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Request: Escape Key should *not* close note window


David Eisner

Idea

37 replies to this idea

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Well done David!

Thanks for posting the Microsoft Windows UX Design Guidelines.

I do hope someone will pass this on to the EN Dev team.

So many developers today have forgotten that following these guidelines is one of the key ingredients to making the app intuitive.

They seem more concerned with looking cool and being different than they do with actual usability.

BTW, I'm not sure if it is in the guidelines, but CTRL+W has been a shortcut for closing a window for many, many years.

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There is a workaround by using AutoHotkey to disable the Esc button when Evernote is in use.

#IfWinActive, ahk_class ENSingleNoteView
Esc::return
 

This basically disables the Esc button when Evernote is being used. For those that still want the functionality of Esc, I have changed the key to shift+Esc below

#IfWinActive, ahk_class ENSingleNoteView
+Esc::send {Esc}
#IfWinActive
return

#IfWinActive, ahk_class ENSingleNoteView
Esc::
MsgBox,,,Button disabled use Shift+Esc, 1
WinActivate, ahk_class ENSingleNoteView
#IfWinActive
return

 

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YUP - ChrisNZL - bingo.  I couldn't figure out why I kept *instinctively* hitting ESC.  Having the @#$%& note closed without so much as a warning is always so jarring, I could never remember the reason I'd hit ESC in the first place.  It's to de-select some selected text, or to close the search bar I'd invoked by hitting CTRL-F, or whatever.  Casually hitting (even spamming) the ESC key to back out of whatever ancillary operation(s) you've invoked and return to the primary use-case of your application (in Evernote's case, TYPING ON A NOTE) is instinctive for many Windows users, and for users who thrives on keyboard shortcuts and fluency through them, having the effin note window closed constantly is a jarring reminder that Windows seems to be an afterthought for Evernote.

ALSO, for the folks saying "Outlook does it".  No, it does not.  I mean, YES - it most certainly does close an open email window by hitting escape - but try opening a window where you are actively TYPING something (e.g. hit reply to an email and start typing, compose a new email and start typing).  When you hit escape, if you've made any changes, it 100% asks "Are you sure" before executing the close.  This is the problem with Evernote's approach.  I can be typing a note, I absolutely want to *continue* typing a note, and I hit ESC to back out of selected text or to close some ancillary modal experience I don't want anymore (Find bar, Attach files window, whatever), but if I've hit ESC one too many times, the whole go#d@mn note window itself is closed and I have to go find it again with (ugh) my mouse.

Obviously asking "Would you like to save" (which is what Outlook and any other windows app does) doesn't make sense for Evernote, since (thankfully) there is no save action to worry with; but maybe simply asking the user "Are you sure", or making an option to do so...and making the option the default for NEW Evernote for Windows user accounts...so the next generation of Windows Evernote users doesn't even know this was ever a problem.

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Hi,

re "I think I press Esc at times when I want to de-select something" ... I looked for but could not identify a single applications where the Esc key acts to remove a selection.

I tried the browsers, Word, Notepad++, Visual Studio, FileZilla, Foxit Reader, uTorrent, calibre.

Also, I noted that in Keepass the Esc key closes the window unless you have made edits, where it asks, which as we agreed is not an option for Evernote.

Devs, if you do change this, please be sure to make it optional.

Regards, David

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+1

 

ESC moves focus from note editor panel/window to note list,
but I don't think this feature is worth of binding to ESC.
At least, it shouldn't close the note editor window,
especially when the main window is hidden.

 

PS: I'm a vimer, so...when the end of typing, an ESC always comes. (ಡωಡ)

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On 9/8/2018 at 11:14 PM, Dyon said:

+1, this annoys the ***** out of me so often...

Is there no workaround possible? Maybe with an outside program to suppress the signal?

Of course, you can totally suppress the key with an outside program. I don't say which one because I don't want to give credits to the developers doing anything an then simply saying to use "this or this program" to cancel the key. They must simply remove it.

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On 10/1/2013 at 3:49 PM, David Eisner said:

no other windows application I know of uses the Escape key to close a window

Just an FYI, MS Outlook new email composing window will close with the ESC key. 

However, I would agree with this request too. Although, I generally do not pop notes out, and but when I do, I have accidentally hit ESC many times. Up voting.

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Outlook also closes the individual Email window on an Escape key.

It does not have any effect on the mail Outlook window.

 

Evernote functionality is identical to Outlook in this respect.

I like the Escape-to-close and would be sorely disappointed should it be removed. Alt-F4 is tedious.

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This infuriates me every single time I hit Esc to get out of find mode... I've been using Evernote for years now, but for some reason I cannot adjust to this terrible re-purposing of such a common key!

Please fix this or at least make this optional for those who have gotten used to it.

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What a stupid simple thing to fix, ignored for 6 years.  When I alt-tab between Evernote and a vim session, I'm constantly hitting escape, losing my place, and having to track down my note again.  Often times it even closes the note without saving the last few moments of typing.  

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Evernote behaves *exactly* the same as Outlook. Why are you not complaining to Microsoft about Outlook then?

 

Outlook closes an email on Escape, but this doesn't affect the main window. Precisely as Evernote have implemented it.

When my team are developing apps we would look to mimic popular behaviour as this is the most familiar.

Outlook does *not* have an option to control this. I put it to you that Outlook has at least as many users as Evernote.

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10 hours ago, DavidPierson said:

Evernote behaves *exactly* the same as Outlook. Why are you not complaining to Microsoft about Outlook then?

Outlook closes an email on Escape, but this doesn't affect the main window. Precisely as Evernote have implemented it.

No it does not :) 
With a read-only window, yes (an existing email).
But once you are in write-mode (composing a new email), pressing Escape pops up a "Are you sure?" dialog.

