Behind the Scenes: Redesigning the Note Editor in Evernote

[Shane D. 1,818]

Hi All,

The next video in our Behind the Scenes series is here!

Ian Small chats with Sasha, a senior product designer at Evernote, about the work she and the team are doing to make the editing experience more flexible, consistent, and fun.

We hope you’re enjoying the series and stay tuned for the the rest of the series!

YouTube Link:

 

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Great news, thanks for sharing the insight. As a user of MacWiniOS, having one editor and the same layout everywhere will make life definitely  easier.

Will markdown editing be part of the new editor, or do we still need an external markdown editor as a link when posting content ? I think that many users collect the raw material for their blog or website in  EVERNOTE, so going from there directly into the web manager (WP or other) would facilitate a day-to-day workflow.

[Superglue 5]

Brilliant initiative, so that customers are kept aware what’s EN is working on !

[DTLow 5,736]

37 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Will markdown editing be part of the new editor, or do we still need an external markdown editor ...

My vote is for external editor if you don't want Evernote's enml/html format.  I don't want EN splitting their resources.

Evernote's Chinese spinoff went a different direction; users chose the format when creating a note, and the appropriate editor is launched.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

If the editor is enriched by layout now, maybe markdown is not that far down the road.

And yes, this is nothing critical, one more step of share / copy-paste, and the markdown environment is there. But is is still one more step, and makes a publishing / blogging workflow less efficient.

[DTLow 5,736]

Interesting to see styles mentioned, and the auto-outline potential
Also improved list editing like drag and drop.
It's not a hot item for me but I know this has been an outstanding user request.

Currently my notes are short and concise, with word processing file attachments.
With enhansed editing I see the potential for moving content into note format.

Thanks Ian and Sasha.  I'm enjoying the videos.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

6 hours ago, Shane D. said:

Ian Small chats with Sasha, a senior product designer at Evernote, about the work she and the team are doing to make the editing experience more flexible, consistent, and fun.

Wow!  This is terrific!  You guys are doing a great job.  👍
And Sasha did a great job of presenting and explaining the new editor.

I really like everything you are doing to the new editor.  This time, I do NOT have any complaints/issues.  😉

Thanks again for sharing as you develop.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Someone new likes outlining....

Really support the idea that notes are rendered consistently across platforms and the fact that they are going to look decent too.

[jefito 5,589]

Enjoyed the video. Some stuff:

In general, I like the direction of the semantic headers, especially given that you'll be able to customize them. Questions:

• Will the headers look the same on a different device as on their source, or will they match the local header customizations? If not, will there be a way to transport the customizations to a different device? Scenario: I may want to see things look the same across my devices, but if I share with someone else, maybe they don't like my style choices and want to see them their way.
• Also, how is the semantic-ness of the headers carried around? Must be some convention in the markup, I suppose
• And the money question: will we be able to create our own headers?

With respect to the new font stuff, that's not surprising, given how other cross-platform & web apps do it (e.g., Gmail, this forum, etc.). Obviously the note renderer can handle arbitrary fonts outside the magic circle, so I can drop arbitrary rich text in and it should work, but there are specialized typefaces that I need to use on occasion, and would like to be able to edit directly in them, rather than copy/pasting from elsewhere. I'm guessing that I'm not alone. So how does that play out in the new Evernote world?

Good that you're keeping the old checkboxes (guess you really had to, for backwards compatibility), but the checklist will be welcome as well.

Thanks for doing this series.

Edit: Oh yeah, the tags thing. The [Share] status is definitely down my list of importance; I only share notebooks between my home and work accounts, and I know what's what by notebook name. Tags are much higher priority, and I think that they naturally go in tandem with the notebook, because that's how you organize things in Evernote. Plus tags -- at least in my case -- function like keywords in an abstract; the provide context. Short form: I'm not a big fan of separating notebook name and tags on the screen.

Also, seeing as how the new editing feature are appearing in the web beta, at least for me, I'll kick those around a bit, see whether I can answer some of my own questions.

[ObviousBob 140]

Is anyone actually using the web beta yet? I haven't seen any feedback about it. Or maybe participants aren't allowed to post about it?

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

1 hour ago, jefito said:

Oh yeah, the tags thing. The [Share] status is definitely down my list of importance; I only share notebooks between my home and work accounts, and I know what's what by notebook name. Tags are much higher priority, and I think that they naturally go in tandem with the notebook, because that's how you organize things in Evernote. Plus tags -- at least in my case -- function like keywords in an abstract; the provide context. Short form: I'm not a big fan of separating notebook name and tags on the screen.

@Ian Small, I completely agree with the comment about Tags.  I need for the Tags of the Note being edited to always show as part of the header being displayed for the Note.  I, and many others I think, are very tag-centric, and it would be a real PITA if I had to click on something else just to view the tags for the Note.

Thanks again.

[CalS 5,277]

The video references Notebook and Shared as the two most viewed things in the note header area. 

Providing some input - for my use case don't need share; do use Title, Notebook, Tags, Reminder and the info icon  Getting too many clicks with these embedded menus.  May look pretty but a PITA to get things done.  

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, CalS said:

The video references Notebook and Shared as the two most viewed things in the note header area. 

As per the others, the note header area bothers me

I'm ok with moving items to the overflow menu, but

- I do not need the share button always visible

- I'd like to see items if active; reminder, shared, ....

