(Archived) Some suggestions for a more eased user interface

[Zkaka1 0]

( If you can't see the image for some reason, here's a direct link: http://cl.ly/image/2D3i0N0x2637 )

A small clarification: The problem is that when you want to show that tag from all of your notebooks - you have to manually select a different notebook, which then automatically deselects that tag. You then have to search for that exact tag again on the tag list. Pretty frustrating since it happens all the time.

Thanks in advance,

Zeev.

[Jackolicious 808]

If you right click the toolbar and select "Customize Toolbar.." you'll be able to add an "All Notes" button which will quickly show you all notes in all notebooks.

[Zkaka1 0]

"All Notes" button which will quickly show you all notes in all notebooks.

I've tried this - And it doesn't work.

When you click the "All Notes" button - you loose the tag you selected.

I'll try and better explain my previous post.

Tags in Evernote are used as "sub categories" (which just happen to span across all of the categories, and therefor called "tags"). Sometimes I want to see only the tags that exist in a specific Notebook, or at least have some idea of how many there are and where. Right now I have no way to know which Tags are used in each Notebook, the numbers on the tags list doesn't change according to the Notebooks you select. Another way to solve this, is by filtering the tags list as you select each notebook, showing you only the ones which are available**, or gray out the "empty" tags. In the example I gave before, it says there are 7 tagged notes in the "drafts" tag, though when I click it, it shows just the one note from the "Film" notebook I selected. Sometimes you want to see all of your tags, when you are actually tagging a note for example. But a lot of times you want to just search for a note and then seeing everything, without any indications as to what goes where - is just confusing.

The problem starts when the user selects a tag from the list - As it is designed, Evernote has no way to know wether the user whould like to see just the tags from the notebook he happen to select, or all tagged notes from all notebooks. Right now, when you DO select a tag from the list - you see only the ones that are in the specific notebook you selected. If "All Notebooks" is selected, you just see everything. I think this is good for the default behavior. but what if want it the other way - what if I want to see all of the notes from that specific tag - There's no way to do this right now. Only to go to All Notebooks again and go through the tag list again, and click that tag. This is frustrating, and it happens all the time. I suggested this "middle" stage - to add a button, an arrow, a link, or whatever - that when you click it, it takes you to just the notes from that specific tag. preferably this button should be on the top of the Notes list, and in an unchanging position (so you would not have to scroll up/down to search for it).

Thanks for you quick response, and for your involvement in these type of requests. I do hope that you do something about it.

I feel that Evernote is a good tool. It has all the technologic wizardry behind it to make it work and sync properly. But I feel like it still didn't exactly figure out how users work with it, in terms of the GUI, and design logic. This is very clear when looking on the iOS versions of Evernote, which is not dynamic, not easy to use. You are one of the veterans in this business - and it's a very hard thing to aim for. I wish you good luck (even in the next hundred years) and hope to keep using your tools.

Zeev.

** If you need some inspiration, watch for example how Things application for the mac handles Tags. Though Things tags has a whole different purpose, they designed it so in each Project, only the relevant tags appear, only those which are used on a specific Project (Notebooks in Evernote's case).

[Jackolicious 808]

If you right click in the tags area of the left nav, you can choose to "Hide Unassigned Tags"

[Zkaka1 0]

That was a quick. But wait - What?!

This "Hide Unassigned Tags" option behaves in the most strange way!

It just keeps flittering when you choose different tags. It filters the tags according to the notes that appear in the notes list - and not the other way around! it basically gives you a feeling of which tags are used with which - but it's not a tool that you can work with!

For example, let's say I have a tag with one note in it, and that note has only that tag assigned - in that situation, if I click that tag - suddenly all the rest of the tags will disappear from the list. Its pretty crazy really. I gotta say. What were you thinking designing this? I don't see to logic behind it at all.

I say the tags flittering has to have only one level - which is the Notebook level. You select a notebook - you see the relevant tags assigned to it.

Plus, even with that option selected, the numbers near the tags still don't reflect how many notes are inside them.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Hi. The tags and notebooks can be a little tricky, and others have started threads on this topic (http://discussion.ev...ct/#entry150181). I have suggested a solution to part of this problem by providing two numbers: the total tags in a note on the left, and the tags related to the current notebook on the right. So, you would see something like:

tag-a 12/5

tag-b 25/2

I have to admit that even though I have been using tags and notebooks for a long time, I have been relying mainly on advanced searches, and have not been using the left panel much, so until recently, I was unaware about how the tags and notebooks were being associated in the Mac interface. I think there might be a more intuitive way to handle this in the application, but I'll have to play around with it more on Windows to get a feeling of how it is handled there before I hazard any suggestions.