Evernote for Mac 6.2 Beta 1 Released

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

I’m really excited to announce the release of Evernote for Mac 6.2 Beta 1 which will address some long standing features that many of you have been requesting  The release of Apple’s El Capitan and it’s new split view feature gave us the opportunity to look at how Evernote works in a narrow window environment.  This has led us to redesign a few things.

• First off Evernote now remembers the current width of the sidebar and the note list so that these elements will shrink with the window but they will also grow back to their original widths when you make the window wide again.
  
• Second the sidebar will shrink into a single row of icons so that we take up a minimal amount of space but still provide a mechanism to navigate within Evernote. This is currently designed as a temporary state and does not include shortcuts or other sub elements.  However, let us know if you would like to run it as your main sidebar and tell us the features you would need.
  
• Finally we’ve completely redesigned our note editor toolbars.  They are responsive which means as you shrink the note editor the toolbar also shrinks and instead of having formatting buttons disappear they will be added to a pop-down toolbar that can still be accessed when there’s not a lot of room.    Also new is that if you have a large monitor all of the toolbars will become a single row of icons giving your writing space a bigger area.
  

 

All of the above changes are available to every customer and not just those that are running El Capitan.

 

We’ve also made a number of other changes.

• We’ve added back the All Notes button so it’s faster to get back to all your notes. 
  
• We are continuing to refine work chat and how it integrates into the Evernote experience.  In 6.2 we’ve moved it to the bottom of the sidebar so it is no longer the top most item.  This helps separate it from all of your note functionality and aligns the design closer to our web client.  We are also showing recent chats in the sidebar so it’s quick and easy to reply to people when you receive a message. (NOTE: This is available for Yosemite and newer OSs)
  
• Finally, many people have asked for ways to speed formatting via the keyboard and we've added this in 6.2 by allowing you to use markdown-inspired shortcuts.  We’ve posted a blog post about our new common editor and this is one of the first major new features from this team. Expect more in the coming months.  This basically means that you can type characters into your note that will automatically apply formatting or a style to the text.  Here’s the list of formatting options supported.
  
   
  
  
  • 
    
    Inline Formatting
    
    
    *Text* = Italics
    
    
    **Text** = Bold
    
    
    ~~Text~~ = Strikethrough
    
    
    !!Text!! = Highlight
    
    
    `Text`= Code Block  
    
    
     
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Lists and Tables
    
    
    Typing “1. “ will start a numbered list
    
    
    Typing “* “ will start a bulleted list
    
    
    Typing [] or [ ] will create an unchecked checkbox
    
    
    Typing [x] will create a checked checkbox
    
    
    Typing a line of at least three * or - will add a horizontal rule
    
    
    Typing a [][][] on it’s own line will add a table with 3 columns 
    
    
    Typing [][][][]x2 on it’s own line will add a table with 4 columns and 2 rows
    
    
    
  
  

 

We have also fixed an encryption issue so if you’ve bumped into this problem please try this beta.

 

Because this is a big release and we wanted to get this out to people to start playing with it as soon as possible we are releasing with some known issues.  Here’s a list of things that we know are broken but are actively working on fixes.

1) Many of the biggest issues in the beta are around the new note toolbar.  For example we’re still working through some important tag issues such as  CMD+’ doesn’t work and copying and pasting into the Tag edit field is broken.  Tooltips aren’t appearing and sometimes there are layout issues.

 

2) Of course some things have been moved around.  Probably the biggest change is that the note and tag areas are hidden when you are editing a note.  We felt these were less important when you were editing but you can still get to them quickly by clicking on their icons that remain in the formatting toolbar.

 

3) If you click in the Share dialog, add some names, click in the message field and then back to the recipient field you won’t get the suggestion menu anymore.  For now, please remember to enter everyone you want to share a note or notebook with in the recipient field before adding a message.

 

4) There appears to be an El Capitan bug where Rotate Clockwise or Counterclockwise doesn’t appear to work.

 

Thanks again for taking a sneak peek at our upcoming release and helping us find issues before we ship 6.2 to all Evernote for Mac customers.  We really want to hear what you think about the new features -- better window resizing, new toolbar, markdown and work chat improvements.  You can download the beta from here.  I should also mention that this release only works on OS 10.9 and above.  6.1.1 was our last release for 107 and 10.8 users.

 

NOTE: If you're not seeing the new formatting toolbar you may have to turn it on via Preferences : Software Update and check Enable new note editor toolbar.   Of course if you want to go back to the old toolbar you can also use this checkbox to turn it off.

[EdH 1,670]

I think Evernote should either fully implement Markdown, or not at all.

 

Pretty much this. or at the very least, implement what you want, but if it isn't markdown, don't call it markdown.

[Acid Ham 4]

Happy to see that markdown get finally integrated!

 

+1 for Headings. It should be possible to add Headlines with #, ##, ### which is major markup in markdown

+1 for URL like [evernote](http://evernote.com)

 

Markdown makes only sense when the markup gets not rendered instantly to be able to change formatting. Therefore a switch to show markup or not would be valuable. Otherwise it's just half the rent to have markdown in EN. 

 

Following did not work for me: 

1. `Text` - not recognized as code block
2. ~~text~~ - works first time but then not recognized again and stopped working in current note

[hosier.david 5]

 

Editing:  Rich Text WYSIWYG vs Markdown

 

While this thread is, in general, about the new EN Editor as exposed in EN Mac 6.2 Beta 1, the conversation seems to be dominated by posts about "Markdown".

 

My main concern at this point is that I hope Evernote developers do not become consumed by the new "Markdown" feature to the extent of ignoring most other features that have been requested for years, and hopefully are in the queue.

 

Evernote was designed from the beginning, and still is, to provide a rich text WYSIWYG editor.

I think that is what the large majority of Evernote users want.  If I'm wrong, hopefully someone from Evernote will correct me.

 

I understand that if you are using a plain text editor (not Evernote), that Markdown provides a simple, dumbed-downed, simple, alternative to HTML code to produce a nice, formatted, page when displayed by a browser, or Markdown preview app.