- Tags should be shown along with Notebook

 

[Paul A. 608]

Love the video series and I'm getting increasingly hopeful that Evernote is heading in the right direction.

I do want to add a +1 to showing tags by default somewhere in the vicinity of the notebook. It will be a big loss if they are not visible by default.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

12 hours ago, Shane D. said:

Ian Small chats with Sasha, a senior product designer at Evernote, about the work she and the team are doing to make the editing experience more flexible, consistent, and fun.

@Ian Small,

Now that I've had some time to think and review the changes you have made so far in the Editor Beta, I'd like to provide some more detailed feedback.

Semantic Headers -- AKA "Styles"

• First, please don't start using new terms for well-known entitles.  Please call these "Styles", which almost everyone knows and understands.
• Second, styles are NOT just for headers, they are also for general paragraphs, and even in-line text.
• You mentioned this, but just to reinforce, please do allow us to modify all styles, and create/add our own.

Fonts

• I appreciate the challenge of multiple devices/users/readers, but this problem was solved long ago on the web.  
• It is called CSS font-family Property 
• Please don't try to create your own solution to this without first giving due consideration to a solution that has been used for decades, and seems to have weathered the test of time.
• CSS font-family gives us the best of both worlds:
  • Allows the creator to specify, if he/she wishes, a specific font to be used if available
  • But then has a fall-back to the general font class, as in:
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
• Fonts are fairly personal, and each of us may have a particular font that we prefer.
• So you could allow the user to pick any font on their device, and then append the standard Evernote fonts, and finally the generic font class
• Please don't force us / limit us to use some font that some UI designer thinks is best -- IME these UI designers almost always pick what I don't like.

For reference, this is what you showed in the Video:

Another user has already started another topic on just this issue:

Thanks again for listening to our feedback.

 

[Atul Mishra 14]

3 hours ago, DTLow said:

Tags should be shown along with Notebook

I agree with it. Doesn't matter, if I get to see SHARE button all the time. 

I appreciate Ian and the team for their efforts.

I hope soon we get different colour highlighter (not just yellow), which is necessary for students. "Semantic header" too seems to be very useful for students to create the outline of a topic/subject. 

 

[Galzethron 1]

Love the redesign overal.

Share button not that useful for me ... but tags are.

I love my tags ... want to see them as much as possible

[jefito 5,589]

14 hours ago, jefito said:

In general, I like the direction of the semantic headers, especially given that you'll be able to customize them. Questions:

• Also, how is the semantic-ness of the headers carried around? Must be some convention in the markup, I suppose

OK, looks like the semantic-ness is carried around using the familiar <h1></h1>, <h2>/<h2>, etc. markup. Makes sense. And these are indeed headers, semantically, not just styles, exactly as advertised.

14 hours ago, jefito said:

And the money question: will we be able to create our own headers?

Since only <h1> - <h3> are currently used in the beta, <h4> - <h6> are available. So , maybe? Defining arbitrary named styles? Not sure -- the HTML Force is not all that strong in this one.

Note that the header styles do seem to play well with the new fonts (meaning they retain their semantic content, as well as taking on the different font choice): you might see something like, e.g., 

<h2><span style="--en-fontfamily: serif; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif">Medium Header - Serif</span></h2>

One other note: using the current Windows application, the fonts do look different from those in the web beta, the script font in particular. Not sure if that's a temporary thing, as the video did mention (I think) that the Evernote-blessed fonts would be distributed with all Evernote applications.

That's all for now from the Department of Curiosity for It's Own Sake...

[toao 147]

I am probably relying more on tags than on notebooks to structure my notes, which is why I want more space for them than in the old setup. tags have been squeezed between the notebook name and the share / overflow menu options and frequently I do not get to see them all.

I am thus in favor of moving tags to a seperate line altogether. I am also fine with tags being at the bottom of the note, as long as they do not scroll around with the content of the note. but why not give the tag "line" a handle bar of its own, so we can choose to leave it at the bottom of the editor window or drag it up and put it below the notebook / share / overflow menus line?

best,

Lorenz

ps: oh, and *thanks* for these videos and for sharing, Ian!

[TechL0ver 0]

Hi, 

thanks for showing us these new features. Will they also be available on the iPad app? I have a MacMini but most of the time I use Evernote with my iPad Pro 12,9.

thx for the feedback.

[Bill Myers 458]

None of these changes really mean a lot to me, but nevertheless this video increases my enthusiasm for the new direction at Evernote. For one thing, a greater attention to quality and ease-of-use in one area will, I think, naturally lead to improvements in other areas that are more important to me.

For another, I haven't used the note editor extensively (a lot of my notes are just plain text, attachments or web clips) because it's so clunky and has often been buggy. If the editor gets easier to use, more stable and provides a better experience, I may start doing more with Evernote than I'm doing today

 

[Petsolb 55]

Hey, thanks for posting this update.

In the video you spoke briefly about tables. I am curious to know how the tables behave compared to the current editor? One of the great frustrations for me when using tables and creating layouts in Evernote is that when selecting a table or a field is that I end up changing everything around by accident when selecting text. I would like to be able to have a table's layout to stay fixed, so that I can concentrate on either creating the table (layout mode) or filling it out (writing mode). I still use Excel and Word for most of my lists because of this. In the same way I would love for a template to have a fixed layout so that I don't make any changes by accident.

