Jump to content
  • 0

(Archived) Bugbears and suggestions for improvement [Search, Undo, Export, View, Login, Clipper]


madra

Idea

Hi All.

I'm a recent convert to Evernote and am loving it so far. However, as I've been using it quite intensely over the past few weeks, "throwing my digital life into it" I've been coming across one or two annoyances, which are slightly spoiling the fun for me. As I said, I'm a newbie to Evernote, so some of these may be down to user error –if so, please point out the error of my ways– but, if not, here are some areas the developers might want to look at.

SEARCHING:

Sometimes I mistakenly type a search term into the main search box, whilst I have one of my notebooks selected in the Notebooks panel. This obviously restricts the search to only that notebook. If I then click on "All notebooks" in the Notebooks panel, the search term is wiped and I have to re-enter it. Really irritating!

Also, the system of having to call up a second search window to search within a selected document is unnecessarily confusing. This is compounded by the fact that, when summoned, this search box shares the same general screen location as the main search box, the note title and the author panel, [if "Show extended note info" is selected]. Many times, albeit while not paying as as much attention as I should! I've accidentally typed a search query into the note title panel by mistake. If I notice this before I hit Return, all is not lost; I can CMD+Z to undo. However, if I've hit return, focus switches to the main note content panel itself and CMD+Z is no longer available if I switch back to the note title panel.

SUGGESTION:

1: Take a look at how searching is implemented in OSX Finder, where a search term can be broadened or narrowed by means selecting the appropriate button in the search pane.

2: Provide a single univeral searchbox with options to refine the scope of that search, rather than requiring different search boxes.

Which brings me on to…

UNDOING:

As mentioned above, the undo function seems scoped to the last action in the current panel only. So, in the case mentioned above, where I've accidentally deleted or altered a title and hit return [thus switching focus to the main note content panel], I can no longer switch back to the title panel and undo that error. There are similar glitches, when undoing changes in the main note panel. I've found that what gets undone seems to be very random; sometimes it's just the last word I typed. Sometimes it's a few words. Sometimes it's a complete paragraph. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to it –not that I can work out, anyway!

Likewise the CMD+SHIFT+Z redo function seems to throw a dice before deciding whether it's going to work or not. About one time in three or four, CMD+SHIFT+Z will either not do anything at all, or will redo an action, which does not correspond to the last CMD+Z undone action. All of this is made even more of a lottery, when you are switching between the note title and note content panels, making changes and then invoking CMD+Z and CMD+SHIFT+Z to undo and redo things. Sometimes, when the title panel has focus, trying to redo or undo changes there will instead redo or undo changes in the main content panel!

By far the biggest PITA, with regards to undoing tho' is that there is no way [that I can find!] to undo the accidental deletion of a note from a notebook. CMD+Z doesn't work and it seems impossible to recover the note as Evernote appears to delete said file immediately, rather than using the system Trash, from whence it would at least be recoverable. This is also compounded by the fact that I can't see any option to require an "Are you sure?" confirmation before deleting a file. As, previously mentioned, with so many panels and panes which can have focus in the Evernote interface, it's all too easy to hit the delete key and irretrievably delete a note itself, when you meant to edit the text inside it –because you've overlooked the fact that the note itself and not the content panel has focus.

SUGGESTION:

1: Make CMD+Z and CMD+SHIFT+Z work consistently. ie. They either undo the last action, whatever it was and in whatever panel it took place –or they undo the last action in the currently selected pane.

2: Add the ability to undo deletion of a note, OR the ability to set a preferences option to warn before deleting a note OR place deleted notes in the system trash, so they can be recovered.

EXPORTING:

Please provide a way to get copies of documents out of Evernote, in their original format. If I want to send someone a copy of a document I have in one of my notebooks, I have the options of exporting it [but only in .enex or HTML formats –How does that even apply to an image or PDF?], or I can share the document via email or the usual social networks, or I can make it public and send someone the URL.

All well and good and very high-tech and "Web 2", but all a bit unnecessarily complicated if all I want to do is quickly get a copy of a note out of Evernote, so I can give it to the person sitting next to me. At present, I'm having to open each note in question individually, and then use "Save as.." to save a copy of each one to my desktop.

VIEWING:

It's great that Evernote can show me a "Quick Look" preview of my unsupported documents [eg. NeoOffice files], but it still involves selecting the document in the notes panel, then clicking the "Quick Look" button in the main content pane, which makes it a bit of a painfully slow procedure when trying to browse through a heap of such documents.