 

But if I am using a rich text, or HTML WYSIWYG, editor, what is the benefit of using Markdown in the content creation?  It seems to me that it will require a lot more typing, remembering the Markdown codes, and I still have to view in preview mode to make sure I have entered the correct codes.

So, where's the benefit?   What's the purpose?

 

With a rich text editor I have most of my formatting commands available as a keyboard shortcut.

Most of these are very well known, and even work cross-platform.

I see instantly, in real time, how the formatted textd will appear.

So why would I want to learn a new set of formatting codes, called "Markdown"?

 

There are many apps available for writers, many or most that support Markdown.

Frankly, I don't see Evernote as a strong writers tool (sorry Evernote managers/devs).

IMO, as I see it, Evernote is primarily a PIM (Personal Information Manager).

You can easily use it to create new notes by typing, web clipping, email-to-account, and even pasting the clipboard.

 

 

So, if one can easily, and reliably, create well formatted notes using the rich text editor, why would you want to use Markdown to create the Note, IF, you can easily export (copy) selected text, or the entire note, as plain text Markdown? 

 

 

The advantage for me in using Evernote, is the notebook and tagging system. I couldn't care less about WYSIWYG. My preference would be to type my notes in Markdown. I've been looking around, and I haven't seen anything that will give me that structure I want with a nice simple Markdown experience. I hear Evernote and others talking about how the WYSIWYG editor is the core of the product, but my impression is that it's the part that is constantly being changed and hammered with criticism about how bad it is. In my experience, the notebooks/tags/collections "just work", and that's what I like about Evernote. That's what I feel the core of Evernote is.

 

This is just awful how entering Markdown automatically converts the text you're typing. As several others have stated, I signed up to beta test because of the mention of Markdown in that blog post. Now I basically have no choice but uninstall the beta. Even if you do Format -> Make Plain Text, the note still converts Markdown to styled elements when you type. So I guess "Make Plain Text" doesn't mean what I think it means. And if you enter Markdown and let Evernote convert on the fly, and then you attempt to "Make Plain Text" when you're finished, you don't get what you typed in either (I'm looking at you unordered lists...). So without the ability to turn off the auto-formatting, I have to sadly go back to the stable version and abandon the beta test. I just hope that's not a painful process.

[davemacdo 6]

 

Editing:  Rich Text WYSIWYG vs Markdown

 

While this thread is, in general, about the new EN Editor as exposed in EN Mac 6.2 Beta 1, the conversation seems to be dominated by posts about "Markdown".

 

My main concern at this point is that I hope Evernote developers do not become consumed by the new "Markdown" feature to the extent of ignoring most other features that have been requested for years, and hopefully are in the queue.

 

Evernote was designed from the beginning, and still is, to provide a rich text WYSIWYG editor.

I think that is what the large majority of Evernote users want.  If I'm wrong, hopefully someone from Evernote will correct me.

 

I understand that if you are using a plain text editor (not Evernote), that Markdown provides a simple, dumbed-downed, simple, alternative to HTML code to produce a nice, formatted, page when displayed by a browser, or Markdown preview app.

 

But if I am using a rich text, or HTML WYSIWYG, editor, what is the benefit of using Markdown in the content creation?  It seems to me that it will require a lot more typing, remembering the Markdown codes, and I still have to view in preview mode to make sure I have entered the correct codes.

So, where's the benefit?   What's the purpose?

 

With a rich text editor I have most of my formatting commands available as a keyboard shortcut.

Most of these are very well known, and even work cross-platform.

I see instantly, in real time, how the formatted textd will appear.

So why would I want to learn a new set of formatting codes, called "Markdown"?

 

There are many apps available for writers, many or most that support Markdown.

Frankly, I don't see Evernote as a strong writers tool (sorry Evernote managers/devs).

IMO, as I see it, Evernote is primarily a PIM (Personal Information Manager).

You can easily use it to create new notes by typing, web clipping, email-to-account, and even pasting the clipboard.

 

 

So, if one can easily, and reliably, create well formatted notes using the rich text editor, why would you want to use Markdown to create the Note, IF, you can easily export (copy) selected text, or the entire note, as plain text Markdown? 

 

 

Why use it? Portability. 

 

I would also add that one of the main features of Markdown is that it is very readable *without* any kind of rendering. (See what I did there?)

 

To the final question, with the current implementation, I actually *can't* write Markdown in Evernote because it immediately replaces my MD with rich text. 

 

Why do I want EN to support MD? It's simple: I want all my thoughts in one place. Right now, I have articles and images in Evernote, but I have to keep all my notes in Markdown in another application that supports it. (Also, I have to annotate my PDFs in another application, but the dumpster fire that is the Evernote PDF annotator is another discussion.)

[rdj999 31]

Markdown isn't "dumbed-down" HTML: it's economically-entered and -edited text annotated for the most commonly needed types of textual markup. Unlike rich text, it doesn't "surprise" you with extra blank lines (or none where you want them, such as between lengthy bullets) that force you to constantly experiment to "get around", nor completely prevent you from doing some things (like multi-paragraph bullets), nor does it obfuscate text editing and annotation when there's HTML behind it that you can't find a way to "escape".

 

Having to select text and adjust font size and embolden it and adjust spacing before and after it just to create headings is a pain! Prepending "#", "##", or "###" is much simpler (and more predictable.)

 

Creating a link with [this link](evernote://...) is a lot easier than typing "this link", highlighting it (being careful to avoid trailing punctuation), selecting a menu item, and pasting a URL. And fixing the link (or its text) is more straightforward in Markdown.

 

Internal links and footnotes? Can't even do those in rich text.

 

No, Markdown is simple enough for anyone to learn to use for most of how rich text is used yet sophisticated enough to provide great flexibility without getting in your way. That's why it's become so popular.

 

I am fine with Evernote not supporting Markdown at all. I am fine with Evernote providing Markdown as a text composition and editing option (and would love that, properly and fully implemented). I am fine with Evernote providing intelligent importing and exporting of Markdown. But I'm not fine with Markdown being done "halfway" nor in ways that violate its fundamental design principles of simplicity, touch-typed entry, predictability, and – for sophisticated users – great power that WYSIWYG simply can't approach.

