How reliable is the "All changes saved" indicator? Data loss.

[glitchform 2]

I just recently lost part of a note, luckily it wasn't too important and fairly easy to recreate. I suspect that it happened because I switched to another note or refreshed the window while the sync status indicator on the bottom right of the screen was still "Saving..."

I was more careful with subsequent notes and made sure not to switch to another note/refresh until getting the "All changes saved" confirmation. 

Several questions/suggestions:

1. Is it the user's responsibility to ensure that notes are saved before switching to another note/refreshing/closing browser? Shouldn't this be handled by the application? Shouldn't the note content be stored somewhere in browser memory and continue to sync even if the user navigates to another note in the same window? 
2. If it is indeed the user's responsibility, then the sync status indicator needs to be much more prominent and should be RED and visible to indicate that data loss may occur if the user switches notes.
3. If it is the user's responsibility to ensure successful sync before, then what behaviors will result in data loss?
   1. Navigating to another note
   2. Refreshing the window/tab
   3. Closing the browser entirely
   4. Closing the browser window/tab
4. What happens in the situation where internet connection drops out and the note hangs in "Saving..." indefinitely and the only way is to refresh? How to make sure that content is preserved in this case?
5. How reliable is the mentioned sync status indicator? Data loss sucks and it's hard to trust Evernote after losing content, so I want to know what indicators I can trust to avoid losing data at all cost.

For context, I was a Premium subscriber before (from 2013 to 2015 I think) and back then I was really productive with Evernote. Then I tried other options like plain text, Dropbox Paper, Notion, Standard Notes, Workflowy, etc. I found that all of them hindered my productivity due to missing features (Workflowy only able to handle bullet entries, Dropbox Paper with its terrible file organization workflow), or too many features (Notion which makes me completely unproductive because I am constantly tweaking and over-engineering my system). All this to say that Evernote seems to be moving in the right direction as of late and I am considering moving all my notes back into it... IF SYNC IS RELIABLE. DATA LOSS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

If anybody has any information on how Evernote handles data syncing, or any information on how to avoid data loss due to user error, please share!
Thank you.

[PinkElephant 8,111]

Not much experience on my side with the web client. I use it occasionally. Most of my stuff is done on iOS, heavy lifting in organisation like merging, tagging, moving etc. on my Mac or Win10-PC. So in general:

Every browser application relies on executing things partly in the browser, partly on the server. Say a search request: It will be typed on the browser, then handed over to the server, executed, and the result will be given back to the browser. Same with updating, because it would make bad typing if any short lapse in the internet connection would freeze the typing.

The main status indicator is the network traffic indicator of the browser - in my Safari on the Mac it is the blue bar below the URL, on iOS additional a little turning wheel. How reliable the Sync-Button - I have no idea. Since it is embedded into the code of the page, probably less than the external browser indicators. And yes, if it is there, it should be reliable.

When leaving the browser before the sync is done, it depends on the security / browser settings how data is treated. Because browsers are a main entry vehicle for bad code, most modern browsers will erase the internally cached data on closing.

Because they run their own local database, the most reliable clients are the desktop apps for PC and Mac. Next come iOS and Android, especially when content is available as "offline" notebooks. But from the forum I know threads with data loss on a mobile client under circumstances (intermittent internet-service, leaving the app without closing, switching apps - especially under iOS 13). The web client is probably the one depending the most on the permanent sync, out of reasons explained above.

[glitchform 2]

29 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Because they run their own local database, the most reliable clients are the desktop apps for PC and Mac.

Thank you for replying. I think I will download the desktop client to ensure reliability. 
Was using the web version to benefit from the new beta editor which is very nice, especially the checkbox list and the standardized headings/styles. Not looking forward to going to the old editor on desktop, but hopefully it will be updated to the new version soon.

[gazumped 11,665]

1 hour ago, glitchform said:

any information on how to avoid data loss due to user error

Hi.  AFAIK there's no way to absolutely guarantee that data will never be lost when dealing with online services.  Dropped connections,  browser and software glitches and good old fashioned fat-fingering can happen at any time,  and if that's also the moment when something is being synced there's a good chance of loss or corruption.

The three big protections I use are:

1. a premium subscription which gives me access to Note History.  If a note has been saved to Evernote,  I have access to all the previous versions of that data. No loss can ever be total.
2. a browser add-in called TextArea Cache (other add-ins are available) which remembers the last input in case of  browser crashes
3. regular backups - just in case Evernote ever has a total meltdown,  my internet connection fails,  my hard drive self-destructs,  or a cat walks over my keyboard* I have a local daily total backup of my notes.  I use Backupery which automatically saves my databases to ENEX files.

(*extreme case - we don't have a cat)

[DTLow 5,736]

[glitchform 2]

17 minutes ago, gazumped said:

(*extreme case - we don't have a cat)

Hahaha, better safe than sorry!

Thank you for your suggestions.

[ehrt74 240]

7 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Because they run their own local database, the most reliable clients are the desktop apps for PC and Mac. 

Browsers have had built-in databases for a decade now. The evernote web client could use one. Many other web-apps do.

