Gavin Gough

9 hours ago, gbarry said:

Hi everyone--appreciate the feedback thus far. For two of the noted features above--we're continuing to work on internal links and their functionality. With regard to classic links and internal links, I'm testing against both and seeing them route correctly within the new Evernote. We have a future release to improve them when pasted outside of Evernote, but internally to Evernote they should be working on the latest version. What are you experiencing?

As for TOC, you can now copy any combination of multi selected notes into a bulleted or numbered list in the editor, creating your own table of contents note, and re-arrange it using the editor's drag and drop capabilities for the bulleted list. It adds two steps, but increases the overall flexibility of being able to apply groups of note links throughout. Additionally, we remember the order in which you have selected the notes, meaning you can quickly compile your TOC list (or any list) of note links quickly for pasting into any note. Would really love to hear if that additional flexibility expands and improves upon the TOC functionality.

Hi, thanks for your reply.

It's good to know Classic links will be reinstated. Existing links do work, as you say, but not in the same way. Previously, clicking an evernote:// link would open that note in a new window, which was ideal. Now, focus moves to the current note in Evernote, losing focus on the note currently selected. If the Evernote window is full-screen, it's necessary to go and find it. It's a different behaviour and whilst it's not a huge deal, it's another example of something that previously worked simply and effectively is now a lot more awkward.

It is possible to create a list of notes, as you described. Thanks for that. But, again, here are several steps to replace a feature that previously took one. Yes, a bulleted list can be reordered. That's handy. Is it better than the previous one-click approach? I'd say that's debatable. For me, no, it's more cumbersome.

Finally, I really do appreciate the feedback and can see that some of these issues might be resolved in the future. But they came up in the Beta testing. The issue about internal links certainly did. The lack of tabs too. You and I spoke in the forum about the mess with annotation summaries and I spent some time providing examples and system logs. I'm really struggling to understand why this release has been pushed out before these things were fixed. They're not flourishes I'm looking for, they're basic workflow functions.

I can't work with this version so have returned to the previous release. Therefore testing the issues you mentioned requires reinstalling 10.0.10. You're welcome.

The iOS release is just as bad. Not relevant to this forum thread, I know, but relevant to the question of why Evernote appears to be pushing out a product before it's ready. It was literally impossible to type the title of a note in the first iOS 10 release. And here's a quick sketch note I just added in the most recent version. It says, "Here is a note that I am writing with the sketch option in Evernote iOS". If you can guess what the last sentence says, I'll give a special prize. I certainly don't know and I wrote it!

And that illustrates my bigger point. What was a perfectly usable and productive app has been broken. The cosmetic changes are lovely and I appreciate them. I also understand that you can't please all the people all the time and satisfying all users is impossible. But when it's not possible to write the heading of a note or add handwriting to a note or link to a note or annotate a note or open more than one note... it's no longer a usable notes app. Is it?

I've participated in the Preview and the Beta programmes for this release. I've noted bugs when I've seen them, responded to the feedback questionnaires and posted observations to the Preview and Beta forums. I'm really surprised to see this release go live when the most recent beta didn't seem nearly ready.

It feels as if this release has been rushed rather too rapidly. Perhaps to catch up with the iOS release? It doesn't even feel like a robust Beta, let alone a full release.

I appreciate this is a "journey" and improvements can still be made, etc. etc. but shouldn't the app at least... you know... work?

I made a list of some of the basic functionality that I was waiting to see fixed.

I say "fixed" because these are all things that already existed in the previous release and have not been implemented in 10.0.10.

1. Tabs! - Imagine using a web browser and the developer removed the ability to open more than one tab at a time. My mother only uses one tab in her web browser but I suspect she might be in the minority. This was highlighted early on in the beta programme and seems to have been ignored.
2. Local links - Again, highlighted early on and seemingly ignored. Not only does it seem impossible to create a local link to a note, existing evernote:// links no longer work. Imagine if you were a paying Evernote customer (I am) who'd created a lot of links in other applications (I have)! No need to imagine, I guess. So all the carefully-crafted links are not honoured. Why take this functionality away? Or why send out a product before it has this basic functionality included? </rhetorical>
3. PDF Annotation Summaries - I annotate documents, research papers etc. Previously, annotations were summarised at the top of the note. Really useful stuff! That's no longer available. Not only that, my existing annotation summaries have lost all recognisable formatting. Highlights in the wrong places, text annotations pointing to the wrong text.
4. Web Clipper - I'm not sure what's happened here but the web clipper, which used to be excellent and so much better than any competitors' solutions, is now formatting clipped content in strange and unexpected ways. What was a predictable behaviour is now a lottery.
5. Creating a Table of Contents from multiple notes - No longer an option. Why not?
6. I could go on (and frequently do).

There are a host of curious design choices that other beta users have highlighted. I'm not quite so frustrated with those things. I can live with a quirky new way of doing something as long as it works. Why do I need to click twice on a link to open it? Who knows? It's a behaviour I'm not familiar with and seems like a curious design choice but I'm really only bothered that the link opens.

TL;DR?

Evernote is broken.

At least, it doesn't work in a way that will allow me to keep using it without employing a lot of "workarounds".

This is true of the iOS release too. (The issue about offline notebooks is well documented in the relevant forum, for example.)

Having been with Evernote for 12 years, I was happy to contribute time to the Preview and Beta programmes. I liked Evernote. I encouraged friends to use it. I pestered work colleagues to download it. I don't expect to be making such encouraging noises in the future!

I'm sure a huge amount of work has gone into making this new Evernote release. Perhaps this is simply a bumpy start to an exciting journey but it's not one that I'll be joining. I just want Evernote to be what it used to be, a reliable, robust 'second brain'. This release, sadly, is not a step forward.