[Dan Wilson 85]

I don't use Markdown regularly, but I do think that the ability to write in MD with a MD previewer in Evernote would be useful to me*.  But I agree with an earlier post (I think it was by Marcus) that MD is not a central focus of Evernote nor should it be.  Evernote is a rich text editor and more, website clipper, screenshot annotator, scanner etc, that is incredibly useful to me.

 

I also agree that having the current implementation of basic MD (text replacement) is not faster than most of the existing keyboard shortcuts and can be a hinderance to anyone drafting something in MD.

 

*I have a Wordpress blog that supports MD and I pretty much always write my posts in Evernote.  To be able to write in MD would solve my formatting headaches.

[rdj999 31]

Here's another thing that demonstrates to me this is a really bad idea without per-document toggles: I can paste Markdown text into Evernote, or email it to create a new note, but I can't edit its text once it's in Evernote without risking that it will garble it. That means i can't use Evernote for round-trip workflows involving Markdown and Evernote. That's a problem...

[EdH 1,670]

FYI - my column widths in list-view got trashed again, as per this post. Not an install. I had just totally shut EN down and later relaunched it. It doesn't happen every time - in fact, I tried 3 more times to get it to happen and couldn't - but there is something causing this. I am using List View.

[pgdahl 133]

• Finally we’ve completely redesigned our note editor toolbars.  They are responsive which means as you shrink the note editor the toolbar also shrinks and instead of having formatting buttons disappear they will be added to a pop-down toolbar that can still be accessed when there’s not a lot of room.    Also new is that if you have a large monitor all of the toolbars will become a single row of icons giving your writing space a bigger area.

 

I really like the new editor toolbar. It adresses almost all of the issues I had with the original 6.0 editor. The icons are clear and easily distinguishable from each other, the sharing information is subtle and out of the way but tells you everything you need. I still think the Title could benefit from being more distinct from the copy in the note, but it's only a beta

[EdH 1,670]

From a UI standpoint, I still absolutely HATE it that the note title can scroll out of view. Hate it. This is a problem with Windows as well.

[gabeanzelini 0]

OS: El Capitan (latest)

Evernote: 6.2 Beta 1

 

I am trying to rename a tag (r-click > rename or click twice) and when I start to type it just clears out like I clicked off of it.

 

 

[jeffhamrick 9]

 

Great work. I love the shrinking sidebar, the new editor, and of course the markdown functionality. 

 

A question: is it possible to also show the shortcut when the sidebar is shrunk? Thanks.  

 

Thanks for letting us know you like the shrinking sidebar and new editor.  Currently we do not support shortcuts in the mini-sidebar.  This is what I meant when I said it's really meant as a temporary sidebar for when the window is narrow.  Would you use it more if it had shortcuts?

 

 

I would definitely use it more if it had an icon for Shortcuts. Additionally, I'd love to see that icon – as well as the Notebooks and Tags icons – have a fly-out menu that would give easy access to shortcuts, notebooks, and tags (respectively) when clicked. Something kind of like when you put a folder into the Dock on the Mac Desktop. I would find that quicker and more intuitive than the unnecessarily large outline style currently used for Notebooks and Tags.

[jeffhamrick 9]

I'm not sure I care whether Evernote uses real Markdown, a pseudo-Markdown, or no Markdown at all. Though I do like some of the shortcuts – particularly "* " to start a bulleted list. What I would really like to see is text styles like Header 1, Header 2, Paragraph, etc.

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

From a UI standpoint, I still absolutely HATE it that the note title can scroll out of view. Hate it. This is a problem with Windows as well.

 

 

Having the title stay or scroll is a definitely personal thing.  I've heard a number of people express an interest in having the title stay and a number of people that like it scrolling away.  We decided to keep it scrolling to continue to try to maximize the editing space.  Do others want a feature to keep the title static?

 

OS: El Capitan (latest)

Evernote: 6.2 Beta 1

 

I am trying to rename a tag (r-click > rename or click twice) and when I start to type it just clears out like I clicked off of it.

 

Unfortunately, there's a bug in 6.2 beta where you can't rename a tag in the tag view.  For now you'll have to use the web client to change the tag name. 

[EdH 1,670]

 

From a UI standpoint, I still absolutely HATE it that the note title can scroll out of view. Hate it. This is a problem with Windows as well.

 

 

Having the title stay or scroll is a definitely personal thing.  I've heard a number of people express an interest in having the title stay and a number of people that like it scrolling away.  We decided to keep it scrolling to continue to try to maximize the editing space.  Do others want a feature to keep the title static?

 

 

Thanks. For me the issue is with every other app, like Excel, Word, Textpad, you name it, the title of the document you are working in never vanishes. I cannot tell you how many times in Evernote I have to scroll up to the title of the note to get the title because it has relevant information in it. It could be the email subject the note came from, the file name of an imported file, the bible verse reference I am working on, the title of the article I am reading/annotating, etc.

I appreciate you taking it under consideration. To me, the title is part of the container, like the tags, date, and other things that don't vanish. In fact, I'd prefer the title stay and the tags, notebook, and date vanish from view if you have to make a choice. 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

 

From a UI standpoint, I still absolutely HATE it that the note title can scroll out of view. Hate it. This is a problem with Windows as well.

 

 

Having the title stay or scroll is a definitely personal thing.  

 

 

Marcus, it seems to me that reducing the view of the editing space by one line is a very small price to always know for sure what Note you are editing.  I often start editing a Note, and then something else demands my attention for a while.  When I CMD-TAB back to Evernote I often need to scroll back to the top to confirm which Note is being edited.

 

So, I have two possible solutions for this:

1. Provide an option in EN Preferences that determines if the Note Title is always displayed.
2. Show the Note Title in the Evernote Window title
   1. The Window title is currently "Evernote Premium" (for me)
   2. Why not change the Window Title to:  <Note Title> - Evernote
   3. This is how it already works if you open a Note in its own window

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Why do I want EN to support MD? It's simple: I want all my thoughts in one place. Right now, I have articles and images in Evernote, but I have to keep all my notes in Markdown in another application that supports it. 

 

I definitely understand this.  It is very similar to storing code blocks in Evernote.

