(Archived) No Colored Flags in EN 3.0 Beta

[marcclarke 0]

The cute little colored flags in the left end of the EN 2.2 note header bar are gone from EN 3.0 Beta. I miss them.

[dstavisky 0]

Marc,

Can you achieve the same effect using tags like "Red", "Green", and "Yellow"?

[vogelap 27]

The litle flags in 2.2.1 weren't broken. It was quick and productive to simply click on them, and the solution you're proposing is to write them out?

Think in terms of productivity... Which is quicker -- to click an icon or type "@Green" or somesuch?

Too many features aren't present in 3.0beta, which doesn't worry me (it is an alpha (err... beta) after all). What worries me is that we're not hearing "that will be implemented" for features we've not only come to love, but to rely upon. In fact, we Gurus are getting push-back when we express our dismay at the missing/unplanned features.

2.2.1 solved, very neatly, all my organizational/notekeeping problems. It wasn't broken.

[crane 40]

Think in terms of productivity... Which is quicker -- to click an icon or type "@Green" or somesuch?

Yeah, but you can't even type @green, because the web version of the saved searches ignores the @!!!!

[marcclarke 0]

Marc,

Can you achieve the same effect using tags like "Red", "Green", and "Yellow"?

I used colored flags in a manner somewhat orthogonal to categories (trust me, I am a master of creating new categories as needed). I used the colored flags as visual indicators to application of the note. I'll try to make that a little more clear.

One way to think of my colored flag use was that I flagged notes with my emotional reaction to the note's content. I'll give some examples to try to make that a little more understandable.

I used a green flag for a note that contained "enabling" or "really good" or "best" or "happy" content. So, for example, a note titled "Income Tax Rates Lowered 50%" would get a green flag. A note titled "Global Warming Halted" would get a green flag. A note titled "Best Snow Tires for Colorado" would get a green flag. A note from a family friend reporting that chemo-therapy had been successful and her breast cancer was in remission would get a green flag (more than one green flag, if I could assign more than one flag).

I used a red flag for a note that contained "bad" or "dangerous" or "disaster" or "impending disaster" or "sad" or "despair" contents. So a note titled "America has World's Most Expensive School System But US Students Rated 24th in World" would get a red flag. An e-mail from my best buddy's sister telling me that he died on Christmas day would get a red flag (a real example). A note titled "Antarctic Ice Cap Melting, All Coastal Cities to Flood" would get a red flag.

I used a blue flag for notes with information, usually information that was new to Marc. Most of my clipped pages from Wikipedia got blue flags, as they were informative. I use blue flags for reference material, scientific papers, routine reports, and so on.

I use a yellow flag for "caution". These notes are usually notes that contain the word "may", as in "Drinking More Than Two Alcoholic Beverages May Increase Rate of Heart Disease". The note's contents are not strictly informational, but rather something that would cause me to be cautious, and to look for more supporting material.

I use a orange flag for "caution and danger, combined". Orange is a mixture of yellow and red. So a note "Middle Aged Men Who Do Not Exercise Raise Their Risk of Heart Attack" would get an orange flag.

I use a purple flag for "must" or "shall" or "you will". I associate purple with the Roman imperial purple, with the Caesar making a decree. I assign the purple flag to notes that tell me what must be done, based on sound information and experiment.

Anyway, I think you get the idea. I use EN 2.2 colored flags as sort of a poor-man's highlighter, where I would highlight the title of a printed-on-paper article with an ink highlighter of the same color.

So could I replace EN 2.2's colored flags with new categories in EN 3? No. What I am trying to do is to emulate multi-colored highlighting for notes and note titles.

What do I most want to see in EverNote 2.3? Multiple colors of highlighting. I use colored highlighting in Outlook 2007 and OneNote 2007 and Adobe Acrobat routinely (many times every day), and I sorely miss colored highlighting in EverNote 2.2. Coloring the fonts just does not cut it once you have had a chance to use real colored highlighting.

[glinkot 0]

While talking about flags though, v2 only allowed a filter category for 'flagged' rather than, say, filtering all green flags or blue flags. That kind of made them less useful than normal categories for most things.

I do see what dstav is getting at - you could create a set of categories with whatever names (eg 'blue flag') and use those instead, which would do the same thing for most purposes. However the little flag at the top of the tape is in a handy spot.

The main thing I use flags for is if there are 3 random notes I need to refer to while taking notes for a meeting, I'll flag those notes and filter for the flagged ones, so only my new note and the 3 other ones are shown in the tape.

[crane 40]

While talking about flags though, v2 only allowed a filter category for 'flagged' rather than, say, filtering all green flags or blue flags. That kind of made them less useful than normal categories for most things.

???

I've got one category per flag, so I can green. Or blue. Or green or blue.... As you can see by the filter properties for my red flag, you can create whatever filter you want.

[glinkot 0]

Mmm, interesting. I stand corrected!