(Archived) Bugs and Interface inconsistency across mobile and desktop

[DeltaVictorBravo 0]

I finally found out what that strange icon on the iPad note editing view is, with the little paragraph marker... it lets me rapidly format a line as a "Header", "Subheader", etc... Awesome! Really helps with visual cueing... I'll do that with all my notes!

So back at the desk, open a new note, want to organize my day with those nifty headers...

??

Nothing. Just a manual font size/color selection, but no similar tool. If it's there, it certainly isn't obvious. How annoying! One of Evernote's key strengths is the "enter anywhere, access everywhere" aspect of it... so Interface consistency across contexts is a fundamental usability issue for human interface, and would not be difficult for such things.

Another example is linking to other notes. Desktop version allows me to grab a hyperlink to another note, and paste into a new note. Can't do that on iPad or iPhone... so the usefulness for planning (setting an agenda with resources linked) is SEVERELY limited.

I love the EN concept, and am happily a premium user-- But this is kind of a "death of a thousand stings" issue to have so many small things bother you many times a day. Stuff like this drives me batty, and keeps me looking for alternatives that have worked out such basics.

Others:

• Automatically naming notes by current calendar entry stopped working on iPad about 3 updates ago.
  
• Divider line an option on Deskop, not mobile
  
• "Flickering" of the thumbnails while editing on mobile... new to about 3 updates ago. Hasn't gone away.
  
• The iPad has a button with a little exlamation point in it (!)... not obvious at all that this is for "highlighting"-- a small colored box or icon with a highlighter on it would be more intuiitive-- and there is again no equivalent on the desktop version. As far as I can tell, there isn't even a way to do this on the desktop version. It makes it hard to have any consistent formatting scheme in my notes, which in turn makes them less usable (no consistent visual rules that I can make, propagating the consistency problems in the interface).
  

Other than this forum, is there a formal way to suggest these issues be addressed?

[gazumped 11,652]

Other than this forum, is there a formal way to suggest these issues be addressed?

Hi - welcome to the forums. You'll find an unusually active and helpful peer group here, since (my impression is that) we all feel a bit pioneerish in helping Evernote continuously develop what's turning out to be an app that's an essential aid and accessory to Real Life. Things have improved unrecognisably in the 3/4 years that the big E has been around, and they're doing as much as anyone can to keep up to date with the flood of different/ upgraded OS's and new channels that have come (literally) online in that time.

Apart from the sheer number issue with that flood of OS's and channels, there's also the features aspect - perhaps best illustrated by the fact that even Android developers can't always make apps work in all the different versions of Android that are currently in play. Drag and drop doesn't work on some platforms; highlighting may even be an issue.

Having said that the different teams working in different OS's and on different clients will always try to keep the same functionality going - though in some cases the 'hey did you know we could do this!' sort of addition of one team might take a little while to filter through to everyone else.

I think if you're patient, the continuous development will catch up with everyone's needs, though it doesn't hurt to express your frustrations here, in a forum which is read by the developers - it might bump your particular niggle up the queue somewhat.

The most important aspect of Evernote the company is that employees actively use Evernote the app in their daily lives - so you can bet that the really good ideas get implemented as quickly as possible for all the best selfish reasons!

[jbenson2 2,147]

Other than this forum, is there a formal way to suggest these issues be addressed?

It is not very obvious, but if you want to be sure that Evernote sees your request, you can do the following.

Go to Support Home at Evernote.com

Open a support inquiry by entering your email address.

Problem: select "I have some other problem not listed here."

Other Issues: select "Feedback"

Then enter your suggestion.

[dlu 628]

Posting here works pretty well. We have a good number of Evernote Employees that are "silent readers." Yes I just made that phrase up right now, but I was inspired by gazumped's reference to "Big E" which I really like

Anyways, the source of this is mainly that we have separate development teams. This means each team gets to fully own their product. We get to work in small teams, even though we have twenty something clients out there. Each platform has its own particular style, quirks and technical challenges and we've found that independent teams work really well. The more popular way is sort of this "lowest common denominator" approach to build a single client that works across platforms.

The downside is that our teams have different development speeds and priorities. Rich text editing is an example of something we've basically re-invented on every platform. So trying to get them the same everywhere has been more difficult than expected. I agree that we could do a better job though, we just have a lot to do and we're trying to whittle down that list. Now if only there were some app where I could keep a to do list...