 

So, I propose this:

• Rather than converting Markdown codes to rich text, why not just provide a plain text block where you could enter MD code, or any other plain text.
  • This would allow all MD users to store snippets of MD text that can be easily copy/paste into other apps that expect MD text
  • This would also provide for the portability that some users would like
• Provide a code block, where Evernote will not change any text/code, whether or not it is entered manually, or is pasted from a code editor/IDE.
  • This includes retaining all indents.  
  • If the code text contains colors, the colors would be retained.  IOW, retain the pasted code text exactly as it is on the clipboard.
  • As a bonus, Evernote could (later if need be) provide auto-syntax formatting/coloring (on an optional basis)

So what do you think MD users, would this work for you?

[Stuhrer 252]

 

From a UI standpoint, I still absolutely HATE it that the note title can scroll out of view. Hate it. This is a problem with Windows as well.

 

 

Having the title stay or scroll is a definitely personal thing.  I've heard a number of people express an interest in having the title stay and a number of people that like it scrolling away.  We decided to keep it scrolling to continue to try to maximize the editing space.  Do others want a feature to keep the title static?

 

Fair enough, but in the new Web client you have implemented a solution for that problem. When the title is scrolled away it appears in the toolbar above the note. There should be some space available in the Mac client as well.

[Dale Wright 1]

OS: El Capitan (latest)

Evernote: 6.2 Beta 1

 

I am trying to rename a tag (r-click > rename or click twice) and when I start to type it just clears out like I clicked off of it.

 

I am having the same problem.

[davemacdo 6]

So, I propose this:

• Rather than converting Markdown codes to rich text, why not just provide a plain text block where you could enter MD code, or any other plain text.
  • This would allow all MD users to store snippets of MD text that can be easily copy/paste into other apps that expect MD text
  • This would also provide for the portability that some users would like
• Provide a code block, where Evernote will not change any text/code, whether or not it is entered manually, or is pasted from a code editor/IDE.
  • This includes retaining all indents.  
  • If the code text contains colors, the colors would be retained.  IOW, retain the pasted code text exactly as it is on the clipboard.
  • As a bonus, Evernote could (later if need be) provide auto-syntax formatting/coloring (on an optional basis)

So what do you think MD users, would this work for you?

This is pretty much exactly what I want, a plain-text note that doesn't do anything with what I type into it. In fact, the solution I currently use for notes (nvALT, a fork of Notational Velocity) is what I would describe as "Markdown-aware." It doesn't render Markdown, and I don't want it to. It only does very simple things to help, like when I am typing a list, it automatically starts the next line at the same indent level with the same list delimiter (* or -). Most of what I type in Markdown actually stays in Markdown and never gets converted. I have apps that render MD really nicely when I need it. Evernote shouldn't do this, as it's actually surprisingly difficult to do well.

The problem with the current implementation is that I actually *can't* write markdown in it, even if I want to settle for a somewhat hacky solution. I would be satisfied if I could simply turn off the Markdown-style typing shortcuts.

[EdH 1,670]

FYI - my column widths in list-view got trashed again, as per this post. Not an install. I had just totally shut EN down and later relaunched it. It doesn't happen every time - in fact, I tried 3 more times to get it to happen and couldn't - but there is something causing this. I am using List View.

 

And again. EN crashed. I sent in a bug report via the tool. I have the log as well.

 

Also, can anyone annotate a PDF? I cannot get the "Annotate PDF" or "Annotate copy of PDF" to show up in the right-click menu. None of the normal tools are there - cannot rename the PDF either. I can annotate using the annotate icon in the upper right, but the right-click menu seems boogered up.

[t0panka 3]

I just discovered little tiny bug. When i highlight couple sentences and try to create bulleted list the first sentence always have one extra space between bullet (dot) and words so if i try to remove it it also remove that dot and need to put it there again:

[mrgoerend 89]

Can't see what notebook my note is in: https://www.evernote.com/l/AA3x3IQLE9FJGo81WZ7xQgeWQmVoRBC1z4Q

[EdH 1,670]

Can't see what notebook my note is in: https://www.evernote.com/l/AA3x3IQLE9FJGo81WZ7xQgeWQmVoRBC1z4Q

CLick on the notebook icon, or wide your note window. I believe this is the new way the toolbar dynamically shrinks depending on the size of your window.

[mrgoerend 89]

 

Can't see what notebook my note is in: https://www.evernote.com/l/AA3x3IQLE9FJGo81WZ7xQgeWQmVoRBC1z4Q

CLick on the notebook icon, or wide your note window. I believe this is the new way the toolbar dynamically shrinks depending on the size of your window.

 

Clicking the notebook icon does not show which Notebook the note is currently in (it only presents a list of notebooks I could move it into). And my note window is as wide and I can make it on my 13.3" screen. 

 

Edit: I see now that there's a tiny checkmark next to the current notebook that I have to find by scrolling through the entire list of notebooks. So, yeah, I still can't really see what notebook my note is in

[rdj999 31]

 

Why do I want EN to support MD? It's simple: I want all my thoughts in one place. Right now, I have articles and images in Evernote, but I have to keep all my notes in Markdown in another application that supports it. 

 

I definitely understand this.  It is very similar to storing code blocks in Evernote.

 

So, I propose this:

• Rather than converting Markdown codes to rich text, why not just provide a plain text block where you could enter MD code, or any other plain text.
  • This would allow all MD users to store snippets of MD text that can be easily copy/paste into other apps that expect MD text
  • This would also provide for the portability that some users would like
• Provide a code block, where Evernote will not change any text/code, whether or not it is entered manually, or is pasted from a code editor/IDE.
  • This includes retaining all indents.  
  • If the code text contains colors, the colors would be retained.  IOW, retain the pasted code text exactly as it is on the clipboard.
  • As a bonus, Evernote could (later if need be) provide auto-syntax formatting/coloring (on an optional basis)

So what do you think MD users, would this work for you?

 

 

This would be fine with me, however, I would add that whenever text is added to an empty Evernote note (or a new note is created from text), if the text does not have any "rich text formatting", it should be treated implicitly as a text block – as it behaved before – and should "become" rich text only when the first rich-text formatting is applied to it.

