(Archived) Can I Play?

[jmzimmerle 0]

OK - call me impatient - but I'm reading through all of your posts and just amazed at how much phun y'all are having - especially the mistress. I'd love to chime in on the excitement but alas do not have access to EN3. I've put my name on the waiting list but still no call from above.

Will someone let me play?

Thanks a gazillion!

JM

[jmzimmerle 0]

Thank you - Ill be sure to participate now...

JM

[CapeGhost 0]

Hello, I'm also very impatient and I'm checking my mail-box every hour for an invitation to the beta-test. But till now there was nothing.

I want to play with the new features as well and I can't wait anymore.

[Historiks 0]

Me to. Is there any chance to try the beta?

Historiks

[dbcoyer 0]

I'm sure the moderators will get tired of this after a while. Maybe set up a separate area for people looking for invites??

BUT, before that happens... any chance I could get one??

[crane 40]

I'm sorry guys, did you miss the big image on the main evernote page that tells you to register if you're interested?

Seriously though, I think there are only a few beta testers right now. Given that you're all new to the forum (at least new to posting, given your post counts), it's probably better that we break it first. You might not be as forgiving

[marcclarke 0]

I am highly confident that there will be plenty to do for subsequent waves of Beta testers.

[JustDave 0]

I am highly confident that there will be plenty to do for subsequent waves of Beta testers.

Boy howdy. Me and my 400 or so notes are are quite happy to wait patiently for youse Gurus to break it seven ways from Sunday before I stick my toe(s) in. Anyway, I'm still having frequent "Aha!" moments with EN2.2.

[gordoncahill 0]

Paid pro user. Beta tested ppc version. Plenty of posts. Applied twice. Apparently not loved anymore.

Gordon

[crane 40]

Awwww c'mon Gordon, you're still loved! Seriously, I think there's only a handful of us on the beta. Us users anyway. I think the EN team are still trying to break it too. Trust me, you want to wait for the next release. I can think of few things I've tried that make me want to pull my hair out more than playing with such a baby beta. :shock:

[fabbott 0]

Crane, Marc, et al:

I trust your sense of how trying it may be, but a quick look at the software and a reading of the messages, even if we of the unwashed can't try it, leads to a number of questions that have me salivating like a Pavlovian dog hearing a bell.

I, for one, an really curious about the quality of handwriting recognition in 3. Marc, a good judge, said in an earlier post that it seemed to be better. I have been trying the RitePen 2.7 upgrade, and it has been a marked improvement over the previous version both in speed and accuracy. I am curious if the new beta3 use a new recognition engine?

Additionally, the new version 3, which I can download but not run, despite all my best efforts at fooling it into thinking that I had an account, looks really clean and less busy than the older versions. When it works, does it get busier, or does it retain that kind of clean appearance?

Are the notebooks, which are, I assume, the new version of the endless tape, more like note cards in a file, or do they retain the tape metaphor? Is the image recognition really good enough to recognize text from cell phone pictures? Is the search system still as powerful or has it been bogged down?

Finally, because I keep trying to get my students to use Evernote and they keep telling me that it is too confusing (a complaint that I find strange) for it to be useful to them, is this new version a quicker learn for novices or more difficult? I should point out, for whatever value it has, that I found Evernote easy to learn, OneNote still leaves me baffled.

Thanks for any help that will ease my pain.

Frank Abbott

[wsp 11]

I too am on the outside looking in, but I am eagerly reading the reports from the insiders and examining the tea leaves on the Evernote website. We have already heard from the EN team that the Windows interface will eventually be similar to that of the Mac client, so I think it's worthwhile looking very closely at this image:

http://www.evernote.com/about/beta/tour/tour_mac.php

I observe that at the top of the Mac screen there is a "View" toggle that seems to shift between the traditional tape and thumbnails. I gather the Windows version will be moving in that direction.

But I also have a question for Marc, Crane, and the other beta testers. Does putting multiple databases together create a file that is really large? I worry about putting much of my digital life into a single file that can become corrupted, and, for that matter, a file beyond a certain size is difficult to back up (except, I suppose, by synchronization with a website).

[marcclarke 0]

But I also have a question for Marc, Crane, and the other beta testers. Does putting multiple databases together create a file that is really large? I worry about putting much of my digital life into a single file that can become corrupted, and, for that matter, a file beyond a certain size is difficult to back up (except, I suppose, by synchronization with a website).