SUGGESTION:

1: Is it possible for you to integrate the "Quick Look" view into the Evernote window itself, so that the notes pane would display the "Quick Look" instead of just an icon, when an unsupported document is selected?

2: Similarly, could Evernote use a miniaturised version of the "Quick Look" view as the document icon, in the notes pane?

3: In the Finder, it's possible to keep the "Quick Look" panel open, whilst using the arrow keys to navigate through a folder of documents. Could Evernote imitate this behaviour, rather than having to call up "Quick Look" individually for each document?

Well, that'll do for today. I'm sure I'll be back with more, as i get deeper into this thing!

[EDIT -I knew there was "just one more thing" or two]

STAYING LOGGED IN:

Can we have an option to "stay logged in on this device" [as opposed to, or in addition to the current "keep me logged in for one week" option? For security, my Evernote password is a long, randomly generated string of alphanumeric characters, which I don't actually know myself. On my laptop, I use 1password to manage my passwords, so can re-login to Evernote with a simple keystroke. However, re-logging in on my iPhone involves a tedious procedure of logging into 1password on the iPhone, copying the password and then switching back to Safari to paste it in.

I'm not really sure what "keep me logged in for a week" is supposed to achieve, anyway. eBay has a similarly annoying policy of only allowing you to remain logged in for short periods of time and I just don't get it. Either let me choose to login every time, if I'm super paranoid about security, or on a shared machine -or let me choose to stay logged in continually, if I'm happy that my access is secure. This halfway house approach just seems like pointless hassle.

iOS EVERNOTE CLIPPER

I'm currently using a bit of a workaround, which accesses the Evernote clipper from Safari on iOS [instructions here ]. However, the clipper is not optimised for such a small screen and entering info involves a lot of pinch-to-zoom and squinting around. It would be great if Evernote could work on an alternate version of the clipper, for small screens. Or, failing that, has anyone come up with a solution, more useable on a tiny screen, than the one I linked to above?

Link to comment

16 replies to this idea

Recommended Posts

iOS EVERNOTE CLIPPER

I'm currently using a bit of a workaround, which accesses the Evernote clipper from Safari on iOS [instructions here ]. However, the clipper is not optimised for such a small screen and entering info involves a lot of pinch-to-zoom and squinting around. It would be great if Evernote could work on an alternate version of the clipper, for small screens. Or, failing that, has anyone come up with a solution, more useable on a tiny screen, than the one I linked to above?

Use iCab Mobile as your browser. It has a built in clip to Evernote function. It's a great browser in general.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

2. Format cleaner

In many clipping or copy/paste cases an unwanted formatting goes to the EN text. Please add a "clean all formatting" button which removes all formatting from the selected text. See similar functionality in Google Docs Format > "Remove Formatting".

we have "paste without formatting" and "simplify formatting" features, but no "remove formatting," presumably because everything has to be formatted in order to work in the evernote app. as much as i would like a plain text option, i am afraid it seems unlikely to occur.

Link to comment

Two more suggestions:

1. Text Zoom

Please allow to zoom text in or out (as possible in browsers either by gestures or by cmd+/cmd-) - changing font size is just a work-around and not wanted in most cases!

2. Format cleaner

In many clipping or copy/paste cases an unwanted formatting goes to the EN text. Please add a "clean all formatting" button which removes all formatting from the selected text. See similar functionality in Google Docs Format > "Remove Formatting".

Thanks

Link to comment

you can sort your trash by updated and what is most recently deleted is in top

Actually, I just tried this and it doesn't seem to work. It doesn't register the deleting as an "update".

Bah! Sorry about that. I'm going to go have a chit chat about this

Link to comment

you can sort your trash by updated and what is most recently deleted is in top

I thought I tried this at one point and it didn't work. But, I'll keep that in mind if it happens again. That would make it easier to find a note that was just deleted. Thanks.

Link to comment

I've been using Evernote extensively for about a year now, and I'll just say first that it fits nicely into my life and I'm quite pleased with it. Great job so far. But, I would like to also suggest two features that are touched on in this topic:

  • A more fully-featured "undo" that would allow you to undo a note deletion. Or, perhaps a confirmation before deleting a note (which could be turned off).
  • Searching within the Trash.

I just now accidentally moved my hand across the keyboard and accidentally hit the delete key when I had a note in a list selected, and it deleted it. It did go into the Trash, but there is no way to search in the trash. So, my workaround was to turn my phone to airplane mode, open Evernote on the phone, and compare notes that were assigned to this particular tag and see which one was missing. Then, I was able to sort by title in the Trash to find it. Seems like an edge case, but I've inadvertently deleted notes a handful of times, and it would be nice to either make this less likely to happen through a confirmation dialog or easier to undo with an "undo" feature.

