estevancarlos

Three years in the making!

It finely crossed my mind that part of the struggle I've had with organizing some of my research related to how many of my notes are related to one another. This can be resolved through tagging and Notebooks--that in it of itself a is obviously a large conversation. However I was faced with the problem of constantly opening related notes for my research. Then I asked myself, is there a way to link notes together? There is! Maybe most of your already know this but I wanted to make sure to point it out. Note | Copy Internal Link will copy a link to the specific note. I now have structured a table of contents for listing of notes that link back to the TOC. Although this can be sort of resolved with tagging/Notebooks and clicking on the notes you want to read, the internal link structure creates a really nice user experience. I now just have a single window experience where I can view my information through it's own unique navigation. Any details relating to tagging and notebooks are irrelevant to this navigation experience. With regard to my notes, my TOC links to individual research notes in addition to a topic outline. In the images below you can even see arrows in the right hand side that allow you to quickly go forward and back in the navigation. It's really ideal. I strongly recommend this feature.

I have the same problem. Using Windows 10. The icon always disappears after updates. Someone else posted the question in a Windows forum - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start/evernote-icon-disappears-from-descktop-after-every/367daed4-d020-4529-919d-f6a1efacaa93

Well, this essentially answers my question. I saw Evernote moving in a Google Docs type direction. I assumed they wanted to make it a more full-fledged document editor. This clarifies that they won't. I still believe color coordination is a huge oversight when it comes to methods of organization however but this makes sense.

At this point I feel like they don't believe the feature should be implemented. I use a variety of software out there in different categories. For example I use a lot of audio software. There's one company who came right out with an audio solution that excluded expected features that you find with the competition. My assumption has been that they want to influence and control the user's workflow. They also wanted to create the idea of a simpler experience by not even allowing the user to confront all these other features. This may also be due to the size of the company. This audio company has evolved over more than a decade and they still exclude many features. So it's a software design philosophy. I think you'll find the same when you compare products like Sketch and Photoshop. However what is unclear to me about Evernote whether or not they are trying to aim for a simpler software design. I can't tell. It does a lot as it is. It has many features. What has convinced them to decide to not add color control? Even Google Docs allows that.

Evernote has finally acknowledge the existence of this request - https://twitter.com/evernotehelps/status/1083848094201114625

Has evernote made an official response to this yet? AT THE VERY LEAST there's an accessibility problem with their yellow color. There's very limited contrast. I imagine some people can barely see the yellow. They need a more contrasting yellow and while they're at it, a few more colors. Obviously.

I'm referring to the "view" however unless I'm misunderstanding what you're discussing. I know you can create hierarchical tags within the tag view and you can see the hierarchy there. To my understanding there is no other way to see the actual hierarchy without clicking on the tags in the sidebar. Is this the issue you're referring to?

Yeah, the lack of displaying hierarchy is a major flaw of this application because it inherently encourages the use of a flat structure which limits the organizational potential. It's a user experience problem and... ugh... the company seems obtuse in this way. What platforms do display hierarchy in that view? I use evernote on Mac, Windows, and Android. I've never noticed the display of the hierarchical structure in any of those platforms.

What do you mean by this? I know you can view the tag hierarchy under the tag view but are you referring to something else? Should it be view-able elsewhere?

Well, what I mean is that you can't select a sub-tag while being informed that the tag you've selected is a sub-tag. There is no visual indicator in the note window. And you should be able to create a sub-tag and place in hierarchy in the note window otherwise the experience encourages only the flat structure use of tags.

Sounds like an interesting approach but it still draws attention to the fact that Evernote has a broken "feature". However I will consider your approach. It's similar to how I write some code.

Good point. I personally don't mind the approach of a file being within multiple "folders" at once but yes that is one conceptual discrepancy.

The problem is the user experience. As soon as someone is writing a note, you require that all users use tags as though they are only flat structured. There is no way to write a tag and then write a sub-tag in the note writing window. You also can't write a tag and then select any of it's sub-tags. It's fine if the feature exists but there's no workflow that promotes the feature. So much so that I imagine most people don't know there are sub-tags. Please consider allowing users to select sub-tags and create sub-tags directly in the note window itself.

Well, from a more technical standpoint, Evernote's "tags" is just a term that describes some vague functionality. Commonly tags are used as non-hierarchical organizational terms. In other words tags often have a flat structure. That's how I assumed Evernote worked. However as we all know Evernote is discreet with their hierarchical tag feature. In other words it mimics the common "folder" paradigm. You want folders within folders? Well, you can put tags within tags. Same thing. I think that's where the confusion is. Tags function in the same way folders are expected to function. For example I have a tag called "Engineering" and it contains a sub-tag called "electronics". This is typically what we expect from folders. The problem, as I see it, is that it's not obvious how to create sub tags. It doesn't fit within any easy workflow. You have to click on the tag button and then view this large window full of tags in order to find what you need. You quickly end up with too many tags but Evernote encourages creating tags as though they are flat structured, descriptive terms. It's not visually organized either. So it's one of those Evernote features that suffers due to a poor user experience. Here's how Evernote could fix it. Allow users to select tags in their notes AND place them as sub-tags in other tags while editing their note. Also if a user writes a tag that already contains sub-tags, the user should be able to click on it in order to view and select the proper sub-tag. I've attached one screenshot here with the tags "health" and "home". I am forced to write two separate tags. I want "health" to be a sub-tag of "home" but Evernote does not allow this in the Note editing window. THAT'S the problem. Once that UX matter is resolved you'll find that it's more intuitive to create organized sub-tags and the workflow will be easier. Once you get over the idea that they are "tags" and not "folders" the functionality will be all that matters.

I don't necessarily believe Evernote should be too bloated with features however many of us have come to expect many of the features that are bundled with Google Docs. That should be a baseline in 2018. Obviously Evernote is not there. The product as it works fine but does anyone know if they intend to make any feature additions or changes at all?

This is one of those features I assumed they had and is shocking they don't. This is probably more in demand than their presentation mode.

I'm realizing now that the clients for Evernote might vary in many ways. I do have the ability to view children tags of parent tags in my version of Evernote on OSX.

I used to want this idea but I am not against it. Since Evernote already offers nested tags, that would be better system to use. Additionally, creating a complex set of options for organizing information may make it that much more difficult for some users to find the best organizational strategy. It is likely useful that Evernote limit the options they make available. I actually think their workflow needs to change. Gmail effectively uses a tagging system throughout that allows items to exist in multiple places. You can create a Tag that represents a parent and then create children. Regarding the workflow, Evernote does not make it easy to organize or view your tags. When I'm in Gmail, I can literally view a sidebar of tags and sub-tags. I can quickly find what I need. I can have the same emails within separate tags. Evernote instead promotes the idea of Notebooks which are large, non-hierarchical buckets of information. They serve a purpose but obviously a serve a very narrow purpose. So I am against your idea because I believe Evernote instead should better feature tags on the sidebar, copy the structure of Gmail and encourage people to use tags for their tree-structure needs.