Public URL Webpage Ongoing Changes

[fchandler 30]

We've noticed over the past couple of weeks, that when viewing Public URLs, the format of the viewed Evernote webpage changes from time to time. It appears a new version is being worked on where attachments have a new presentation and font style has changed. Can anyone from Evernote provide any information on my observations and if this new Public URL webpage presentation is actually in the works and when will it be completed? 

[gazumped 11,661]

Hi.  This is a -mainly- user supported forum and though Evernote developers do read the posts here,  they don't usually comment on ongoing work or release dates. I'm personally not aware of any changes in presentation - there is a new 'beta' version of the web-based database view,  but that is something you opt into once and remain with that view unless and until you opt out again.  Is it possible to provide some screen shots of the effects you mention?

[fchandler 30]

So today the new Public URL view is remaining constant, so I'm guessing Evernote is done with this new work. You will notice the attachments have a new look and layout which I personally like.

[Scott T. 662]

@fchandler Yes, we were previously running experiments with a subset of users, but we have now enabled the updated public note view for all users. The update is mainly to allow public notes to be rendered in the same way as they are in all other clients. The public note view had been neglected for a long time, but should now do a much better job of displaying content like tables.

I hope you like it.

[gazumped 11,661]

11 hours ago, Scott T. said:

The public note view had been neglected for a long time, but should now do a much better job of displaying content like tables.

Wow - total understatement!  That is an amazingly better presentation.  Thanks for everyone's efforts here.  ?

[daveincleveland 3]

I have many public URL's saved in individual task records in my task manager; previously these links would reliably open a browser window momentarily, then a dialog asking me to allow the desktop app (Mac) to open the note.  This took me directly to the note that held information associated with the task.

Today, all my previously-generated public note URL's just take me to the Evernote web interface, "wherever I left off." It doesn't seem to matter whether I use the "new" interface or revert to the "old."  All of these links appear to just open the Evernote web app to whatever note was active the last time I used the web app.

I tested creating a new public note URL from within the web app today, and pasting that into a new browser (Safari) window; this opened the target note in question in the web viewer but did not detect/prompt me to use the Mac desktop app/client.

Are existing public note URL's broken by the update/enhancement of the public note URL web view that just rolled out?

[DTLow 5,736]

6 minutes ago, daveincleveland said:

Are existing public note URL's broken by the update/enhancement of the public note URL web view that just rolled out?

I'm not clear about the " web view that just rolled out".
Can you point to a link discussing that.  You also might try posting in that discussion.

[daveincleveland 3]

I just saw a new web view format for public note URL's today; the thread linked below suggests it has been tested for some users for a week or two but appears to have gone live more widely in the past couple days:

 

[daveincleveland 3]

@Scott T. - since the update, public URL's that I had already saved (I use them in my task manager to link back to task/project notes and resources) no longer seem to be working.  My "legacy" public URL's now just launch the Evernote web view (regardless of whether I have the old or new version selected) to the last note I had open/active. Is this expected behavior or a bug?

If my legacy URL's are broken, it is going to be a major headache to re-locate all of those individual notes using Search...I wasn't particularly careful about how I organized or tagged them since I was always able to navigate straight to them using the deep link.

A secondary issue is that Safari used to "pop" my Evernote for Mac desktop app and open the target note when clicking a public URL (as long as I was logged in) to one of my own notes; that no longer seems to be happening, now the Web view just opens. Is this also expected behavior? (or a bug associated with using "legacy" public note URLs?)

[Gear64 43]

53 minutes ago, daveincleveland said:

@Scott T. - since the update, public URL's that I had already saved (I use them in my task manager to link back to task/project notes and resources) no longer seem to be working.  My "legacy" public URL's now just launch the Evernote web view (regardless of whether I have the old or new version selected) to the last note I had open/active. Is this expected behavior or a bug?

If my legacy URL's are broken, it is going to be a major headache to re-locate all of those individual notes using Search...I wasn't particularly careful about how I organized or tagged them since I was always able to navigate straight to them using the deep link.