I don't know if this would be possible, but it would be really cool to be able to set a word limit in a text field (for instance, max 100 words) as I do a lot of reports and projects and there is often a word limit that I have to stick to.

And another thing: Would it be possible to have some kind of field/label presets for a field? Checkboxes are all good, but sometimes when I make a list, I would like for instance to mark the status of a project ( 'sent', 'in progress', 'finished' etc) with different colour labels without having to manually type in the word and select a background colour for each entry. Being able to set a progress bar (percentage) would also be really useful.

Again, thanks for the update. As an artist/designer, being able to have some extra options for visual content and layout would be great. People have been talking about being able to customize covers/thumbnails for individual notebooks for years, and I still have hope this might happen at some point. And having a home page/landing page with shortcuts would definitely make things much easier to navigate when you have dozens of notebooks and almost 5000 notes.

Edited June 10, 2019 by Petsolb
typos & additional thoughts

[Bill Myers 458]

One other thing: I love the fact that the old checkbox feature will be left intact for those of us who are used to it. I like the idea of checklists -- and I may use them -- but I also like Evernote's commitment to adding options rather than subtracting them. 😊

[Liam Gretton 86]

I primarily use Evernote for creating text notes, with occasional attachments so I'm particularly sensitive to problems with and changes to the editor. I don't mind not being able to sprinkle dozens of fonts throughout a note, and a sparse selection of fonts is ok for me but only if I can override that choice and specify which fonts I want to use. For example the monospace font used in the code blocks is not to my liking, but there's no way of changing it. I don't really care if fonts don't map perfectly across devices (it's been broken in that respect at least for Android forever anyway).

I'm very glad there's being some effort put into the editor at last, but there's an awful lot of white space and light-grey-on-white design.

[Vincent Noel 62]

The Evernote editor is already very powerful and flexible (on the mac), these changes look like nice improvements. The checkbox/outlining stuff is great. Nice!

[jaypema 5]

Enjoyed the video, and it gives me hope for the future!

Some of my thoughts (I hope that EN staff are reading this info for 1st hand feedback)

Editor: For someone who uses EN on MacWiniOS, a unified editor would be great (IMHO: iOS is terrible - and even using an external editor and copying to EN takes so much fudging around!) I hope this change is not just for the web interface.... I personally want an app centric environment!

I like the idea of 'semantic headers' or styles, but hope there will be a 'easy' keyboard shortcut (which would help with the lack of MarkDown support) - and for non-header text.  I understand the need for  a reduced font set, but I hope they are not too restrictive with the selection.  Only last week Apple announced that they are adding a font store to iOS.... that tells you a lot!

Tags: Being viewed by default in the note - yes please!

Images: It would be really useful if images could be embedded as attachments, as well as inline.  

Checklists: Oh thank you!!!!!!

Excited to hear future progress, and a potential go live date.

 

[dagbo 34]

On 6/5/2019 at 5:02 AM, Atul Mishra said:

I hope soon we get different colour highlighter (not just yellow), which is necessary for students. "Semantic header" too seems to be very useful for students to create the outline of a topic/subject. 

Agreed re. colour highlights not just yellow, and it looks from the video like there is a new "pen" feature that suggests this is going to happen 🙂

I have oscillated constantly over the years -- stick with Evernote, go to OneNote, find something different?? I have GBs of notes in Evernote so departing is a significant decision for me. However, since the new CEO joined I am glad to see a clear focus on two things - a consistent interface across platforms (thank goodness!), and a focus on the stability of the software. Not sure if it's just me, but the Windows and Android versions I use seem much more stable in 2019 than previous years. Less (hardly any!) crashes, no lost notes, etc. etc. 

This video was really enjoyable. Understated and focused on improvements...nothing flashy, just making things better.

My two cents: tags must be viewable, Share is a feature I just don't use in Evernote.

[jefito 5,589]

6 hours ago, dagbo said:

Agreed re. colour highlights not just yellow, and it looks from the video like there is a new "pen" feature that suggests this is going to happen 🙂

Not sure what the "pen feature" that you refer to is. What point in the video do they discuss it? Currently, the highlighting is still just a toggle. 

[s2sailor 2,161]

7 hours ago, dagbo said:

My two cents: tags must be viewable

It looks like the tag list will be at the bottom of the window instead of up by the toolbar.  Still visible but in a different location.

[s2sailor 2,161]

14 minutes ago, jefito said:

Not sure what the "pen feature" that you refer to is. What point in the video do they discuss it? Currently, the highlighting is still just a toggle. 

In the toolbar the highlighter icon looks new.  It shows a yellow tip.  "Possibly" indicating is may allow for other colors ... or it is just a new graphic for a yellow highlighter.

[jefito 5,589]

2 hours ago, s2sailor said:

In the toolbar the highlighter icon looks new.  It shows a yellow tip.  "Possibly" indicating is may allow for other colors ... or it is just a new graphic for a yellow highlighter.

So far, just a new graphic. If they were to allow for other colors, it'd probably be a dropdown to the color picker, as with the pen color control. I'm not saying that that won't change, but there's nothing really new under this particular sun, at least for now.

[dagbo 34]

I'm hopeful the little icon next to the U for underline (to the right) is something that will offer additional colours beyond Evernote yellow! But as I say, to me it just suggested this little icon might be in. Guess we will have to wait and see.