And that's exactly the point - pressing escape when editing is a common operation. Especially in MS programs, where shortcut operation these days (as compared to the 90's/00's) are multi-key operations (as with VI/Emacs/whatever).

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Yes it does 😀

Because in Outlook there is a choice of saving or not saving.

In Evernote it is automatically saved
There is not any possibility of asking the Evernote user whether they wish to save.
So Evernote is equivalent to Outlook with an unedited email i.e. a read-only window.

Both exit on an Escape key.

And Evenote behaves the same as Outlook in this respect of the Escape key, and should remain so.

Not sure what the issue is really, just don't press the key. There are many keys on the keyboard, the Esc is located well out of the way.

Kind regards

David

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An option would be fine, a great idea. But for heaven's sake don't unilaterally change the behaviour without an option.

Many of us totally like the current way it works. Still not sure why you keep pressing the Escape key if you don't want to exit the window, Do you keep pressing other keys you don't mean to? Not being sarcastic, am really genuinely puzzled here.

Current behaviour exactly follows Outlook's. Microsoft actually do a lot of UI experience modelling.

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I think I press Esc at times when I want to de-select something, or think I have a drop-down menu focused but don't actually.

I don't use Outlook so am not used to Esc closing windows.

Would probably prefer a Ctrl+W shortcut to close the window, akin to Explorer or most web browsers.

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On 3/9/2020 at 5:21 PM, DavidPierson said:

An option would be fine, a great idea. But for heaven's sake don't unilaterally change the behaviour without an option.

 

On 3/9/2020 at 6:25 PM, ChrisNZL said:

Would probably prefer a Ctrl+W shortcut to close the window, akin to Explorer or most web browsers.

Alt+F4 continues to work

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7 hours ago, jefito said:

Alt+F4 continues to work

Yes, Alt+F4 is a very standard key sequence right from day dot.
Ctrl-W is used as "close one tab not the whole window" in multiple tab screens e.g. Notepad++ (where Ctrl-F4 does not work, to my mild annoyance).

In your browser, Alt+F4 will shut the whole thing - while Ctrl-W closes just the current tab. As to which is closest to the Evernote multi-window approach ... I'm not sure.

Testing with Excel (2010), which is the only multi-window program I can easily put my hands on:
* Ctrl+W and Ctrl-F4 both close the current file/window
* Alt+F4 closes all open windows - surprising (to me).

Would we expect that Alt+F4 behaviour for Evernote? I probably wouldn't, so it goes to show how hard it is to be consistent. What do you reckon, jefito?

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6 hours ago, DavidPierson said:

Would we expect that Alt+F4 behaviour for Evernote? I probably wouldn't, so it goes to show how hard it is to be consistent. What do you reckon, jefito?

No idea. It can certainly be difficult to be consistent in different applications. Personally, I think that having Escape close the separate windows is not a great UI choice. But Alt+F4 is a reasonable choice; it does exactly what people want, which is to close the separate window. If they could disable Escape from doing that, it would be fine with me.

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I am a windows desktop dev, and I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure ALT-F4 is hard-wired in the Win32 system to trigger a "close window" event...in Microsoft .NET Winforms and WPF applications (their desktop app platforms), you actually have to do work to "opt-out" of ALT-F4 closing a window (since it's low-level OS that catches and responds to the event).  So it's pretty standard and safe bet to support, even more so than ALT-W I think?

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According to the Windows standard, Alt+F4 should close all of the evernote windows, including the main window. It doesn't do this currently; should it? Possibly.

I might raise an enhancement request to have the Alt+F4 functionality corrected. What does everyone think?

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19 hours ago, DavidPierson said:

According to the Windows standard, Alt+F4 should close all of the evernote windows, including the main window. It doesn't do this currently; should it? Possibly.

I'd like to see that standard, but from my experience, Alt+F4 closes the current active window. It's just the same as clicking the 'X' icon in the title bar, or clicking Alt+Space and then selecting "Close" from the popup menu. Internally, I think it just sends a WM_CLOSE message to the current window, and then that window does its thing. Some Microsoft documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/closing-the-window. In particular, this means that you can do Alt+F4 t o close a child window of an application (e.g., a dialog), and it won't close the whole application. I believe that that's the intent, and anecdotally, that's the way that the software I work on behaves as well. As does the Windows Evernote application.

20 hours ago, DavidPierson said:

I might raise an enhancement request to have the Alt+F4 functionality corrected. What does everyone think?

I think that Evernote is working as it should with respect to Alt+F4. It should not be changed.

With respect to Escape, I think that it's a poor choice in general, though the stated problem, "I was just trying to de-select some text" isn't really valid as that's not how you de-select text anyways (the selected ext just sits there looking at you saying "So what."). For completeness sake, we should note that for using Escape for closing a dialog is certainly common practice in Windows (I think it's the default behavior), but in this case, it's surprising, as the separate note window doesn't look like a dialog, it just looks like a separate document window. That's what should be changed.

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On 6/17/2020 at 3:01 AM, Egholm said:

Woop woop, for all of you that are eager to get rid of the escape-closing, consider joining the beta-program... Finally, some progress!

Thanks for the tip - I keep forgetting to check the beta app when I get frustrated with missing or non-intuitive features. 

ctrl+W works in beta, and that is my preferred shortcut for this 

Hopefully they don't implement the Esc key into beta later... 

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This is annoying , I kept accidently close the note un-intentionally , 
eg: if you do a ctrl+f to do the search on the note, then click on esc to exit the search mode, then sometimes you hit the esc key twice will close the note

but it doesnot make it wrong, some other people might enjoy this feature

Just make it an option to let people choose to use it or not...

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