 

In other words, don't treat it like rich text until "I do", AND it would be nice to have a formatting control that allows me to imbed a code block WITHIN an otherwise rich text note.

[rdj999 31]

Okay, here's a really nasty one: in the beta, it no longer seems possible to copy tags in an existing note for the purpose of copying them and pasting them onto other notes. I can still select them - but only by clicking them while holding down SHIFT or CMD, not by dragging the mouse across them – and I can no longer CMD-C copy them.

 

I depend on this capability to normalize my tagging across multiple notes. Yes, I know you can select multiple notes and add the same tags to them: I'm talking about being able to replace (or selectively replace, or selectively add) one or more tags to individual notes using tags copied to the clipboard.

 

Please tell me this is a bug...

[escapist 6]

It seems to me that automatically applying RTF formatting, on the fly, based on Markdown-like syntax is not "Markdown support". It's not "light Markdown support". The feature actively strips the Markdown characters as I enter them.

[jemostrom@w 3]

For what it's worth, I've been testing this for about 10 minutes and my impressions so far:

 

I like that you're considering supporting Markdown formatting but I think that the current implementation could be more useful.

• Typing **bold** is actually more "complicated" than hitting 'command-B'bold'command-B' so I don't see any improvement there. Same for the other commands (except tables)
• The above would have made sense if I could get the markdown formatted text by copying the text (preferable I would be able to toggle between the views like for example DevonThink or DayOne) but right now it doesn't really make sense to me.
• The table commands could be an improvement but I rarely use tables so I'm leaving this open for others to comment on.
• If I copy markdown formatted text into Evernote nothing happens, so here I don't get any change at all.

I'm writing most of my stuff in Markdown, I almost never use a word processor for writing things, and when I'm not using Markdown I'm using LaTeX. So one of my biggest irritations with Evernote is the use of WYSIWYG, I would like to be able to store raw text - most often source code or markdown - evernote. Right now I avoid using Evernote for these type of notes (which probably explain the low number of notes in my account) and mostly store web clippings and photos of documents.

 

I don't know if it's a good solution but an option for a "dual mode" view of notes would be very useful for me. With this I mean that I can edit/write files using markdown and the text files are stored as is (including tabs/spaces) and a "view" option that displays the rendered version of the note (see DayOne and DevonThink). This would also make the new editing features much more useful.

 

The second thing I want to bring up is something more difficult to describe, using the note editor in Evernote doesn't feel as solid/relaxing/calming as I would like (yes, I said it was difficult to describe). The editing experience is way more solid/relaxing/calming when I use Alternote to write things (which have the same kind of formatting that the new editor uses).

[EdH 1,670]

hated reading the blog post yesterday. I hope everyone is doing ok. Is the mac team still in place or were there some here that were let go?

[jemostrom@w 3]

Here is another interesting "feature". I have a Workflow script on my iPhone that generates some Markdown and then it translates this to HTML and sends it to Evernote. This works just fine but editing of the note have different behaviors on the web and in the Mac app.

 

If I look at the source of the note on the web the last two lines of the notes are two headers (which is exactly what is expected), like this

 

<h2>First header<h2>

<h3>Second header</h2>

 

If I now place the cursor at the end of the note and press return and type "Hello world" the resulting HTML is

 

<h2>First header</h2>

<h3>Second header</h3>

<div>Hello world</div>

 

(shouldn't that be a p-tag???). If I create a new note and do the exactly same thing in the Mac app then I get

 

<h2>First header</h2>

<div>

    <br>

</div>

<div style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px;" data-mce-style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px;">Second header</div>

<div style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px;" data-mce-style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px;">Hello world</div>

 

In other words I get an empty line between the two headers, the second header is changed to a div element and the text now gets some messy formattning.

 

I see several problems here, first the use of div elements instead of what to me looks like a typical p-tag (both web and mac), the insertion of an empty line, the change of a header element to a div tag and finally the unnecessary styling.

 

If I forget about the changes in HTML my user experience is that I get different results depending on where I edit the note!!

 

I do understand that editing of HTML is messy (and it's why I prefer Markdown and rendering when necessary) but not the different results.

[macfixer 705]

hated reading the blog post yesterday. I hope everyone is doing ok. Is the mac team still in place or were there some here that were let go?

 

This is probably not the right spot for this posting 

[EdH 1,670]

 

hated reading the blog post yesterday. I hope everyone is doing ok. Is the mac team still in place or were there some here that were let go?

 

This is probably not the right spot for this posting 

 

{shrug}

I interact with the mac developers here and I am asking out of concern. They can delete my posts if they feel it is inappropriate.

[rooguima 0]

The "Markdown" features is amazing, but isn't perfect. When I try to make a table with 1 column the evernote app don't processing the markdown([]x2). Another thing is the markdown code, the feature is some 1 line? Add more lines please, like marxico.com do.

[ethomp 1]

I tried pasting what should have been plain text into a new note. I tried both the right-click menu, ⌘V, and Edit | Paste.  None worked, as in nothing happened. I was able to paste into TextMate fine. 

 

I tried Edit | Paste and Match text, and it worked. It also pastes fine into the Evernote Helper menu bar item. 

 

OS X 10.10.5

 

It's reproducible at least with this text slug. 

 

 

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

I just discovered little tiny bug. When i highlight couple sentences and try to create bulleted list the first sentence always have one extra space between bullet (dot) and words so if i try to remove it it also remove that dot and need to put it there again:

 

I'm not able to reproduce this issue.

 

Can't see what notebook my note is in: https://www.evernote.com/l/AA3x3IQLE9FJGo81WZ7xQgeWQmVoRBC1z4Q

 

Tooltips weren't working in Beta 1 which made this a lot harder but you'll be able to hover over the notebook and tags to be able to see the entire name and all of your tags.

 

 

FYI - my column widths in list-view got trashed again, as per this post. Not an install. I had just totally shut EN down and later relaunched it. It doesn't happen every time - in fact, I tried 3 more times to get it to happen and couldn't - but there is something causing this. I am using List View.

 

And again. EN crashed. I sent in a bug report via the tool. I have the log as well.

