (mental) age.

 

On 11/29/2022 at 11:52 PM, PinkElephant said:

Just to mention it: The Tabs that will not directly offer options in settings will redirect with a single click to the account page on the web.

These are all settings that take effect on the server, whereas the settings that can be reached directly are inApp-settings for the client.

So it makes sense to have them all in one place, as it makes sense to redirect to the web pages for the general account settings. This is not a bad UI, it is a good UI, because it offers one click access without unnecessarily doubling the web functions into the app.

Really have no idea what you're on about. It's completely pointless to have 5 individual tabs, all showing you the exact same link 5 times over, how you can call this good UI is mind baffling to me. Furthermore, just because settings are server-sided settings, doesn't mean they shoulnd't be accessable in the in-app Settings tab, it's pure lazyness from EN. I am signed into the app, so these server-sides settings ARE accessible from my signed in account. They can then simply not be available/greyed out if in any case you are using EN offline. It absolutely is terrible UX as there is a loads of unnecessary steps just leading you to the same answer: a link to your web profile. If these settings are going to be accesible through a browser only, I shouldn't have to click 5 times to find out for each of them.

How can you call these settings being available inside the app unnecesarry? Opening a browser and having to sign into my account again, that's what's unneccesary here. They are extra steps that can be avoided since I'm already signed in and it's perfectly feasable to have these settings in the app despite them being server sided. The only way this could be seen as unnesary is from the perspective from EN who don't see the value of good UX.

 

On 11/29/2022 at 10:26 PM, Boot17 said:

If you just want to send Evernote your opinion and not get feedback from other users, then submitting feedback through the Evernote clients is the way to go.

Thanks for pointing that out, however it really contradicts the name of this subforum being Feature Requests and threads being called "ideas". I don't mind getting feedback, discussion is good, but afforementioned passive aggressive disagreements just for the sake of arguing are not. I have no idea why somebody would spend time on something so specific and pointless, while being so wrong,  when all we want is a good working note-taking app.

As a side note on this topic, it looks like the "Simple notes" Android widget which I frequently use to quickly take a note is not working properly, and despite hitting Save, the note simply disappears which is why some of my notes have been going missing.

I'll be using the direct feedback function from now on.

[PinkElephant 8,802]

You must not enjoy what I write - everybody’s darling is everybody’s fool  🤡