(Archived) Snippet View - Horrible

[ogmios 3]

The new snippet view is horrible. It takes tons of rooms for nothing, displays bits of information in line, which doesn't make it that useful really and also displays information for all your notes for all to see. I keep sensitive bits of business information which don't require NSA encrypting, but that are not for all eyes either. Please allow at least to have the old view back as an option and don't impose a snippet view because a few liked it.

Thank you!

[lucianofuentes 1]

I feel rather indifferent to snippet view. Sometimes it's useful for quickly spotting the note I'm after, and other times it draws the eye to notes that by chance generate a perky visual.

I understand the desire to aid the eye with more "visual" attributes, though I'm surprised they haven't implemented color attributes on notes (I first posted about these here)

Anyway.. not moaning. Some recent features (like the super Chrome extension) were welcome surprises and now form an important part of my workflow.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Ah,memory can be so fleeting sometimes.

I can recommend a program to help you with that: I think it's called "Evernote"

[jefito 5,589]

Wasn't my memory that I was talking about...

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Can you or anyone confirm that the pdf thumbnail is visible in the snippets view on the Mac release? Pretty important to my workflow.

Looks like your question may have been lost in all of the above noise.

Based on my testing of EN Mac 2.2 RC2 today, the Snippet view is built as follows:

• 
  [*:32yvfn8y]Initially the Acrobat icon is shown
  [*:32yvfn8y]It is later updated to show a thumbnail of the entire first page of the PDF
  [*:32yvfn8y]However, the EN Win 4.4 RC continues to show the Acrobat icon

In most cases I don't see any value in a very small (1x1 in) thumbnail of the entire first page of the PDF.

• 
  [*:32yvfn8y]Everything is so small that I can't recognize anything.
  [*:32yvfn8y]I can't tell which notes have a PDF vs just an image

My preference would be to show the Acrobat icon if the ONLY attachment is a PDF.

If there are attachments of other types, then show the standard attachment icon (a paperclip).

[PeDaSp 0]

I have to add my name to this list. The new snippet view is far too busy - just too much info for one to be able to scan quickly. You can't even change the font size of the title.

What the point of showing most of whats on the right also on the left in snippet view!

List view would be fine - only if it showed the full note on the right instead of underneath. There should be an option to have it on the right. I want to quickly scan a list and then click on one to see the full note.

This is all as step backwards for sure

[nova47 60]

@JMichael, thanks.

I bit the bullet. The pdf's appear as an image thumbnail, not the adobe icon, that's good. Unfortunately the image that is captured is only a cropped section from the middle of the first page so, unlike before, letter head images at the top of the pages that I use to quickly eyeball/sort are gone, leaving nothing but unreadable text.

[attachment=1]screenshot1.png[/attachment]

[cg28 0]

Just to add another anti-snippet view vote. I agree that it's far too busy and adds nothing to the old mixed view, which was neater, clearer and more attractive. As others have said, list view might be a good compromise if it offered the list on the left with notes on the right. As it is at the moment, with the note displayed underneath the note list, it really doesn't work for me. Even if you intend to keep snippet view as a permanent feature, lease, please bring back mixed view as an option.

[jbenson2 2,147]

In my opinion, the Snippet View is brilliant.

I rely on the Snippet View approximately 75% of the time.

I kill the Left Panel (with F10) and the Note Info (with F8). This lets me see tons of content. It is easier to view the Note Panel in Portrait Mode. The List View's Landscape Mode is too restrictive and requires too much scrolling.

I switch to the List View when I want to concentrate on the structure of the titles only.

[nova47 60]

Can someone post a screenshot of the snippet view? I'd like to see it before upgrading.

It's pretty similar looking to the Snippet view provided in the new web interface.

Uhg, thanks Jeff. Things looked good on the web so I upgraded my windows box to 4.4 RC first. Ooops...pdf's don't show the thumbnail. Can you or anyone confirm that the pdf thumbnail is visible in the snippets view on the Mac release? Pretty important to my workflow.

[Julian 40]

I was going to start a new thread but found this. Here are my thoughts...

The Mixed view was working well for me as a notes list (I find the "List" view too plain and unformatted and difficult to scan quickly). Mixed view was a nicely formatted multi-line summary of the key details of a note with the note title in a distinct font so that it stood out clearly in the list of notes and with the dates and tags neatly displayed on the lines beneath the note title.

Am I the only user that chooses meaningful names for their notes? All that the Snippet view does for me is to make the display of note title, tags and date less easy to absorb at a glance because the note title is not in a distinct font and the tag and date display are less clear because they merge into the snippets which are often meaningless streams of unformatted text (quite how does the following snippet from one of my notes "skip to: page content! links on this page ! site navigation ! footer (site information) Home ... " add to the usefulness of the note details? Many of my snippets are equally useless). A long unformatted string of mostly semi-meaningless text simply does not add to the ease of scanning a list of notes and seeing at a glance what is there.