[Sloop JB 26]

When I saw the new editor in the video, there was a lot I liked (such as actual checklists, headers, and table improvements).  But my first thought was, “Where’s the tags!”  Lots of fluff like the share button, but a key organizational element is hidden. That is a pity because the ability to organize by tags is one of Evernote’s key differentiators over programs like OneNote.  Hiding them and making the user click around to see them makes the feature much less useful.  So much so as to make them neatly useless.   The funny thing is that the new design pushes notebooks over tags, but Evernote has only a fraction of the ability to structure notebooks that OneNote has.  So it gives up an advantage in favor of something that its traditional competitor is much better at.

[Jpmurr 0]

I like all of this but I agree it would also be nice to be able to have the tags easily available from here as well.

[s2sailor 2,161]

32 minutes ago, Sloop JB said:

“Where’s the tags!”

It is hard to see in the video but tags looks to be at the bottom of the note window.

[John in Michigan USA 129]

So far we've seen mostly UI presentations. IMO the improvements with the highest return, BY FAR, are to be found in the area of code quality, regression testing, operations, etc. I hope that gets covered.

[Paul A. 608]

Am I the only one a little disappointed that there's no senior person from Evernote participating in these comments? I was very impressed when the CEO himself responded to several comments from the first video's forum thread, as it really helped reinforce the impression that Evernote is becoming more responsive and that they are listening and considering all the feedback.

I'm sure there are Evernote people reading this thread and I would love to see them ocasionally respond thoughtfully to some of the best feedback that their loyal users are providing.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Seems they are busy to produce the next video - came out right now, about the „invisible“ EN that provides all the service.

And yes, more interaction would be good.

[Sloop JB 26]

On 6/8/2019 at 10:35 PM, s2sailor said:

It is hard to see in the video but tags looks to be at the bottom of the note window.

I can live with that, in the sense that you woudn’t have to click around to see them.  But on top would still be nice, since that is where the name of the notebook is.

[John in Michigan USA 129]

On 6/11/2019 at 2:02 PM, Paul A. said:

[ SNIP ]

I was very impressed when the CEO himself responded to several comments from the first video's forum thread

[ SNIP ]

Must have missed that. Got a link?

[PinkElephant 8,046]

1 hour ago, John in Michigan USA said:

Must have missed that. Got a link?

Here you go:

Open that thread, go way down.

 

[jefito 5,589]

7 hours ago, John in Michigan USA said:

Must have missed that. Got a link?

You can find anything he's written through his forum profile: @Ian Small

 

[Ian Small 215]

Hi everyone -

 

Dropping back out of lurking mode to provide some additional insight and to reflect on some of the threads above….  There is lots of valuable feedback in this discussion - thank you!

 

I’m sorry if we have disappointed some of you with a perceived lack of responsiveness in the comment threads on these videos.  As you would probably expect, our top priority is listening for input and watching for new insights that emerge from these forums and also from all the other community and social mechanisms through which these videos are distributed.

 

During initial design, we focus on talking to and learning from individual users.  When we move into preview releases, we engage one-on-one with tens and hundreds of users.  As we ramp tests to thousands, tens of thousands and ultimately into millions of users, we start looking increasingly to quantitative data to inform how successful we are being because the conversation doesn't scale otherwise.  That’s just the simple mechanics of how things need to work at the scale of Evernote.

 

Concretely, the new note editor has been out in preview release with select Evernote web users for the last 75 days, ramping from a few hundred users trialing very early builds to now thousands of users kicking the tires in a larger-scale (but still early) beta.  In the private discussion attached to that original preview program, the conversation around some of the same topics raised here has been intense, resulting not just in bug fixes but also in changes in design and implementation that we are still continuing to work on as I type this.  Understandably, we have focussed our energy on going back and forth with and supporting users who are evaluating this build for us in the wild.  (Some of you on this discussion are also involved in the private preview program discussion; thank you for your feedback and contributions there!)

 

This is not to say that we don’t value your responses to these videos.  As I said above, we read every one to look for new insights and observations.  In general, I think that the early response to the first few Behind the Scenes videos has proven that our decision to start communicating with the community through this video mechanism has been a good one.  However, I recognize that as we increase this style of communication out to you, it naturally bumps up your expectation of our ability to be able to engage both interactively and on a lot of fronts at the same time.

 

We’ll do our best to engage as we are able, but our priorities internally are clear:

• First and foremost, we need to focus on shipping quality software that delivers the more coherent and consistent Evernote experience that I blogged about earlier this year.  We are still relatively early in that process; we have a long way to go.
• When we are able to engage, we try to prioritize interactions that inform us of how to refine the software in flight, or to identify and eliminate bugs.  That means we won’t necessarily be able to circle around to catch everyone up across all the different communication channels and all the threads.  Apologies.
• And finally, I want to get us out of the habit of making promises we don’t meet.  I am not a fan of making commitments we're not 100% sure we can deliver on.  So unfortunately that means most of your questions about additional feature X, anticipated delivery date Y, and what about Z - no matter how reasonable! - are likely going to go unanswered until we can back up an answer with facts, or better yet, software.

I truly appreciate your ongoing patience with us while we focus as much energy as we are able to muster on building a better Evernote for you.  We are trying to test everything we are doing early and often.  And we continue to listen to the feedback from those tests and to evolve in response to that feedback.