 

Also, can anyone annotate a PDF? I cannot get the "Annotate PDF" or "Annotate copy of PDF" to show up in the right-click menu. None of the normal tools are there - cannot rename the PDF either. I can annotate using the annotate icon in the upper right, but the right-click menu seems boogered up.

 

 

The contextual menu was totally broken in the beta.  This will be fixed shortly.

 

We're getting a Beta 2 ready for everyone that will have fixes for many of the bugs you've reported like being unable to rename tags and widths of columns getting lost or growing.  Once it's built I'll post a link to the release candidate here.  

Thanks again to everyone for posting your comments and bugs.  You're finding some great issues.

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

If you would like to try the 6.2 Beta 2 release candidate you can download it from here.

[ccbirdsall 2]

I just want to throw my 2 cents in on the markdown issue. 

 

I agree with a lot of what's been said. But I understand that a full markdown implementation in evernote is probably not a great idea. Even if we think it's becoming more common, I can guarantee that if I said something about markdown to most of my friends in the real world they would have no idea what I'm talking about. 

 

That being said, I also agree that the current implementation could be made much more useful if there were a copy/export as markdown option. I use pandoc to generate academic papers in both microsoft word and latex (for pdfs). I already achieve this functionality with the wonderful evernote plugin for sublime text. But having the option built into evernote would open it up for a lot more people (i.e. those not using editors like sublime text). 

 

So, the basic message is enable some kind of markdown output in addition to the input option you've already provided. 

[EdH 1,670]

If you would like to try the 6.2 Beta 2 release candidate you can download it from here.

 

column widths retained, and the context menu is back. 

[EdH 1,670]

I have a bug. I get emails from Eventbrite as an event organizer, and those go to my Evernote account. Now none of them have a header. No toolbar, no tag field, no subject line, nothing. 

 

So EN isn't reading the HTML in the email correctly and it is causing it to mess up.

 

Where can I send an .enex to? I don't want to share one in this group.

 

Here is what it looks like. https://www.evernote.com/l/AAGqOXCfao1EQ7YR1vU-D9ApZVt9144y2eI

[rooguima 0]

If you would like to try the 6.2 Beta 2 release candidate you can download it from here.

The MD code is best in Beta 2, but developers need support for more than 1 line. The table create with MD using "[]x2" remains not working.

[ajrenwick 0]

Hi guys, favourites are missing from my side bar when it is minimised.

 

 

 

[jemostrom@w 3]

This looks a bit strange, when I select a notebook from the sidebar "Notes" gets highlighted, not the current notebook ... very confusing

 

This is with b2

[jemostrom@w 3]

Another bug with b2 is that typing four dashes sometimes gives a horisontal rule, sometimes two em-dashes

[jadz 0]

There appears to be some issues with the way keyboard shortcuts for tagging and moving notes to notebooks operates.

 

I'm a heavy user of the GTD process, and so have a default notebook which I use as my 'Collection Box'. From there I will use shortcut keys (cmd + ') to tag notes will start typing and them press ctrl + cmd + m to move the note to the appropriate notebook. 

 

In previous versions this functions perfectly, in this beta release however, the shortcut keys don't seem to be triggered correctly. I'll need to tab out of fields or move the mouse to fully focus on the note as opposed to being able to do it from the note list.

[jadz 0]

Also, when trying to tag from the note list, the tags appear to be displaying outside of the box used for tagging.

 

Observe https://photos-1.dropbox.com/t/2/AAB12SL6Yg2wU2RlgaK1iL2o-s06IdxqWrDq3V8AxXy8ZA/12/467548/png/32x32/1/_/1/2/Screenshot%202015-10-01%2010.19.21.png/EOXWRRi0mpHcBCABIAIoAQ/B0EKcwqSwWy5FpAkCi620uKy4GRUZOwgsKKhBZfsBjg?size=1280x960&size_mode=2

[macfixer 705]

Hi Marcus!

 

I've been holding back on Evernote because of the lack of Markdown support. I was very excited to hear about this beta, so I signed up right away. I should note that I've only been using this beta, and haven't really used the 'regular' version of Evernote. I like it so far, but I don't really like how I can't see the 'source' of my markdown text.

 

I would suggest to show the text the way apps like iA Writer does, while editing. And show the 'parsed' text when viewing a note.

 

 

 

 

I have three more comments on the way Markdown is parsed in Evernote:

- I'd love to she Markdown headings

- For the 'checklists', I really like the way Github has implemented this. You create a checklist like so:

- [ ] Not checked item- [x] Checked item- [ ] Another not checked item

- I'm also a big fan of the default tables in markdown:

| Table head 1 | Table head 2 ||--------------|--------------|| Table content | Table content || Table content 2 | Table Content 2 |

Basically, in my ideal world Evernote would support full Github Flavored Markdown.

 

I know the Markdown implementation is in an early stage, but that makes this the best time to give my take on it.

 

 

Great work so far and I can't wait the test the coming versions!

Bram

 

Unrelated: Man, that screenshot makes me miss Sparrow 

[macfixer 705]

I think Evernote should either fully implement Markdown, or not at all.

 

I think you're thinking of "Do or do not, there is no try" 

[rdj999 31]

Here's an issue that I don't recall from pre-beta.

 

When pasting text into a note, the cursor is positioned somewhere in the middle of the pasted text, not at the end of that text – as I believe nearly everything else does.

 

This occurs in both beta 1 and beta 2.

[popo55 0]

Really like the new editor bar, if only because tags are no longer relegated to a tiny space where you can't see more than one and it's difficult to add new ones!  I'm also glad that when it attempts to autocomplete the tag, and you keep typing, it no longer changes the case of the tag to the previous suggested autocomplete tag.  This was sooooo annoying before. 

 

In previous versions this functions perfectly, in this beta release however, the shortcut keys don't seem to be triggered correctly. I'll need to tab out of fields or move the mouse to fully focus on the note as opposed to being able to do it from the note list.

 

Also, when trying to tag from the note list, the tags appear to be displaying outside of the box used for tagging.

 

 

I can also confirm this is happening.  Something really wonky happens with Cmd+' like it's trying to access the old place where the tag box used to be?  But the cursor doesn't go to the tag box, and sometimes it will add the tag and sometimes it won't.