[PinkElephant 8,111]

These browser databases (depending on the settings) in most cases only exist as long as the browser is open. When you close it, data is lost, because nobody wants random data loaded from the internet to persist on a personal computer. And not every browser will ask on every shutdown whether to keep the data, or to finish syncing first. 

One must as well keep in mind that currently the web platform is the main testing ground for new EN designs. I think currently there exists the new beta client, the classical client and for very long term users another vintage client. The beta client is nice, because the improvements are there to try. But if you read the forum, it still has hiccups. So from being a full Internet application and the beta situation IMHO the Web Client is at the moment the least stable client. I currently suggest other clients for serious work, especially the desktop based versions.

[ehrt74 240]

20 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

These browser databases (depending on the settings) in most cases only exist as long as the browser is open. When you close it, data is lost, because nobody wants random data loaded from the internet to persist on a personal computer. And not every browser will ask on every shutdown whether to keep the data, or to finish syncing first. 

I used to be a freelancer and i developed front-end applications which used IndexedDB. It is persistent storage. Data is not lost when the browser is closed.

[PinkElephant 8,111]

Yes, there are applications that create persistent storage from the browser. What proves what ? That is is possible, generally viewed ?

People are told to use the web client (among other situations) if they use a computer where they can't install a client or do NOT want to leave residue of their server content. If you access for example your private EN account from a work PC, you maybe do not want or need to be a programmer to get rid of stuff there after closing the session. IMHO it would not be a good idea to write persistent data from an EN browser session.

But to stop anybody to loose something by closing the session too early, it would work ...

[ehrt74 240]

13 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Yes, there are applications that create persistent storage from the browser. What proves what ? That is is possible, generally viewed ?

People are told to use the web client (among other situations) if they use a computer where they can't install a client or do NOT want to leave residue of their server content. If you access for example your private EN account from a work PC, you maybe do not want or need to be a programmer to get rid of stuff there after closing the session. IMHO it would not be a good idea to write persistent data from an EN browser session.

But to stop anybody to loose something by closing the session too early, it would work ...

I'm not a front-end developer and i don't know the general patterns for dealing with persistent browser storage. What I would expect to find is that browser apps (like the kindle reader) store data in persistent storage until you log out, at which point the storage is deleted. 

 

The main difference between a browser app and a desktop app is the delivery mechanism. Functionally there's very little you can't do in a modern browser that you would want to do in a native application. 

From the point of view of developers the browser app has the advantage that old versions can be deprecated very quickly. Does the customer have a problem? all they have to do is reload their browser window.

I do however accept your point that a lot of people do not think about browser apps this way--a lot of people think that a chromebook is "useless without an internet connection", for example (though how many things do you want to do with any computer which don't require an internet connection nowadays?). 

Btw, if you open the chrome developer tools and navigate to application -> indexeddb -> evernote -> sugar you can see some of the data the evernote browser app stores in the indexed db. A fair amount of information is being saved, but it appears to not be the contents of notebooks set to offline mode in the android client.

[PinkElephant 8,111]

No, it won’t, because the „offline“ status of a notebook is an exclusive feature of the mobile apps. There the app holds the data, and it is protected by the measures of the mobile device (Touch / Face-ID) and optional by a Passcode for the app itself (plus all the sandboxing and encryption going on on smartphones by default).

From my own experience I know that people (including me) often do not log out, they simply close the browser. Why would you jump through (probably) several open tabs to log yourself out in each one, when you can simply close the browser ? This is what in the end leads to data loss as well, because sometimes in one of the browser sessions a sync has not yet closed when the browser is quitted.

The mobile devices are regarded as personal devices, bound to a single person. PCs are not, they are by definition multiuser machines. So measures that can be taken on a mobile device (like caching data for a later sync) can create a security gap on a desktop, when many users have access. 

[ehrt74 240]

24 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

No, it won’t, because the „offline“ status of a notebook is an exclusive feature of the mobile apps. There the app holds the data, and it is protected by the measures of the mobile device (Touch / Face-ID) and optional by a Passcode for the app itself (plus all the sandboxing and encryption going on on smartphones by default).

From my own experience I know that people (including me) often do not log out, they simply close the browser. Why would you jump through (probably) several open tabs to log yourself out in each one, when you can simply close the browser ? This is what in the end leads to data loss as well, because sometimes in one of the browser sessions a sync has not yet closed when the browser is quitted.

The mobile devices are regarded as personal devices, bound to a single person. PCs are not, they are by definition multiuser machines. So measures that can be taken on a mobile device (like caching data for a later sync) can create a security gap on a desktop, when many users have access. 

What you are saying here could also be used to argue against native apps on windows / OS-X. 

Most PCs are of course immensely unsafe things compared with Android or iOS devices.  However i would expect a web browser running on a PC to store its data (cookies, indexed db, web sql, cached files etc.) to a path inside my home directory with no read access for other accounts (at least this is the linux security model. I have never used OS-X and i have never cared to look at how windows deals with this).

If I give someone my password* to my chromebook, it should not surprise me if they can access all data stored in chrome by me. If i do not give someone my password I would be shocked if they could do so. The same applies for my smartphone. 

* note: i use 2 factor authentication so my password by itself does not grant access to my account.

Edited January 21, 2020 by ehrt74
corrected a mistake