 

Finally, for those of you who have stuck with this post this far… we know tags are super important to a significant percentage of our user base.  (As an aside, we’re trying to improve support for them on Evernote implementations where tags are currently and inexplicably somewhat second-class citizens.).  Tags in the modern Evernote web environment aren’t hidden behind a click.  They have always been shown at the bottom of the note editor screen (a particularly observant s2sailor noticed this in the video - full points!), which is different than where they are on the Windows build or on the Mac build.  There are advantages to this, and as has been observed in this thread, there are also clearly some disadvantages as well.  This continues to be a source of ongoing discussion internally.

 

Going back to lurking now.  And probably shooting another video in my copious spare time...

 

ian

[jefito 5,589]

3 hours ago, Ian Small said:

They have always been shown at the bottom of the note editor screen (a particularly observant s2sailor noticed this in the video - full points!), which is different than where they are on the Windows build or on the Mac build.

Cherry-picking on this (and no points taken away from @s2sailor's keen eyes), from the "classic" web version (still there, but kinda flaky and not very usable), tags on top:

 

Anyways, nit-pickery aside (and I guess you did qualify with "modern"), I'm down with getting consistent user experience everywhere Evernote is, at least to the extent possible. That's good and important work, and focusing on that plus wringing out nagging bugs now rather than later is welcome. In any case, thanks for chiming in, and thanks for listening.

[CalS 5,277]

3 hours ago, Ian Small said:

They have always been shown at the bottom of the note editor screen (a particularly observant s2sailor noticed this in the video - full points!), which is different than where they are on the Windows build or on the Mac build.  There are advantages to this

Just wondering what those might be...

15 minutes ago, jefito said:

Anyways, nit-pickery aside (and I guess you did qualify with "modern"), I'm down with getting consistent user experience everywhere Evernote is, at least to the extent possible. 

Yeah, as long as tags are on top...  

[s2sailor 2,161]

Hey, nothing wrong with being on the bottom.  Oh wait, we were talking about tags ... yeah, I'm ok with that too 😀

[PinkElephant 8,046]

My preference would be on the TOP.

Why ?

Because if the note is just holding an attachment (like a pdf, as many of mine do), I would rather not like to move around the complete window to find all my elements. At the top, I can today a) modify the note title (spotlight search on the Mac will only find these words) b) enter some short text on top of the attachment as explainer c) set my tags d) select the target notebook. Everything at the moment nice and close together in the control zone.

If moved to the bottom, I will have to think about scrapping my precious 32“ display, and go back to something smaller 🤓

[jaypema 5]

This thread is really interesting, and just shows how hard a task EN have!!!!

I like Tags, I do use them - but I care more about a better, nicer writing experience.... (and the improved search will be good for me too!)

Good luck Ian Small and the team, and we all need to understand that we CAN'T have exactly what WE want!  

(I am enjoying this thread, and realise inflection is lost in written form such as this...)

 

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Usually, when I want the candy bar, I stomp my little feet, and I get it 😂

For me, the videos tell us what to expect - but they open a feedback window as well to tell what we would like. So why not tell what we think would serve our individual one out of thousands of use cases - at the end, every software solution is a compromise between a set of workflows to cover, technical issues and the need to keep the user interface simple, and the software serviceable. I enjoy the clearly communicated strategy, the new openness, and what I see up to now in releases is confirming this feeling.

[Petsolb 55]

As I've said before elsewhere, I tend to think and work visually, and creating an illusion of boundary here and there makes me more productive. I con't miss physical notebooks, but I miss the restriction of a limited number of pages, and limited space. Right now EN for me is like a bottomless sea of notes, even if I have used tags extensively. Rather than repeating myself, I'll go ahead and quote parts of a post from another thread:

"I don't really miss physical notebooks that much, but I miss the great feeling of finally having filled an entire book. Adding some visual cues would help me create that sense of having made progress. Right now Evernote for me is this bottomless sea of notes from the past eight years. I realise that might not mean much to every Evernote user, but having a notebook cover, even with a progress bar next to it to indicate how much of the notebook have been filled (if you have specified a limited number of pages/notes), would be very helpful to me with the kind of work I am doing. A notebook cover can be like a trophy/reward or achievement like in a video game as it can represent progress. For instance, I like to have a new notebook at the beginning of every month, but I would also like to get the sense of how my notes are piling up. Having a few visual cues to encourage me to look through my previous notebooks would be good.

This has been a discussion in the EN forums for years. I guess either you get it or your don't. Or, in other words: Either you think and work visually or you don't. For those who don't, searches and tags are probably more than good enough. However, I would love to see a more wide acceptance of the fact that people think and work differently, and that one way isn't necessarily better than the other. I would love to see EN provide the necessary tools for both groups."

[PinkElephant 8,046]

@PetsolbDouble posting ... please decide on which thread you want to post, but avoid „copy and paste“ of the same stuff to other posts. You can link to your own content if you think it serves here and there.

[Petsolb 55]

2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

@PetsolbDouble posting ... please decide on which thread you want to post, but avoid „copy and paste“ of the same stuff to other posts. You can link to your own content if you think it serves here and there.

I thought quoting was fine as long as it was contextual and not a 'copy and paste' of an entire post? Very well, I'll remember that one next time

[MNlaw 0]

I don't want to lose the ability to use my device fonts, such as Georgia or Century Schoolbook.

[faifaifai 16]

That means 2 things to me: 

1. Dark Mode is coming to Windows platform with this unified editor across platforms. 
2. Finally the check box won't extend the line height with no reason!!!