[PeeJayTee 99]

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks for all of your detailed feedback on the "markdown-inspired" shortcuts we introduced in this beta.  With best of intentions, we added this feature in hopes that it would make people who are used to typing markdown have a better experience in Evernote.  It’s clear that this implementation missed the mark, so we’ve decided to pull the inline shortcuts out and rethink the approach.

 

For the next beta, you’ll find the “inline" formatting shortcuts have been disabled.  That means that **TEXT** will no longer be replaced with bold, !!TEXT!! will no longer be highlighted, etc.  This may disappoint some of you who found the feature useful, but we believe that it’s better to investigate some alternatives.

 

The shortcuts for numbered and bulleted lists (“1. “ and “* “) , tables ([][][]x4), checkboxes([x] and [ ]) , and horizontal rules (***) will remain.

 

As some of you may be aware, we’ve been making some changes here in how we decide what to build.  A big part of that is to be more in touch with the people who use and love Evernote, and make sure we’re making a better product for them.  This process may be messy at times, but that’s the nature of beta software.   Your feedback is critical - both the praise and concerns with what we’re doing.  I’m personally very excited about this and I look forward to working with you more.

 

Thanks,

P.J. from the Editor Team

[EdH 1,670]

Thanks P.J. I think that is the right approach regarding Markdown. I'd love to see MD in EN, but it needs to be a fairly comprehensive implementation. Looking forward to future builds.

[dustinfarris 13]

It’s clear that this implementation missed the mark, so we’ve decided to pull the inline shortcuts out and rethink the approach.

 

As some of you may be aware, we’ve been making some changes here in how we decide what to build.  A big part of that is to be more in touch with the people who use and love Evernote, and make sure we’re making a better product for them.

 

This is wonderful—not that the feature was pulled (although, yes, it needed to be)—but that Evernote is actually listening and responding.  Easily the most promising post I've read here.  Pivoting is better than putting on a blindfold and charging >50% of the time.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

 

As some of you may be aware, we’ve been making some changes here in how we decide what to build.  A big part of that is to be more in touch with the people who use and love Evernote, and make sure we’re making a better product for them.  This process may be messy at times, but that’s the nature of beta software.   Your feedback is critical - both the praise and concerns with what we’re doing.  I’m personally very excited about this and I look forward to working with you more.

 

Thanks,

P.J. from the Editor Team

 

 

P.J., wow!  This is huge!  

 

This is a long-requested, and very welcome change to how you guys make design decisions.

Knowing that you guys will actually listen, give serious consideration, and sometimes go with our requests is a really great thing.

 

I don't know what, if any, role your new CEO Chris O'Neill played in this decision, but I'm going to give him a lot of credit for at least allowing the change to go forward.

Of course my thanks go to you, the entire Editor Team, SoftwareMarcus,  Jackolicious, and others I'm unaware of working behind the scenes.

 

I love your attitude and approach.  Please keep up the good work. 

[rdj999 31]

I'll add praise – with high appreciation for both the process and this "trial" outcome. I'm quite satisfied with both, particularly considering the risk that Evernote took in being actively engaged in the discussion. 

 

Thank you!

[jonskirk 1]

+1 on the various comments about making markdown optional. This is not just a presentation issue. Some of the markdown syntax interferes with normal text editing - for example, when I write column names from a database query, this_is_my_column, suddenly it's converted to italic, destroying the query. Or when I have a document that uses ---- to indicate comments, suddenly it's converted to a horizontal rule.

 

I can see the formatting would be useful in some situations, but in others it's a problem, so it should be optional.

[aharpole 6]

It's fantastic that you guys are going back to the drawing board on this. A couple of thoughts/ideas:

 

- might I suggest that you use CommonMark? (commonmark.org) Markdown is simple to use but it has proven very difficult to unambiguously spec out. CommonMark has created a fantastic spec and implementation which you can start with, and augment with other features like to-dos and tables. They have reference implementations in C and JavaScript. I haven't dug much into the code myself but I imagine that it's not terribly hard to define different types of elements to add them to the grammar.

 

- Most of the Markdown editors I use will style my Markdown text and help me out with lists (look at apps like Typed, TextMate's markdown bundle, Atom's markdown package, or Day One for good examples) without actually changing my text content. That's useful. Then, when I am ready, I can look at the Markdown as HTML in a separate preview view. Evernote's initial approach of converting stuff to styled text in real time is error-prone and somewhat invasive.

 

- GitHub is an example of making it really easy to include things like images in your Markdown by supporting drag & drop. 

 

- It's okay with me if Markdown notes are a special type of note that get treated differently than plain text or rich text/HTML notes. I just want Markdown to be treated well in Evernote. (if Markdown notes are a distinct note type, then I would envision Markdown notes being like blog posts or something, in which you have a preview/view mode, and an edit mode)

 

- It would be really cool (albeit more difficult) if you can freely switch between Markdown and the WYSIWYG modes. 

 

- It's okay with me if your Markdown implementation doesn't offer full parity with what you can get with WYSIWYG. But since you can include raw HTML in Markdown I think you might be able to get away with making it always possible to switch back and forth between WYSIWYG mode and Markdown mode. 

 

- It might be a good idea if Markdown is one of those power-user-only features that is kind of hidden away. I don't think Evernote should become more daunting to new users just so power users have something great to work with.

[manfredell 0]

Just updated to El Cap and I'm running EN 6.2b1

It's acting strange: when I open it the main window does not appear, I have to click on the dock icon again for it to show after a few secs.

 

Applescripts do not work anymore, e.g. I have one defined in Hazel which moves a file into a Evernote notenook when a certain file appears oin a folder. Has been working fine until El Cap.