Link to comment

1. Searching. I agree. That can be annoying. I am more annoyed, though, with the instant searching that tries to look for stuff before I am done typing. With thousands of notes everything can get so bogged down.

I strongly agree with this. For some reason, my search is often slow or freezy (far more so than the rest of Evernote), and so a single wrong character can add two or three seconds to a search. Since I often hit a wrong character or two, especially when typing functions like "source:mail.smtp," this is a major impediment to my easy use of the search function.

Yes, but it also effects the Evernote Web Clipper, as that requires a fresh login, every seven days.

This must vary browser to browser. Which browser do you use? I use Chrome and have only had to log in to the clipper once every month or two (maybe only after I turn my computer off, which, as you can see, I rarely do).

Link to comment

Undo: Is there a program similar to ours that does undo in a way that you like?

Hmmm... good question. Maybe the answer is to make it slightly harder to alter the title of a document, or delete it without warning, rather than extending the scope of the undo action across various panels

- Trash: There is a trash in Evernote. Should be just below your last notebook if you're on Lion.

Ah! -thanks. My bad. I've got so many notebooks, the 'Trash' was scrolled past the end of the panel.

...We've spent a bunch of time on PDFs, and trying to build a catch all view for "all other document types" is a little daunting

I appreciate that and wouldn't expect you to try and build support for previewing every type of document into Evernote itself. Hence why I pondered whether there was any way of leveraging the fact that Quick Look can render previews for a variety of document types, to create those previews within Evernote itself. Like yourself, I suspect the answer is no, as I've never heard of Apple opening up Quick Look in that way. I presume the existing Quick Look facility within Evernote just hooks into OSX itself and the previews are provided at system level?

Staying logged in:

I'm assuming this is mainly for the web client? (Web has a separate forum, and I can't speak directly about it)

Yes, but it also effects the Evernote Web Clipper, as that requires a fresh login, every seven days.

iOS Evernote Clipper

Love the idea of the clipper, and I'm not in charge... but from what I gather there isn't an easy way to make a Safari iOS clipper. I've heard a crazy work around that involves making your own browser with a clipper bulit in, not sure we'll go down that route.

Is it not possible to serve up a different mobile device optimised stylesheet, if the clipper is accessed on a smartphone? [i'm assuming the clipper is constructed in HTML/CSS/JS]. As per my link above, the current clipper can be used on iOS, by creating a custom bookmarklet. The problem is that its interface is too big and unwieldy, when viewed on a phone screen, which makes using it pretty painful.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

1. Searching. I agree. That can be annoying. I am more annoyed, though, with the instant searching that tries to look for stuff before I am done typing. With thousands of notes everything can get so bogged down.

2. Undoing. Rarely do it, so I guess I haven't been bothered by it.

3. Exporting. In HTML the PDF gets put in a folder. It's all there. Attach them to an email and send it to the friend next to you, put it on a flash drive, or just right click on the note and email it directly (it shows up with your note and the PDF as an attachment). I don't see what could be easier (doesn't the email do exactly what you are asking?), and I am not sure what you want Evernote to change.

4. Quick Look. I don't know what this is. I guess I don't have any unsupported formats.

5. Staying logged in. This is a web issue. I am often getting logged out as well. It is frustrating, especially because it means I cannot access to the forum!

6. iOS web clipper. There is another thread on this somewhere in the forums. I think there is some kind of workaround. Personally, I am fine with copy (all of the page), send link, and paste into the email. I hear that Safari can be a real pain with plug in functionality.

Link to comment

Noted! I may or may not have commited one or more of these "user errors" myself

Undo: Is there a program similar to ours that does undo in a way that you like?

- Trash: There is a trash in Evernote. Should be just below your last notebook if you're on Lion.

Viewing: We display PDF's inline, as well as images. I don't know of a way to integrate Quick Look directly into Evernote. I'm happy to be informed if there is an easy way. We've spent a bunch of time on PDFs, and trying to build a catch all view for "all other document types" is a little daunting

Staying logged in:

I'm assuming this is mainly for the web client? (Web has a separate forum, and I can't speak directly about it)

iOS Evernote Clipper

Love the idea of the clipper, and I'm not in charge... but from what I gather there isn't an easy way to make a Safari iOS clipper. I've heard a crazy work around that involves making your own browser with a clipper bulit in, not sure we'll go down that route.

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...