Got only now to 6.6.4 version.I love your work, but not the new version. I'll tell you why.
Shortly:
you replaced the "Notebook panel" with a context menu, both for reading and organizing Notes. It's a good option, but it should not be compulsory at all. I'll tell you why, even if a glance at this screenshot should be enough to get it...
- Too much scroll and click
It was so good to have a layout of my notes.... when jumping between 2 or 3 stacks just few clicks were sufficient.
Let's suppose you are jumping between stack A,B, and C, in your ordinary work-day.
I have a lot of notebooks, so that they are not contained in the single view of the context menu. I need to scroll... yeah, that's the point. To scroll. Because the context menu does not keep your last scrolling position, just like a fixed menu. You have to scroll again and again, if your current notebook is not named "AAA" or "_View the World"
Before:
click on A. Is it the right one? No.
click on B. Is it the right one? No
click on C. Is it the right one? Finally yes.
Total time: 5 seconds
Now:
click on menu. Scroll down to A. click on A. Is it the right one? No.
click on menu. Scroll down again o B. click on B. Is it the right one? No
click on menu. Scroll down again o C click on C. Is it the right one? Finally yes.
Add the chance that the stacks are not named A, B, C but have different names, maybe similar: if you have a fixed menu, you just click on the following stack. If you have a contextual menu, you have to remember which was the last stack of notes you clicked onto.
But... shouldn't Evernote be meant to help with helping memory? ;-)
If you feel you like a more articulated justification, please read the following; otherwise feel free to stop here.
- Visual Memory:
Some of us have a strong visual memory, which is the reason why mind mapping software appears to be very useful. Using visual memory, makes you know where things "are": you have strong physical perception about that. And, actually, one of my dreams, would have been to see Evernote to evolve towards a more visual interface, without loosing its "list view" feature. So you can understand how pain this change induces to me.
Aside from personal tastes, I do think that making appear and disappear just deprive people from exploiting their visual memory, which can be a little bit frustrating. And it may also appear as a dumb choice.
- "Time to love, time to hate"
Compactess is as good as widness. There is a time for compactness (my smartphone sleeping in my pocket) and a time for wideness (my 24'' screen standing on my office desktop).
We love your compact app for smartphones, but I guess that many people, using Evernote for productivity, can safely afford to use 300 pixels of their wide-screen monitors for seeing all their work at a glance.
Preventing them to do that, is like compelling a Lamborghini to run at 50mph on the highway. "Why are you doing that to me"? The feeling is that of injustice.
- Brainstorming
I personally think that Evernote WAS excellent for brainstorming: just write down a note, then organize it later. Now moving notes is much more clumsy and hard. You don't really know where notes are, so you don't really know there to put them.
Ok, you can if you are a really organized person and you perfectly remember the Names of your stack and notes. So the question is: shall one be an organized person for using Evernote, or shall Evernote help disorganized people? ;-)
- Evolution vs. Market
A short consideration. The Market (whose ancestor is Capitalism) has its advantages: it pushes stuff to change, to renew, to evolve. Which is good.
However, this continuous call for change sometimes leads the evolution to too much narrow ecosystems. A "mind-gathering software" as Evernote is, should perhaps fly away from that. I would advice Evernote stuff to consider whether something shall be really changed, and question the reason why they are doing that: pursuing fanciness or usability? Are you adding or removing features? Are you giving your users more freedom or more constraints?
- Just think about dust
Yes, I know: you thought you were giving your users "more space". But "more space" does not necessary means "more freedom".
I understood that when I started living alone in a huge house: tiding and cleaning was very hard. Sometimes would like to live in a smaller flat...dust is merciless.
I will save this note, I don't know where. In the default stack, of course, Information Technology always has an answer. I could find it if I used proper tags, yes. But the truth is that yesterday I was a happier man than today I am ?
Now I have to think more about what I do. And so Evernote has lost a little bit of its functionalities.
I sincerely hope that you are restoring the fixed menu back.
Thanks for your continuous job in improving Evernote.
Mike