Yes, all the "notebooks" all go into a single EN Lite database. In EN Lite, a "notebook" really is like a folder; if you delete a notebook from the EN Lite database the notebook and all the notes it contains are instantly gone for ever (which is fine with me, one just has to know what is a folder and what is a tag).

To have multiple EN Lite databases I currently think one would need multiple EverNote accounts (that is my deduction, we will have to cross-check with the EverNote Development Team). The EN Lite "Account" menu (far left, where on most Windows programs the "File" menu is) seems to have the ability to switch between multiple accounts. I am only speculating here, as I have only one EN Lite web account right now.

We have yet to see whether corrupting the local EN Lite database on one's hard drive will also cause the web copy of the same data to become corrupted via automatic synchronization. Currently (being the pessimist that I am) I assume it will. So I assume one must scrupulously make one's own local backups. Alas, EN Lite no longer provides an automated local backup feature.

[wsp 11]

Marc, though I think I grasp the new format, there is a problem of changing terminology. As I understand it, when you move your individual databases from EN2, they become notebooks in EN3 within one large database file. Right? Since my present EN2 databases amount to about 400 Mb collectively, that means my new database in EN3 -- a single file, I gather -- would be about 400 Mb. That's a large file (and likely to become much larger in the future), with apparently fewer safeguards (i.e. an automatic backup on one's own hard disk) than before. It feels as though a reassuring safety net is being taken away from us.

[gordoncahill 0]

Awwww c'mon Gordon, you're still loved! Seriously, I think there's only a handful of us on the beta. Us users anyway. I think the EN team are still trying to break it too. Trust me, you want to wait for the next release. I can think of few things I've tried that make me want to pull my hair out more than playing with such a baby beta. :shock:

Then why have the "apply for the beta now" plastered all over the website if they don't actually want people to apply and become beta testers. Seems like a way to annoy a few people by providing the invite and then not replying to the application. Kinda rude actually. At least provide a "we have plenty of people, thanks anyway" reply or remove the application box and stop teasing us. If Evernote wants a closed or limited beta fine, that's what they did with the PPC version. But why make the forum public if that's the case.

Gordon

[marcclarke 0]

Marc, though I think I grasp the new format, there is a problem of changing terminology. As I understand it, when you move your individual databases from EN2, they become notebooks in EN3 within one large database file. Right?

WSP,

All correct.

Since my present EN2 databases amount to about 400 Mb collectively, that means my new database in EN3 -- a single file, I gather -- would be about 400 Mb. That's a large file (and likely to become much larger in the future), with apparently fewer safeguards (i.e. an automatic backup on one's own hard disk) than before. It feels as though a reassuring safety net is being taken away from us.

I share your concerns. But as I keep saying, this is a very early Beta version, so I am not getting excited yet.

[marcclarke 0]

Crane, Marc, et al:

I trust your sense of how trying it may be, but a quick look at the software and a reading of the messages, even if we of the unwashed can't try it, leads to a number of questions that have me salivating like a Pavlovian dog hearing a bell.

I, for one, an really curious about the quality of handwriting recognition in 3. Marc, a good judge, said in an earlier post that it seemed to be better. I have been trying the RitePen 2.7 upgrade, and it has been a marked improvement over the previous version both in speed and accuracy. I am curious if the new beta3 use a new recognition engine?

I am still playing. Allanstarr is using the Beta with a Tablet. Perhaps we can get him to chime in? Allan?

Additionally, the new version 3, which I can download but not run, despite all my best efforts at fooling it into thinking that I had an account, looks really clean and less busy than the older versions. When it works, does it get busier, or does it retain that kind of clean appearance?

It stays very clean and crisp.

Are the notebooks, which are, I assume, the new version of the endless tape, more like note cards in a file, or do they retain the tape metaphor?

EN3b (which I personally call "EN Lite") retains the endless tape metaphor from EN 2.2 (which I personally call "EN Classic"). The tape and the Note List are the same in EN Classic and EN Lite. It is the EN Classic Category Panel and Category Intersection Panel that have undergone huge visual, functional, and behavioral alterations in making the leap from EN Classic to EN Lite.

Sorry, terminology problem. My bad. We should encourage the EN team to provide a glossary.

