j0001s

The difference with my workflow is that I always have a multi-tab outliner open (the OPs aforementioned Ecco Pro). A thought crosses my mind on any one of the many projects that I'm working on, I flip to that tab and write it in. Then, when I'm working dedicated on the project, I go and organize. The one-doc/one-outline approach of Word/Pages doesn't cut it for me, and I've always have found the Word/Pages outline features clunky. So, Evernote is SO close to meeting my workflow model, and in fact could better it, being able to really quickly open up the right Note (equivalent to my tabs, without the tab limitation) as well as all the other great organization features that Evernote brings to the table. I know us outliner junkies are not that common. I would dearly love to move away from Ecco, a program that was Windows only, follows none of the current GUI standards, and was abandoned in 1996. (BTW, I'm on a Mac, and run Windows under Parallels just so I can still run Ecco...) But I have never found anything better for outlining. Evernote could be.

+1. An outline for me acts almost as a collaborator. You can dump down the ideas free flow, see patterns and organize: Collapse allows for being able to deal with many pages of content in a single view Properly implemented drag/drop allows for quick organization: Dragging to a collapsed entry should open the entry, and allow placement anywhere within the entry (many outliners get this wrong) Dragging should be allowed both in vertical and horizontal directions at the same time. When I move an entry, I may want to promote/demote the entry (many outliners get it wrong) It's nice to be able to embed other data types within the outline (pictures, etc), but, isn't mandatory, IMO It would not be a requirement for outline to allow for dragging anywhere within a doc. If it was constrained to a contiguous list, that would meet 90% of my requirements. To move outside of the list, there's copy/paste.

As a religious user of outlines, I can say that Cloud Outliner doesn't cut it. It makes assumptions on what level you want the entry to be when you move it - which is usually (in my case) wrong. There's a number of other usability issues that I could point out. Bottom line - you're not missing much. When I do an outline in Evernote, I end up using copy/paste to move stuff around, and living without the ability to collapse levels. The best outliner remains an ancient abandonware Windows outliner called Ecco. The core 10% of its outline features embedded within Evernote would be absolutely killer. I'll upvote the outline feature, though.