Dear Evernote Developers I'll put my hand up and make a point about e-mail, then about UI, as this is the place to do it right? ================== For a lot of people that have not discovered Evernote, they use e-mail as a sort of 'crude Evernote'. They refer to their e-mail to refer to information that others have e-mail to them, they have e-mailed to themselves, refer to pictures, dates, appointments, research, diagrams, links from past communications. It could even be argued that Evernote is a sort of E-mail 2.0, in the sense that Evernote is an evolution of E-mail in that it not only lets us send research and information to others, Evernote lets us 'send' and 'keep' information resources for ourselves. Anybody with an interest in computer networking would understand that the E-mail protocol (informally speaking) is one of the oldest and widespread protocols of the Web, and it is amazing that it actually continues to exist today, despite the various security threats and modern networking protocols that have developed in recent years. Having said that, the ubiquity of e-mail in the modern workplace and personal home space is truly global. I have rice farmer relatives in rural Philippines that do not own a computer, yet they possess (and use) an e-mail address. Do you see the point I am making? E-mail is -still- important. To have a readily accessible button in Evernote to share an Evernote Note with someone that does not have Evernote provides a bridge to convey information to those that do not have Evernote. They do not have Evernote. They may never have Evernote. A lot of my clients do not have Evernote and I do not expect them to. Interesting to note, this is a two way street. Power users will note that they have a special 'Evernote E-mail Address' that they can e-mail notes to, and it will be added to their Evernote database automatically. So you can see that on some level, there is a two way mechanism that was designed into Evernote to both input, and to output information via the E-mail protocol. I am sure that many (all) users see that removing the button to share a note by e-mail, and relegating it to an ostensibly hidden, (or hidden away) method seems to deprecate the above fact that Internet mail is still the protocol of choice for sharing information between people on the Internet. To replace that button with a proprietary network chat program has three effects. 1) It makes me waste time trying to find an essential feature which has been hidden away. It was there. Now it is gone. 2) I cannot customise the button I see so that I can put it back. So to recap, it was there. Now it is gone. I cannot put it back. 3) The two points above make me wonder what kind of hubris would make a company think that forcing me to use a proprietary chat program would be better than e-mail, which, face it, is a global standard. Now, this is just e-mail. Jackalicious, thank you for clarifying that Evernote has "no plans to remove the email note feature". However, the fact that "we have deprecated it", despite the above makes me pause and wonder about what kind of corporate direction has been given to the designers and coders, so that this change would be directed from on high. I would not be surprised if at Evernote Headquarters, everyone uses Evernote and thinks that a chat program is wonderful. Sure. If everyone is working in a large corporate environment (cubicle farm perhaps) where it is faster to bypass e-mail and talk to each other by Evernote ... However, the rest of us -do not- live in Evernote land. Try as hard as you might, and as much as the CEO might like, you cannot force feed us changes like this. This is a little change. Perhaps someone will reply, saying 'oh, nothing has changed, it is still there'. But it is little changes in course direction that make me wonder whether Evernote is arbitrarily deciding for their users, instead of listening to their users. UI - Readability - Grey Text on White ===================================== Noting that later editions of version 5 have 'deprecated' the email note button, I suppose I should not have been surprised that more drastic directions were afoot. I should not have been surprised to find the UI had been drastically changed. My e-mail has exploded with criticism of the uncomfortable, grey on white, minimalist interface. I have already gone on the record to say that I frankly, along with the (uncomfortably true) majority of posters (and a lot of them new posters that found their way here specifically to comment) have reacted, and then responded negatively to the new design from a readability standpoint. I understand that criticism can be expressed diplomatically and constructively, or harshly and emotionally. The fact is however, criticism is criticism, and I hope that there is some deep discussion back at HQ about how to better incorporate the changes Evernote feels it wants to make, with the practical requests for readability, usability, legibility, and customisation (at least, to some extent) to show that however big Evernote might be in confidently trying to incorporate new features, it can still humbly listen to its users and accomodate, if not make the users, their priority. I note that it has been said that there are budgetary considerations that prevent customisation. That makes me smile. How hard can it be to provide a 'classic Evernote' color scheme that allows those that use the v5 look to keep doing so (in v6)? (and keeps those who love 'new things' chugging along in their all grey and white world of v6) How hard can it be to provide an 'accessibility option that makes headings larger and provides distinct zones of colour for the different areas of the screen'? How hard can it be