Brilliant move Evernote, keep it up and let us know what you are working on. 

[arguvant 28]

My concerns: I fear a lowest common denominator effect across editors. I use osx, android, windows, and web. They all do different things well, but the web is the worst to work with (I only use it in linux because no linux client). Even the new preview which I was added to. So it concerns me that the web version is being used as the basis for a common editor. I know slack and atom and offline web apps built with Electron are hip, but if that's the direction of evernote on the desktop... urgh. Slack has to do far less and is a slow memory-hog.

Tags are important to me, and so is seeing the url from where the note content came from. This url, last I checked, was hidden in note details and wasn't even clickable :-(

Since the webclipper doesn't always work, I often want to be able to view the original content/context of where the note came from. It also can remind me why I clipped it, or if there was further context I wanted to add.

i never use the share button or care who can see the note, because I'm predominantly using evernote as my private digital memory.

 

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Let not concerns put a shadow on our mood.

EN posted a new video today, which shows some stuff they are working on to improve the web client. It does not look as cutting back on features, all the opposite. For me it looks as if they really want to create a unified AND improved user experience. They showed features like nesting tags that are currently missing on the web client, and want to add these - not take them away from other clients.

So do as Asterix the Gaul does: The only thing to fear is that the sky will fall on our heads. Don’t worry, be happy !

[Tridib 0]

Hi, wanted to know if it would be possible to undo something in the editor. I recently changed a changed note saved in HTML format to simple format and the could not find a way to undo it.

[Zortleby 2]

Great that you're getting users in on this.

Here are a couple of my personal pet peeves:

• List items are indented way too much. Here's a screen shot from 6.19.2.8555 (308555) Public (CE Build ce-62.3.7750) on Windows 10.. Wish I could put a border around it but I couldn't figure out a way to do that here.
  
  I'd change it in CSS, but AFAIK there's no user-accessible way to do that, and in any case it would only fix this for me, on that one machine. I can't imagine anyone wants the current behavior.
• Cut/Paste and Drag/Drop of "paragraphs" often results in extra or missing "line feeds" at the beginning or end or the text you move.

[Mistywindow 14]

So Evernote finally decided to respond to continual user requests to upgrade the crappy editor. Dropbox Paper must have been hurting the bottom line.

I was a paid user from day one, but cancelled my sub a couple of years ago because of this issue; Dropbox Paper and Bear Notes filled the gap beautifully. This coming upgrade has prompted me to renew the subscription.

Now when do we get Markdown?

:)

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

In 2015, Evernote said they were going to make a common editor which would fix a lot of the ultra basic features and functions, such as typing, cursors, font sizes, etc. Bug fixes and new features would be easy to roll out. I vaguely remember them working on this since 2013, though my memory is hazy.
 

The blog post linked in that thread appears to have, quite ironically, vanished. I guess Evernote doesn't want anyone to remember it?

 

Now it's 2019 and now this thread appears to represent a second pledge to create a common editor that will fix a lot of the bugs in the basic features... of course prior CEOs have promised to fix bugs and UX weirdness in the past (Phil Libin, Chris O'Neill) and my cursor still jumps around and basic touchscreen functions don't work and tags and fonts and alignment are still wonky. I do greatly appreciate the fixes that have been implemented, though...

 

Can someone tell me what's going on with respect to:

• What happened to that first common editor project?
• Is this a continuation of that first common editor project or is this really a second common editor?
• Will this pledge from Evernote to fix basic bugs and UX really happen? Or should we expect a similar announcement in 2022 where the CEO says "Yup, we sure need to fix bugs and we will. This time is different. We really mean it this time... But first we're going to work on a superficial brand refresh."

[PinkElephant 8,046]

There are 3 days in your life:

• yesterday
• today
• tomorrow

Only one of the 3 is important - guess which !?

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

14 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

prior CEOs have promised to fix bugs and UX weirdness in the past (Phil Libin, Chris O'Neill)

Good point.  Like a lot of politicians, past Evernote CEOs have failed to deliver on their promises.

15 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Will this pledge from Evernote to fix basic bugs and UX really happen?

A great question.  Until we see some results, we won't know for sure.  But I can say this: The current CEO, Ian Small, seems much more sincere, more well grounded, and has taken a different, if not unique, approach to really fixing Evernote.  I really like his demeanor and these Behind The Scenes videos.  All that does give me hope, and some confidence, that things will really change this time.

[badjer.phoenix 24]

I love what I am seeing here & am very excited about this video. This video has a lot of the features that I have asked for (granted over the yrs) & am excited that they are being addressed & to top it off sounds like it will all be in the same release date (fingers crossed, hoping that doesn't change). I think some of these changes will give EN a modern, sleek look & a better feel to it (similar to what Notion is doing but with Evernote's spin on it).
 