In EN Lite (EN3b) a "notebook" is a new creature, not seen in EverNote Classic. An EN Lite notebook is a folder with in the EN Lite database. It is a "container". A notebook contains notes. All notes in EN Lite are in notebooks. An EN Lite database must contain at least one notebook. An EN Lite database may contain many notebooks. I do not know if there is an upper limit. In EN Classic (EN 2.2) all notes were in databases. In EN Lite, folders are within the (one) database and notes are within folders. An EN Lite database does not hold notes directly; in EN Lite a database must have at least one notebook, and notebooks hold notes directly. If you delete an EN Lite notebook you delete both that notebook and the notes with that deleted notebook (and they are gone, forever, right now, with no back-up and no retrieval on the desktop or on the web server, that I know of). In EN Classic there were multiple databases. In EN Lite there is only one database, with many folders in that database. Importing an EN Classic database into EN Lite creates a new notebook in EN Lite, one new notebook per imported database. EN Lite can directly import notes from an EN Classic database without your having to perform a manual export (though I think Crane has posted some discussion on the relative merits of both paths elsewhere).

A note is still a note in EN Classic and EN Lite; one creates, edits, and deletes notes in the same way in both versions. The editing interface is the same, the Out-Of-Tape interface is the same, etc.

EN Lite (EN3b) has taken the old EN Classic (EN 2.2) concept of a "category" and split it into two new concepts, a Tag and a Saved Search. An EN Lite Tag is the same as an EN Classic Manual Category. An EN Lite Saved Search is the same as an EN Classic Automatic Keyword Category. However, in the EN Lite UI, Tags and Saved searches are completely separate entities and are stored in two different portions of the new UI. In EN Lite, one can not mix Tags and Saved Searches in the same hierarchical tree. Further, in EN Lite, one can not transform a Tag into a Saved Search by adding a textual search pattern to a Tag. One has to delete the Tag and create a new Saved Search.

Is the image recognition really good enough to recognize text from cell phone pictures?

I haven't tested this yet. My cell phone has a non-focusing lens with 2 megapixel resolution and no flash, and thus always seems to want to use a too-slow shutter speed to get sharp pictures. I have a dream of being able to use my cell phone to take a picture of a page of printed or hand-written text, and have EN successfully recognize at least some of the text for search purposes.

Is the search system still as powerful or has it been bogged down?

The search system has actually been expanded a bit with some new keywords. Because EN LIte Tags are manually assigned, one can now search for notes having a particular Tag, or one can search for notes that do NOT have a particular Tag. One can also search for notes that have any of several different tags.

Finally, because I keep trying to get my students to use Evernote and they keep telling me that it is too confusing (a complaint that I find strange) for it to be useful to them, is this new version a quicker learn for novices or more difficult?

Thanks for any help that will ease my pain.

Frank Abbott

Right at this moment I personally think EN Lite (EN3b) would be more difficult to learn than EN Classic (EN 2.2) due to the hard bifurcation of EN Classic categories into EN Lite's separate Tags and Saved Searches. The EN Development Team may have conducted some market research with total newbies that indicates the new UI is easier for newbies to learn. I have no data.

I, too, found EverNote really easy to learn, especially once I figured out that an EN Classic category was a tag rather than a folder (thanks, Leo!). I posted another long essay elsewhere on this new Beta forum about how I think it makes sense for newbies to learn EN Classic.

I should point out, for whatever value it has, that I found Evernote easy to learn, OneNote still leaves me baffled.

We need to talk more about how you conceptualize OneNote. Everyone I have shown OneNote to has picked it up fully in about ten minutes once I explain that it uses the bookshelf, 3-ring binder, and pre-punched pieces of note paper metaphor. OneNote is modeled directly on the metaphor of three-ring binders on a shelf. OneNote is the shelf. A OneNote notebook (which, BTW, is actually a physical folder on the file system on the hard drive) corresponds to a 3-ring notebook. Notes live inside a notebook using the sheet of paper in a 3-ring binder metaphor. OneNote's conceptual metaphor is just like a bookshelf full of three-ring binders full of notes. With a glue stick one can stick pretty much anything into a 3-ring notebook. OneNote even lets you stick audio and video tracks into notes (sort of like putting a music CD or a movie DVD into one of those wonderful little plastic pages for a 3-ring binder). OneNote also has a "sub-note", which follows the metaphor of writing something on a Post-It and sticking the Post-It to the note with one's comments about the note written on the Post-It. This is a metaphor I wish EverNote also had.