A secondary issue is that Safari used to "pop" my Evernote for Mac desktop app and open the target note when clicking a public URL (as long as I was logged in) to one of my own notes; that no longer seems to be happening, now the Web view just opens. Is this also expected behavior? (or a bug associated with using "legacy" public note URLs?)

So what your saying is if you note is widely public, you're potentially exposing sensitive data if this is real bug?

[DTLow 5,736]

52 minutes ago, Gear64 said:

So what your saying is if you note is widely public, you're potentially exposing sensitive data if this is real bug?

I'm not reading anything like "exposing sensitive data" in this report.

[Gear64 43]

23 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I'm not reading anything like "exposing sensitive data" in this report.

 

2 hours ago, daveincleveland said:

My "legacy" public URL's now just launch the Evernote web view (regardless of whether I have the old or new version selected) to the last note I had open/active. Is this expected behavior or a bug?

I interpreted this as url accessing the wrong note. What if that wrong note had sensitive data? However does that mean 'web view' as container in web browser or the actual evernote web client attached to his account?

[daveincleveland 3]

@Gear64 no, the public note URLs that I created prior to yesterday don't seem to do *anything* except launch an Evernote Web window in my default browser. It is defaulting to showing wherever I was if I am still logged into the Web app.

I signed out of the web app and tried a "legacy" public note URL and it just launched the Evernote Web login page.

[gazumped 11,661]

Interesting - I switched to Vivaldi recently because Chrome and Firefox were eating my memory space and I wanted to try a 'light' browser.  Though based on Chrome it is faster (I think) than my previous choices,  and allows me to use the rather wide options in the Chrome App Store - and the latest Evernote Web client.  I just clicked on one of my legacy links to see what happens when (and if) I jump to a note,  and got a pop-up that said:  "Want me to open all these links in the Evernote App from now on?" to which I was very happy to say Yes!

I'm rather happy with Vivaldi for the moment.  Just sayin.  And a 2-year old link to a note works fine in the latest beta 6.16.1

[Scott T. 662]

3 hours ago, daveincleveland said:

@Scott T. - since the update, public URL's that I had already saved (I use them in my task manager to link back to task/project notes and resources) no longer seem to be working.  My "legacy" public URL's now just launch the Evernote web view (regardless of whether I have the old or new version selected) to the last note I had open/active. Is this expected behavior or a bug?

If my legacy URL's are broken, it is going to be a major headache to re-locate all of those individual notes using Search...I wasn't particularly careful about how I organized or tagged them since I was always able to navigate straight to them using the deep link.

A secondary issue is that Safari used to "pop" my Evernote for Mac desktop app and open the target note when clicking a public URL (as long as I was logged in) to one of my own notes; that no longer seems to be happening, now the Web view just opens. Is this also expected behavior? (or a bug associated with using "legacy" public note URLs?)

@daveincleveland Public URLs will initially open in our "Single Note View". Clicking on the button in the upper-right should prompt you to log in if you aren't already. After that, it will save a copy of that note into your account, then open our web client with that note displayed. If you had previously selected a specific web client (old or new), it should open the correct client. 

Also, you mentioned that it just opens the last active/open note, vs. the one you just saved. If you can give me the exact scenario that this happens in, I can investigate to see if we missed a specific case. We're still actively making some changes to improve the whole flow.

We are working on the ability to send the "open note" request to our desktop or mobile client, if they are installed. We previously had a change for that in, but was causing a bug, so we temporarily reverted that change. We have another fix we're working on, but we want to make sure it behaves well and doesn't cause any other side effects. I'd expect it to be ready very soon.

If you have specific feedback on the behavior, please let me know and I'll pass this on to our team. We're really trying to get the whole sharing/viewing experience right, especially for these public/shared note URLs. We still have a lot more work ahead, but value any input you have.

[daveincleveland 3]

2 hours ago, Scott T. said:

@daveincleveland Public URLs will initially open in our "Single Note View".

That doesn't appear to be happening, at least not for me.