• check lists with strike through
  • very excited about this. I'm a visual person & the strike through makes it easier for me to scan & know that it's done
  • I'm one of those peeps that would be using a bullet point with the check box just so I could get my list to format properly (excited to get rid of these extra steps)
• semantic headers = hope there will be keyboard shortcut
• icons
  • wasn't mentioned in the vid but we saw them in it.
  • really hope this is implemented as I am visual & it would help me (works in Notion very well)
• drag & drop paragraphs
  • excited beyond belief about this
  • it's a feature that Notion uses that was making me wonder if EN wasn't listening (I stand corrected)
• tables
  • happy about the drag & drop inside & out of it
  • is very clunky at the moment & was hard to re-locate it the table (wouldn't even work with cut option for me) 

 

• sharing option visible
  • I agree with others in this post that I don't need to see this. Or, as someone else mentioned, to only see it if it has been shared
• limited fonts
  • I agree with what some others have said here where the font is personal & would rather not have it downsized. If it must be downsized then please give us more than just 6 options. The formatting ability of EN is one of the features that let's me choose EN over other note taking apps

 

• multi-colour highlighter (mentioned in post)
  • I would second that vote. I would love to have more than 1 colour like we have in the Premium's annotating feature
• text background colour, toggle list would be great editions to the editor as well
• it would be nice to have a recurring reminder feature as well

All in all excited about the direction EN is moving in

[Athena13 12]

On 6/8/2019 at 8:27 AM, s2sailor said:

It looks like the tag list will be at the bottom of the window instead of up by the toolbar.  Still visible but in a different location.

Ugh, so you have to scroll to see a key identifier/how and where the note fits into my taxonomy.  Having those at the top of the note make it easy to run your eyes over them in no time/at any time as a matter of course.  Putting them at the bottom means a deliberate effort to scroll down to check that the tags I have are the ones I want.  From a basic QA and user-friendly perspective, they should be at the top.

[Athena13 12]

On 6/26/2019 at 2:37 PM, MNlaw said:

I don't want to lose the ability to use my device fonts, such as Georgia or Century Schoolbook.

+1000  It is important to me that my documents across platforms and across applications have a consistent look and feel.  I use Calibri everywhere - and somehow that seems also to have become a default on a broad scale for modern, streamlined but stylish documents, so it's not like I'm hoping for Papyrus or a rare custom design.  It's probably a deal-breaker for me to lose the ability to retain the fonts all my existing documents have and all of the documents I generate on other services have.  I do not understand why EN would want to take a step backward to the very basic and dated-looking fonts in that short list of 5 or 6.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

If you want seamless font management on all platforms, this means a restriction in fonts.

When I wanted to have Calibri on my Mac, I had to „steal“ it from my Win-10-PC and install it manually on my Mac. It gets worse on the mobile platforms. 

So we probably can have an editor that makes things look the same on all platforms. But it will probably mean restrictions depending on what „other“ abilities the different platforms have that can not be unified.

Or with other words: Maybe they have to crack some eggs to make an homogeneous omelette.

[Javnisa 1]

Good Morning,

 

The changes I would make in the editor after testing the beta would be the following:

 

- Underlined words, yellow and red should be somewhat more phosphorite as in real life, they are too pastel and diluted in the text.
- Please add the justified style, please add justified style to the text.
- The notes should have a more visible date of creation both outside the notebook and inside the note when opening the note to know when it is, that helps companies a lot.
- To also be able to establish reminder notices for notes and checklists, that helps companies a lot.
- Simplify the notepad change system
- Improve when you open a quick note and do not have time to assign it to any site that is assigned to a standard booklet type "Transits"

 

To improve the ergonomics of the application, it would be necessary to implement these changes as a minimum to be able to attract new users who are currently on other payment platforms

 

Thank you.

[wsp 11]

Just a couple of very belated thoughts about tags and fonts.

I would prefer to see the tags displayed at the top of the note rather than the bottom, though I can live with either arrangement. But the one menu that certainly must be preserved in some form is the “Assign tags” one (control-alt-t in Windows). That (or something like it) seems to me indispensable when dealing with a note that is connected with too many tags to be easily shown on the note screen.

I’d also like to put in a word for a few more fonts — more, at least, than the half dozen that are now showing up on the Web version of Evernote. It’s easy to become addicted to one or two favorite fonts over the years (it’s Georgia in my case), and although it might sound like a trivial matter, using those particular fonts becomes a very important part of the user interface. It’s actually a big issue for some of us.
 

[Alexander Schatten 6]

First of all I am glad that the editor gets a rewrite. I hope that also many long term bugs will be fixed. (For instance nested lists more often then not showed a wonky behaviour while editing.)
 

Anyways. I wonder why no one yet spoke about the elephant in the room: collaborative editing. I think this is a very important feature everyone offers these days and in quite good quality: Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, Apple Pages etc.
 

Currently this is — honestly spoken — quite a mess; particularly when you throw that half dead chat feature into the mix. 
 

i think collab and Chat/comments for and about notes is actually very important. What is planned here?

thanks and good luck 

[s2sailor 2,161]

6 hours ago, Alexander Schatten said:

I wonder why no one yet spoke about the elephant in the room: collaborative editing. I think this is a very important feature everyone offers these days and in quite good quality: Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, Apple Pages etc.

Personally, I have no interest or need for that.  Maybe in a business environment.  Not discrediting your input, just offering a different perspective.

[Alexander Schatten 6]

Well. Everyone needs different things. However my point was very serious: collaborative editing is not a special feature any longer. It is just expected in such a toll. And expected in high quality, for that matter.  
 

Now. Evernote offers a form of collaborative editing since many years,  albeit in a terrible quality. Think how even simple sync issues (even from one user) are handled.
 

and also part of the game: versioning. Also existing, but in an obvious screwed on way and also in very bad quality — in every regard  from UI to clients  

I am quite certain you don’t sell such a product anymore in a few years if this is not just working well. Again. Check out the examples I mentioned.  