 

tell application "Evernote"
    activate
    create note from file theFile notebook {"Auszuege"} tags {"Sparkasse"}
end tell

 

Now I get:

2015-10-02 09:35:56.670 hazelworker[831] [Error] AppleScript failed: Error executing AppleScript on file /Users/manfredell/Downloads/Konto_79165505-Auszug_2015_009.PDF.
2015-10-02 09:35:56.671 hazelworker[831] OSAScript error: {
    NSLocalizedDescription = "Evernote got an error: AppleEvent timed out.";
    NSLocalizedFailureReason = "AppleEvent timed out.";
    OSAScriptErrorAppAddressKey = "<NSAppleEventDescriptor: [0x0,5b05b \"Evernote\"]>";
    OSAScriptErrorAppNameKey = Evernote;
    OSAScriptErrorBriefMessageKey = "AppleEvent timed out.";
    OSAScriptErrorMessageKey = "Evernote got an error: AppleEvent timed out.";
    OSAScriptErrorNumberKey = "-1712";
    OSAScriptErrorRangeKey = "NSRange: {0, 0}";
}
 

Also dragging a file into the dock icon to create a new note with it stopped working.

 

I have premium because of it working so fine but it now is a PITA!

[rdj999 31]

I'm in pretty much complete agreement with everything that "aharpole" just stated. Although I'm not a big fan of "modal" documents, I'm not sure it isn't best to have different note types in this case.

I acknowledge that having different "composition" and "presentstion" modes poses design and usability challenges, but it's worth considering, because it could open up tremendous flexibility in Evernote's future.

(BTW, this forum system has a superb mobile/iPhone interface!)

[jemostrom@w 3]

FWIW - doing a dual-mode interface would be "attractive" to me personal - but I do realize that I'm not the typical Evernote user so ...

 

Currently I'm keeping my personal notes as markdown files and handle syncing/backup using dropbox/git but it would be nice to be able to keep the notes in Evernote.

[JayF 30]

Bug:  The tag autocomplete is once again broken for tags containing "-".  When I type a "-" in  a tag's name in the tag field, the entire tag name for the first tag with the current pattern  is entered without being selected. 

 

Jay

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

Just updated to El Cap and I'm running EN 6.2b1

It's acting strange: when I open it the main window does not appear, I have to click on the dock icon again for it to show after a few secs.

We're investigating this but haven't figured out the root cause. It only affects a small select group of people. If you have anything unique about your system that you think may help us figure out why it only happens on a few systems, please let us know. For example, do you always run in full screen mode or something like that.

 

Applescripts do not work anymore, e.g. I have one defined in Hazel which moves a file into a Evernote notenook when a certain file appears oin a folder. Has been working fine until El Cap.

 

tell application "Evernote"

    activate

    create note from file theFile notebook {"Auszuege"} tags {"Sparkasse"}

end tell

 

Now I get:

2015-10-02 09:35:56.670 hazelworker[831] [Error] AppleScript failed: Error executing AppleScript on file /Users/manfredell/Downloads/Konto_79165505-Auszug_2015_009.PDF.

2015-10-02 09:35:56.671 hazelworker[831] OSAScript error: {

    NSLocalizedDescription = "Evernote got an error: AppleEvent timed out.";

    NSLocalizedFailureReason = "AppleEvent timed out.";

    OSAScriptErrorAppAddressKey = "<NSAppleEventDescriptor: [0x0,5b05b \"Evernote\"]>";

    OSAScriptErrorAppNameKey = Evernote;

    OSAScriptErrorBriefMessageKey = "AppleEvent timed out.";

    OSAScriptErrorMessageKey = "Evernote got an error: AppleEvent timed out.";

    OSAScriptErrorNumberKey = "-1712";

    OSAScriptErrorRangeKey = "NSRange: {0, 0}";

}

 

Also dragging a file into the dock icon to create a new note with it stopped working.

I'm guessing these 2 are related. I'm not able to reproduce this on my El Cap machine running the same AppleScript or dragging and dropping a file to the icon. Can you think of any reason why your system would be different or unique?

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

Hi guys, favourites are missing from my side bar when it is minimised.

 

 Screen Shot 2015-10-01 at 5.42.17 pm.png

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-01 at 5.42.43 pm.png

 

Actually for this first release of the mini-sidebar we won't have it.  It's really only for temporary use while in split view.  However a bunch of us around the office like it a lot and would rather run this minimal sidebar instead of the full size one and would like to have all the same features.  Do you think you would run this mini-sidebar full time?

 

 

This looks a bit strange, when I select a notebook from the sidebar "Notes" gets highlighted, not the current notebook ... very confusing

 

This is with b2

 

This has actually been the design of the sidebar since Evernote for Mac 5.x so this is not a bug.  With that said, I've heard loud and clear that many don't like this design.  

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

We just released Evernote for Mac 6.2 Beta 2.  Read more about it here. 

[EdH 1,670]

We just released Evernote for Mac 6.2 Beta 2.  Read more about it here. 

 

Is this the same b2 from 2-3 days ago?

[SoftwareMarcus 388]

 

We just released Evernote for Mac 6.2 Beta 2.  Read more about it here. 

 

Is this the same b2 from 2-3 days ago?

 

 

It's not.  We removed the inline markup-inspired formatting, fixed clicking at the bottom of the note to get into edit mode and also fixed a copy and paste issue with tables.

[onegregwiley 1]

It’s clear that this implementation missed the mark, so we’ve decided to pull the inline shortcuts out and rethink the approach.

 

 

Totally agree! It is better to take a step back to get it right than to ship something half-baked. It seems to me that markdown is a decisive feature, and power users don't mind "working for it". Perhaps it is a preference?

[arne 0]

Hi, I have been following this group and the recent development quite eagerly so I felt compelled to write up a few lines on how I would like to use Evernote on Medium because I thought it might be too much text for a post here. 

 

The TL:DR is basically that I think it is not clear enough what Evernote tries to be and that it should think of it as a platform that offers built upon its API different services/applications to different target groups centered around a highly collaborative Evernote App with live text editing, reflow able text editing, tasks that can be attached to everything (see the link above)...and another simple Note App for people that like to use Markdown and don't need the collaborative features (to mention dayone here once again ).

 

I don't know what you have defined as your ideal customer or what personas you are building the software for but as much as I am appreciating the new openness and communication I am not sure who is engaging in this conversation. There is probably a large number of people that will only start complaining once you have changed something together with the participation group. This is why I think the platform approach is useful. Like what box does around files does Evernote around notes.

 

What do you think?