Suggestion for Future Version (Desktop Versions)

[TechBarber 100]

I use Evernote on both Windows and Mac. It could be the way I have my notebooks and tags setup, but I find it hard to quickly distinguish between the "notebook" area of the sidebar, and the "tag" area of the sidebar. 

 

Allow me to explain...

 

Let's say I wanted to quickly find a note related to Project A, which would be contained within my Work notebook. My eyes quickly glance over to the sidebar on the left-hand side and I start looking for the word Work. I find it, expand the tree to see the items contained within, and then scroll through the list looking for Project A, but I can't find it. Why? Because I'm looking in the notebook list, not in the tag list. At this point I have to scroll down the menu bar and open up the tag section to begin my search again.

 

It would be helpful if there was an easy way to distinguish between a list of tags and a list of notebooks while navigating the sidebar - that's my opinion. 

 

The amount of time wasted scrolling through lists only to find I'm in the wrong area isn't much, but it adds up over time. This may not be a common problem though I admit. I think it's because I have a lot of notebooks and tags called the same thing (e.g. Notebook called Work, tag called Work). 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

HMmm you are right, aside from the heading of each section, which would be lost in a long list, there's no real visual cue about what you are looking at. 

 

On the Mac app, the shortcuts bar offers a small icon to indicate whether it is a notebook, a tag, or search, etc.  Something like this could be helpful, but perhaps a little too intrusive to have iterated on every single tag or notebook potentially hundreds of times. I'm sure there's a more subtle way to indicate what the user is viewing. 

 

Personally I haven't ever had my tags listed in the side, so I've never encountered this problem before. My tags aren't used to drive my activities as much as for organizing stored data so I usually am fine to rely on the tag filters for each notebook, or for search.  But I can imagine for some workflows... (perhaps staunch GTD'ers, or anyone else using tags to drive action?) having tags right up front is important, but could get cluttered if the user has lots of notebooks and tags listed in the sidebar. 

[Sentinel 195]

I do the same as Scott.  If I know what Notebook my data is in, I open that Notebook and do a search within it.  I find that very quick.

I don't have Notebooks nor Tags opened in my left sidebar.  However, all of this is quite the personal preference.

 

In direct response to the request, maybe a Rule Line separating the Notebook List and the Tag List in the left sidebar would be enough of a separator.  As it stands, the Tag Icon is placed at the beginning of the Tag List, but a Rule Line would add an additional space to the separation.  Just a thought.

[Sentinel 195]

Or maybe a slightly different color background to the lists.  Grey for one as opposed to black.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Hmmm, or perhaps a floating "sticky" header, so that "Notebooks" stays pinned at the top of the pane while viewing notebooks (if you have enough notebooks to occupy the entire pane), and as you scroll past that to tags, the tags heading gets pinned to the top as you scroll through your tags (which will, more than likely, always occupy the full left pane). 

 

If I find an example on the web (and there are plenty out there! But I just can't think of one off the top of my head!) I'll post it here.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Like this:

http://www.webtutorialplus.com/demo/sticky-header/default.html

 

Except, of course, the pinned header for Notebook would be replace by Tags as it scrolls past. 

[TechBarber 100]

Or a tiny little icon of a tag in front of each item. The notebook list could have a tiny notebook icon.

[gazumped 11,652]

+1 from me too - I get the lost tag / looking in the wrong place issue from time to time.  Minor problem for me,  but it does happen - a little redesign tweak or two would be good...