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

1 hour ago, Alexander Schatten said:

However my point was very serious: collaborative editing is not a special feature any longer. It is just expected in such a toll.

I totally disagree.  It is NOT "just expected", at least not by many.

Yes, those in teams or organizations might need collaborative editing, but for most Evernote users, whom I believe are just individual users, we do NOT want to complicate the EN Editor, nor delay delivery of the new Evernote for collaboration features.  That was tried by a previous Evernote CEO, and it was a disaster.

Further, I don't think collaborative editing, as in multiple users changing the same document at the same time, is a good idea.  In fact, it is a terrible idea.

If you need full-on document editing with version tracking by user, then use MS Word or similar.

Let's keep Evernote simple until the basics are completed and reliable.

[DTLow 5,736]

10 hours ago, Alexander Schatten said:

I think this is a very important feature

You're welcome to post feature requests in the forum at https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/304-general-feature-requests/

[dlh2109 19]

22 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

Let's keep Evernote simple until the basics are completed and reliable.

I really hope Evernote can get to this state as soon as possible (on all platforms). Complete and reliable is fundamental and long, long overdue. 

In terms of collaborative editing, that is not a use case for me as I mainly use Evernote as an individual. That said, I would like to be able to embed a live Google Doc in a note so I can edit the document (in Evernote) and see changes made by others.

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, dlh2109 said:

In terms of collaborative editinging, that is not a use case for me as I mainly use Evernote as an individual. That said, I would like to be able to embed a live Google Doc in a note so I can edit the document and see changes made by others.

Google Docs is an excellent collaborative editing tool

If the document is embedded; it ceases to be a "live Google Doc"
Instead, embed a link to the document

[dlh2109 19]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

If the document is embedded; it ceases to be a "live Google Doc"

This is precisely my point. I don't want it to cease anything. I want it to remain live and editable. I don't want to leave Evernote to edit my Google Doc. I see such integration as a natural extension of Evernote's philosophy of trying to help users like us organize our digital lives.  

I understand this isn't how Evernote currently works. I'm suggesting it as an alternative. One that I think many users would benefit from and appreciate. There's certainly no technical reason why this couldn't be achieved. It also gets around calls for Evernote to implement its own collaborative editing solution, which, as you pointed out, is already available via other services.

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, dlh2109 said:

I don't want to leave Evernote to edit my Google Doc. I see such integration as a natural extension

There's a slippery slope.    
What about word processing with MS Word, spreadsheets with Excel, markdown with ...

I'm satisfied we can integrate these applications via links/attachments   
using Evernote's app that stores and organizes my notes/documents,    
and also serves as a note editor

>>Another example would be YouTube videos. I'd like to have the choice of including a link to a YouTube video and/or embedding that video right into a note so that it can be played (in Evernote).

As per Google Docs, I include a link in the note

>>I don't know why you're talking about offline documents (Word, Excel). 
    I'm suggesting public online resources

And "don't want to leave Evernote"

[dlh2109 19]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

There's a slippery slope.    
What about word processing with MS Word, spreadsheets with Excel, markdown with ...

I'm happy I can integrate these applications via links/attachments   
using Evernote's app that stores and organizes my notes/documents,    
and also serves as a note editor

I don't know why you're talking about offline documents (Word, Excel). 

I'm suggesting public online resources, such as editable documents, be viewable and/or editable in Evernote. Another example would be YouTube videos. I'd like to have the choice of including a link to a YouTube video and/or embedding that video right into a note so that it can be played (in Evernote).

[ericjhinson 1]

If I'm honest - I didn't know Evernote ever upgraded their software... so the Beta email and video series got me informed. Video is a powerful medium. Glad Evernote is opening the kimono and showing us inside. Smart move!

Features:

• Love the header styles. That's a super nice feature GDocs has had for a long time. Parity with them is important.
• Where the heck are the collapsible lists? Drag and reorder is nice, but that's a must have. I want my notes to be small and feature headers only and all the info to collapse.
• Love the attachments look and feel. They were too tall before.
• I hope you're updating the font color options. The mac color picker popup window is terrible UX.
• It'd be nice to interlink to other notes quicker too.

Hope that helps!

 

[Ryokan 2]

Hi,

Where can one download the new Beta for Mac OS? 

I keep reading people talk about the beta app on Mac

and I want the new editor on my desktop now but can't find how to download/install it.

Thanks.

[PinkElephant 8,046]

Some betas are public (everybody can participate), some are on invitation only.

To apply for the later, you can use this link:

https://evernote.com/intl/en/betaprogram

[Ryokan 2]

Thank you for the link @PinkElephant

[Holg 0]

I was a long way from first web beta. this thread started June 2019 and the changes in web editor are really very much appreciated. As it i already June 2020, I hope that new editor will be available in Win/Mac/iOS soon.

Good work so far ... hard to wait for the new versions!

Cheers,

Holg

[elexjohn 0]

Love the video series and I'm getting increasingly hopeful that Evernote is heading in the right direction,

I do want to add a +1 to showing tags by default somewhere in the vicinity of the notebook. It will be a big loss if they are not visible by default.

[afyania 0]

That means 2 things to me: 

1. Dark Mode is coming to Windows platform with this unified editor across platforms. 
2. Finally the check box won't extend the line height with no reason!!!

This is a brilliant move Evernote!

 keep it up and let us know what you are working on. 

[PinkElephant 8,046]

… dark mode IS available for the Windows client …