OneNote also has OneNote "categories" (which are NOT the same things as EverNote Classic categories), which are exact duplicates of EverNote Lite Tags (no brains, no self-assignment, manual assignment only). Maybe that should be the other way around, I suspect that EN Lite Tags are in fact direct copies of OneNote categories.

[marcclarke 0]

Awwww c'mon Gordon, you're still loved! Seriously, I think there's only a handful of us on the beta. Us users anyway. I think the EN team are still trying to break it too. Trust me, you want to wait for the next release. I can think of few things I've tried that make me want to pull my hair out more than playing with such a baby beta. :shock:

Then why have the "apply for the beta now" plastered all over the website if they don't actually want people to apply and become beta testers. Seems like a way to annoy a few people by providing the invite and then not replying to the application. Kinda rude actually. At least provide a "we have plenty of people, thanks anyway" reply or remove the application box and stop teasing us. If Evernote wants a closed or limited beta fine, that's what they did with the PPC version. But why make the forum public if that's the case.

Gordon

Gordon,

I would call what I am running now late Alpha code, not Beta code. :shock: Among many other issues, the on-line Help is not even close to matching the initial EverNote 3.0 Beta code, which makes finding and testing new features tediously laborious.

I think the EN Development team wanted to give the early code to a few people so they could cope with the carnage (and carnage there has been). I know the EN Development Team has both been fixing our reported bugs and adding new features a furious rate. Please keep the faith; I am confident there will still be plenty for the Reinforcement Wave of Beta Testers to break (uh, I meant to say, "test").

[dstavisky 0]

First of all, thank you for replying to all these questions about Evernote 3!

Few comments and clarifications:

Yes, all the "notebooks" all go into a single EN Lite database. In EN Lite, a "notebook" really is like a folder; if you delete a notebook from the EN Lite database the notebook and all the notes it contains are instantly gone for ever (which is fine with me, one just has to know what is a folder and what is a tag).

To have multiple EN Lite databases I currently think one would need multiple EverNote accounts (that is my deduction, we will have to cross-check with the EverNote Development Team).

That's correct.

The EN Lite "Account" menu (far left, where on most Windows programs the "File" menu is) seems to have the ability to switch between multiple accounts. I am only speculating here, as I have only one EN Lite web account right now.

Exactly!

We have yet to see whether corrupting the local EN Lite database on one's hard drive will also cause the web copy of the same data to become corrupted via automatic synchronization.

No way! IF (big IF) your local database file ever gets corrupted, application won't load this database and won't sync it with the server. In fact, if you don't have local backup (more on this below), you can restore your local data by deleting the corrupted .exb and re-syncing with the server.

Currently (being the pessimist that I am) I assume it will. So I assume one must scrupulously make one's own local backups. Alas, EN Lite no longer provides an automated local backup feature.

Well, the database technology we are using is very reliable. But things happen - file system can get corrupted, your hard disk can die, your notebooks can get lost or stolen... Regular backups are always a good idea, especially when you are talking about your memories.

Here is what we discussions about local backups in 3.0 at http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=5624:

We don't do local backup ourselves anymore - there are many solutions for doing this at the system level, and we decided not to re-invent the wheel. We moved the Evernote .exb database files into "My Documents" directory to make it easier for you to perform backup using the same tools you use to backup your documents, email database files, etc.

Of cause all your server data is regularly backed up in our data center.

[marcclarke 0]

We have yet to see whether corrupting the local EN Lite database on one's hard drive will also cause the web copy of the same data to become corrupted via automatic synchronization.

No way! IF (big IF) your local database file ever gets corrupted, application won't load this database and won't sync it with the server. In fact, if you don't have local backup (more on this below), you can restore your local data by deleting the corrupted .exb and re-syncing with the server.

While this confidence is music to my ears, I think we still need to see what happens under a number of circumstances, such as:

• 
  [*:80d01]Concurrent synchronization attempts to the web service from two or more devices with different edited copies of the same note.
  [*:80d01]Sudden Internet connectivity loss during synchronization to the web server. This latter condition will be common with mobile devices such as SmartPhones, iPhones, and Android phones, and happens to me frequently with WiFi on my laptop.