This link:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s86/nl/9486405/c73d9795-2b86-47a9-9a39-f69a54a0e8d7/

Does not appear to resolve to the specific note from which it was created; it just opens the regular Evernote Web view (see screenshot):

This is what's in my address bar after the link address resolves and the page displays:

https://www.evernote.com/u/0/Home.action#n=d66a212c-b4dc-499d-9ff0-bd49aab1aa3a&s=s86&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&

I checked my Safari settings and made sure that pop-up blocking and all other content blocking/filtering that I could find was turned off for Evernote.com 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

13 minutes ago, daveincleveland said:

This link:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s86/nl/9486405/c73d9795-2b86-47a9-9a39-f69a54a0e8d7/

Does not appear to resolve to the specific note from which it was created; it just opens the regular Evernote Web view (see screenshot):

FWIW, for me that link opens a new browser tab (in Opera), with an Evernote page that has a padlock image and the message "You need permission to access this note," and a button to request permission.

[DTLow 5,736]

11 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

FWIW, for me that link opens a new browser tab (in Opera), with an Evernote page that has a padlock image and the message "You need permission to access this note," and a button to request permission.

I don't think that was a public url

This one works    https://www.evernote.com/l/AAoH6VjLal9BkJ5tMX10BrjrA35NkfAgdX4

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I don't think that was a public url

This one works    https://www.evernote.com/l/AAoH6VjLal9BkJ5tMX10BrjrA35NkfAgdX4

So it does. My apologies if I misunderstood the conversation!

[daveincleveland 3]

Likewise, @DTLow your public link appears to work correctly for me.

OK - maybe I'm off base calling my "shard" links "public".

In any event - I have dozens of these "shard" links embedded in my task manager and they are now not working since the new Web view rolled out, and that is the thing that I need to understand - whether this is a bug that will be fixed or whether I need to somehow manually locate all those notes using Search or whatever and replace them with Evernote:/// links (if that functionality ain't coming back).

[DTLow 5,736]

12 minutes ago, daveincleveland said:

calling my "shard" links "public".

I think they would be private web links.  I just created one for the same note and it worked; I can't speak for older links.

[daveincleveland 3]

This is where I am hoping @Scott T. or one of his colleagues can help. 

I re-created one of these private links for a note where the link I had was not working; the desktop client generated the same link URL I already had from a couple weeks ago, and it is still not opening/finding the note (nor is the browser handing off to the Evernote desktop application).

[Scott T. 662]

@daveincleveland Thanks for bringing this to my attention and giving a specific example. I'm able to reproduce the specific case you highlighted. It appears this is an issue for private note links (not public). It works fine for our new web client, but doesn't appear to work for the older web client. I wasn't aware that we had made any changes related to private links. Nonetheless, I've alerted our dev team of this. They're taking a look. Hopefully I can get you an update soon.

[daveincleveland 3]

Thanks Scott! I just tried again, switching back to the new web view, the private links are indeed opening the correct note in web view (although not launching the desktop app as you indicated this is not yet implemented). I could swear when I tried this yesterday it was not working in either the old or the new web viewer, but it is working in the new web viewer now.

Looking forward to having the link back into the desktop app restored, but in the meantime, this will enable me to find what I'm looking for!

[alexandremrj 18]

I have the exact same problems, links that previously went to the specific note when pasted in the browser (it opened the web view and then asked if I wanted to open in my desktop), now simply go to the top most note in the web version.

Basically the links to specific notes stopped working in Firefox

[DTLow 5,736]

Since you both have Premium accounts, you can use Evernote Support as a resource zt Contact Evernote Support

[daveincleveland 3]

Over on the thread:

 Evernote team has acknowledged there is an issue, reproduced the problem, and is working on a fix.

[Scott T. 662]

Yes, we're looking into the right fix for this. For transparency:

A change we made for private note links (vs. public shares) will send the user to our new web client to view the note, rather than opening the VERY old viewer we had. As part of the change, we no longer also generate "evernote://" links since that is not reliable and was a bit of a weird experience to both open the web client and pass it to the installed client as well.

The problem is that we haven't fully rolled out the new web client to every Evernote user (but should be very soon). Also, users have the option to go back to the old web client. So, in both of these cases, we will redirect to the old web client. However, the parameters sent to the new client to have it open the specific note are not understood by the old web client.