to provide a small amount of customisation for the buttons in various areas, such as in Omnifocus or Curio so I could decide whether I want my buttons on my notes to be either 'send by e-mail' or 'send by chat' or even none or both? The resources needed to make the above possible ... hmmm ... do you really think that it would be better to spend those resources on adding sexy new features? Ah yes, there are many many many things that have been going on 'under the hood' that us users do not know about and are not giving Evernote enough credit for. ... to which I say, if you bothered to re-write the entire program, or at least significant amounts of code for version 6, why could the above not have been done? Nightstalker has made the point, I think, that towing the corporate line that the UI change to version 6 is because of Apple Yosemite, and 'we are not going back' (to paraphrase) is trying to shift the criticism towards Yosemite, and Apple (correct me if I misread that). I found it interesting that he, and others, have made the point that they are not averse to Yosemite necessarily, but that other apps like Curio seem to have managed to shift to Yosemite, retain their visual identity, update their UI, allow customisation, and still keep users happy. It is not Yosemite, or Apple's fault if you make your UI the way it is, and people react adversely. Version 6 could have been better than version 5. Many are saying it is great on review sites. Review sites are often marketed to those that are looking at a product for the first time. On this forum, you are getting power users that are specifically finding their way here to respond to the design changes. If anyone were to suggest we are an extraordinarily biased sample base is a bit simplistic to me, in fact, I would say that those people that find their way specifically to post here (as I am many are) would be paying premium users from a professional background that wish to dialogue with the Devs. Customers who would be especially suited as guinea pigs testing your software, and our criticism should count for something. I would not raise this (at the risk of it sounding ego-driven) but I am a lawyer. I consider my real job role to be as a 'master of information'. Information flows in and out of my professional and personal workspace and my job is to efficiently, and comfortably organise, sort, process, share (by e-mail), draft, store, archive, edit, adjust, direct, cull, categorise, read, recognise text and picture and pdf information and deal with it. Point is, that is relevant to why I have loved to use Evernote. That is relevant to why I am making an impassioned request for you Evernote developers to listen, and listen hard. As a power user, I thought the later versions of version 5 were FANTASTIC. I have been in touch with an Evernote power user who is in the medical field and he is also a rational, considered person who has a similar view. Version 5 is/was great. Version 6 is ... unusable. Two professionals saying the same thing. But there is more. I recognise I am not special. Take for instance, a coder. A student. An entrepreneur. A builder of websites, or buildings, of businesses, a teacher, a plumber, a carpenter, or even one of the most hardest working persons, a mother with kids. These would all be customers of Evernote that like me, can use Evernote to manage information in this day and age. How is it relevant to us that the new UI is harder to use, hides various features, does not allow customisation (Surely the above categories would have various and different priorities for customising preferred buttons here and there). How come the different ages of your users, some old, new young, not be catered for from a useability perspective in terms of making your UI easy to read. Version 5 surely was. Version 6 surely isn't. I am not even over the age of 30 and I find the new workspace difficult to comprehend compared to version 5. Why the 'one size fits all' approach? Do you think that Mum would have a need for chat instead of e-mail? Get real. Several users have posted screenshots showing how hard it is to comfortably visually delineate within the new grey on white workspace. How many users that 'like' the new UI have put up photos showing how much they like this or that icon? Criticism has been short and long, and many are detailed. Praise has been one or two lines here and there. I actually laughed out loud when someone said that twitter was largely positive about the new design. Twitter. Twitter was largely positive about the magazine spread of Kim Kardashian's 'newly' unveiled posterior. Fact is, people were getting excited about the unveiling of an ass. Perhaps unfair to say apropos, but some might in this case. Being subscribed to this thread, my e-mail has exploded with responses that are scathing of the new UI. Sure there are teething problems, but those are expected when the engine is re-written. What is more tragic is that version 6 was supposed to be -better- then version 5, but many are complaining about the unreadability of the new UI. Fact is, many, most of the responses here (myself included) think version 5 is better than version 6. Customers are taking active steps to revert. Customers are looking for alternatives. I hope that at Evernote HQ, there is some deep thinking going on. As another user 'Laooura'? (forgive me if misquoted) has said, I say myself: "I find myself paying money, and with every update - getting less features" Customers are asking for more a easy to read, customisable, functional, interface. We had most of that with version 5. Version 5 didn't look too bad either. Having tried version 6, I reverted to version 5. Ironically, I felt like I had upgraded.