Once the web server's master database has been corrupted (and I am assuming it can be corrupted, while I think Dimitry is assuming it can not be corrupted, and I sure hope Dmitry is right, and I am not willing to trust my precious data to hope), I am not clear on how to recover other than to delete everything on the web server, restore on a local device from a local back-up, and then upload to the web server from the restored client.

For those among us EverNote users who perhaps do not keep our backups fully up-to-date, it is very comforting to hear that in case of a disaster (hardware crash, device loss or theft) we can always get back to the most recently restored version of our EN3b database by connecting a new device to the EN3b web service. Very nice.

[crane 40]

Only a couple of comments, since marcclarke did such a good job answering.

1. I kind of like the look. I see that the newest release has moved icons from the note header to higher up, e.g., tag/delete/etc. I'm still trying to decide if I like that. Other than that, the look is fresh and clean. See image:

2. Re size, I have 500+ notes in my EN3b database. It takes about 16 MB. I took 470 notes from my 2.2 database (all of these notes have been imported into 3b - the difference is the notes I've added to 3b in the interim for testing.) A 2.2 database with these 470 notes is about 12 MB. I don't think the size of the new DB is that much different than the old.

3. I tend to find 3b faster than 2.2. It's most definitely faster to start/close. That may be due to the fact that my 2.2 database has 7000+ notes in it. It might also just be that the new code works faster.

4. Re "easier" vs. "harder"... Personally, I think that 3b would be easier to teach to someone, if only because it's essentially crippled, compared to 2.2. For example, you can have notebooks, but they must be stored in alphabetical order, and there cannot be subnotebooks. You can have tags, but they have to be stored in alphabetical order. You can have tags as children of other tags, but that doesn't seem to gain you anything yet, since you can't (at least before the newest releast) select a bunch of tags and see what was in all of them. You can have saved searches (like our automatic categories), but they cannot be stored with tags, must be stored alphabetically, and cannot be in a hierarchy. In addition, based on reading of the most current release notes, it seems that if you want to synchronize, you're limited to 32 saved searches and none of the names can have non-alpha-numeric categories. (I haven't played with this yet, but the release notes seemed to indicate it.)

My point is that the more restrictive you make a tool, the easier it is for a novice to use. For instance, it's easier to teach someone how to use a hand saw than a compound mitre saw, if you get what I mean.

For myself, I really would love to be able to one day move to EN3b, but it's not powerful enough yet. However, I would consider giving it to a newbie to try.

[glinkot 0]

Hi Crane and others,

Just looking at your screenshot there, that toolbar at the top looks really large. I know most EN fans value their screen realestate- is there a 'small buttons' option and/or is that toolbar customisable?

Thanks

[crane 40]

That would be a no on both accounts.

Actually, here's a better idea of the space issues. The image below shows the same view with both EN2.2 (left) and EN3b (right).

Here are two separate areas of potential discussion:

(1) The big header, under the menu bar. 2.2 is smaller than 3b, by a significant amount. 3b is prettier, but that's a subjective opinion

(2) Surprisingly, the note header on individual notes is about the same size in both versions. I say surprisingly, because I figured that removing the icons for tag/delete/etc., would shave a little bit of space. (Note to EN folks: I liked the icons in the note header. Now I have to travel farther with my mouse.)

[iafanasyev 1]

is there a 'small buttons' option and/or is that toolbar customisable?

The toolbar is planned to be customizable (one will be able to add/remove buttons, and hide button captions explicitly, which will make the toolbar thinner).

[iafanasyev 1]

(1) The big header, under the menu bar. 2.2 is smaller than 3b, by a significant amount.

Please also count the height of the bottom statusbar, and you will see that the vertical space is used in EN3 more efficiently than in EN2.

[crane 40]

Hehehe. Not to split hairs or anything, but I'm not so sure. The EN3b status bar is shorter than the 2.2 statusbar. But it's not shorter by enough. If you look at the enclosed image:

The little red lines are the same length. Now perhaps I'm missing something (I'm still on my first cup of caffeine after all), but they indicate to me that you lose a few pixels of space in 3b.

[iafanasyev 1]

The little red lines are the same length. Now perhaps I'm missing something (I'm still on my first cup of caffeine after all), but they indicate to me that you lose a few pixels of space in 3b.

You won...

Next time i'll take my pixel-precise ruler with me before going to the Forums. 8)

[crane 40]