We were discussing whether to just open the new client irregardless, or to make changes to the old client. But we'd prefer not to do the latter. Fix is still under discussion.

I apologize for the current inconvenience. I welcome any feedback on the subject and will gladly pass it on to the team.

[pshanks 0]

53 minutes ago, Scott T. said:

We were discussing whether to just open the new client irregardless, or to make changes to the old client. But we'd prefer not to do the latter. Fix is still under discussion.

 

One of the challenge is the new web client is not support in Firefox!!!
But these same links have worked before with the OLD web client before being pass to the desktop app (both Windows and Mac). 

Also I'm wondering how the ability to open a note on the Desktop (thru the Web client) is going to work now....As that doesn't work now either

[gazumped 11,661]

3 hours ago, Scott T. said:

I welcome any feedback on the subject and will gladly pass it on to the team.

OK here's my 2c

AFAICS there are a limited number of scenarios where I would quote a note link.

1. Where I have a link in another app from which I wish to open a note in Evernote on the same device - examples: a link from another note,  or my calendar,  mind mapping or to-do app.  These links should default to a local browser with full editing rights if there is no local app to open.
2. Where I share a link to someone else with optional levels of editing authority which should open in a browser,  or in a locally installed Evernote account (sharees' option).
3. Where I share a public link by email,.  which should open in a browser,  or in a locally installed Evernote account (sharees' option).

Ideally and in all cases I want the link to open quickly and in the case of (1) directly in my app - starting the app if necessary.  (3) should open quickly in a browser* and provide a quick view of the content,  plus a small option** to display in,  or import the note to,  the viewer's account.

The web client should automatically adjust to the display type - mobile / tablet / desktop,  and use the full width of the window if editing rights are not involved.

* It's been my recent experience in Vivaldi,  Brave and Brave Dev that the web client takes a long time to load - anyone unfamiliar with Evernote will probably believe the link is faulty and give up if slowness is a common experience.  The viewed note doesn't need anything from the main web client other than being able to display a note with active links - is it possible to streamline the loading process in light of that?

** If branding on this client is too large,  it draws too much (non-user) attention and rather than encourage new business,  it confuses a lot of viewers into believing that they must install Evernote to view the note.  Which prompts objections and queries rather than satisfaction with the shared content.  Users are more likely to look for different and less controversial means of sharing information - like email!

[Scott T. 662]

@pshanks and @gazumped, I have passed both of your feedback on to our team. I'll continue to post updates when I hear more (hopefully soon).

[alexandremrj 18]

On 10/11/2018 at 10:42 PM, Scott T. said:

Yes, we're looking into the right fix for this. For transparency:

A change we made for private note links (vs. public shares) will send the user to our new web client to view the note, rather than opening the VERY old viewer we had. As part of the change, we no longer also generate "evernote://" links since that is not reliable and was a bit of a weird experience to both open the web client and pass it to the installed client as well.

The problem is that we haven't fully rolled out the new web client to every Evernote user (but should be very soon). Also, users have the option to go back to the old web client. So, in both of these cases, we will redirect to the old web client. However, the parameters sent to the new client to have it open the specific note are not understood by the old web client.

We were discussing whether to just open the new client irregardless, or to make changes to the old client. But we'd prefer not to do the latter. Fix is still under discussion.

I apologize for the current inconvenience. I welcome any feedback on the subject and will gladly pass it on to the team.

This had a very big impact on my side because all private note links on my task manager simply do not work on my Windows machine.

Strange as it seems, starting on my Mac and Omnifocus and cliking a private link in the task manager, firefox opens a new blank tab and my Evernote Mac opens right away with the corresponding note.

Starting on my Windows machine and Omnifocus (web) and clicking a private link in the task manager, firefox opens the web client in the all notes section with the first note on that list. It does not go to the corresponding note, nor Evernote for Windows opens.

 

Considering that there is a lot of trust going in Evernote, because of the amount of my data that you have, anything that starts eroding that trust is a slippery slope.

 

[Scott T. 662]

Update: Based on the feedback from the forum (thanks everyone), we're going to revert the change for private note links until we can have a better experience that doesn't break the use cases here. Assuming there aren't issues, the change should go out later this week.