OK, now that I've got that off my chest I'll try to be constructive...

Firstly, I really don't understand what seems to be a general Evernote philosophy of trying to offer as few options as possible to users. It seems to me that Mixed View could have been left in as well as introducing the new Snippet view but if you really don't want to do that then here are my suggestions for improving the readability of the snippet view:

1) Render the first line (note title) in a more distinctive font so that the title stands out by bolding it, making it slightly larger, or a combination of the two; what you did in Mixed view seemed to work well. Surely this suggestion at least is pretty uncontroversial and easy to do?

2) Start the snippet on the third line so that the second line is clear for just the tag and date information and can be absorbed more clearly at a single glance. If some people hate this and want the maximum space for their snippets then you could always have an option "Start snippet on new line" but then that would be an option for users so I guess I'm on dangerous ground there.

3) Going even further into the dangerous territory of offering users options, how about having a "Number of lines in snippet" option? I would set it to zero to supress the snippets altogether but others might want to set it to a higher value like 4 or 5 so that each note entry in the snippet view became a bit longer (in terms of screen space) but could show more snippet text hence this option offers extra capabilities for both snippet lovers (gives them bigger snippets) and snippet haters.

It you implemented the above then I could set things up so that in effect I turn snippet view back into mixed view (although I still don't have tags and dates on seperate lines so an option for that would be something I would value as well). In fairness, if I got everything including the ability to have tags and dates on seperate lines, then it would in my opinion be a better implementation of mixed view because the one thing that I do like about what you did with snippet view is the new handling of images. I like the way you extract out a single image and show it is a uniformly sized image at the right hand side, that looks a lot cleaner to me that the fairly haphazard thumbnails that used to be at the left in the mixed view and were usually too small to discern any detail from anyhow.

The one final option that I would like would be the ability to have a dummy image (maybe an image that says "Text Only" or similar) that is displayed as the image for any notes that don't have images in them. When scanning down a list of notes I would find the formatting neater if it didn't jump to full width for text-only notes and then back to narrower to include the image for notes where there is an image to display. I accept that I might be being a bit OCD here which is why I definitely put this suggestion last.

- Julian

[soundsgoodtome 155]

I was going to start a new thread but found this. Here are my thoughts...

The Mixed view was working well for me as a notes list (I find the "List" view too plain and unformatted and difficult to scan quickly). Mixed view was a nicely formatted multi-line summary of the key details of a note with the note title in a distinct font so that it stood out clearly in the list of notes and with the dates and tags neatly displayed on the lines beneath the note title.

Am I the only user that chooses meaningful names for their notes? All that the Snippet view does for me is to make the display of note title, tags and date less easy to absorb at a glance because the note title is not in a distinct font and the tag and date display are less clear because they merge into the snippets which are often meaningless streams of unformatted text (quite how does the following snippet from one of my notes "skip to: page content! links on this page ! site navigation ! footer (site information) Home ... " add to the usefulness of the note details? Many of my snippets are equally useless). A long unformatted string of mostly semi-meaningless text simply does not add to the ease of scanning a list of notes and seeing at a glance what is there.

OK, now that I've got that off my chest I'll try to be constructive...

Firstly, I really don't understand what seems to be a general Evernote philosophy of trying to offer as few options as possible to users. It seems to me that Mixed View could have been left in as well as introducing the new Snippet view but if you really don't want to do that then here are my suggestions for improving the readability of the snippet view:

1) Render the first line (note title) in a more distinctive font so that the title stands out by bolding it, making it slightly larger, or a combination of the two; what you did in Mixed view seemed to work well. Surely this suggestion at least is pretty uncontroversial and easy to do?

2) Start the snippet on the third line so that the second line is clear for just the tag and date information and can be absorbed more clearly at a single glance. If some people hate this and want the maximum space for their snippets then you could always have an option "Start snippet on new line" but then that would be an option for users so I guess I'm on dangerous ground there.

3) Going even further into the dangerous territory of offering users options, how about having a "Number of lines in snippet" option? I would set it to zero to supress the snippets altogether but others might want to set it to a higher value like 4 or 5 so that each note entry in the snippet view became a bit longer (in terms of screen space) but could show more snippet text hence this option offers extra capabilities for both snippet lovers (gives them bigger snippets) and snippet haters.

It you implemented the above then I could set things up so that in effect I turn snippet view back into mixed view (although I still don't have tags and dates on seperate lines so an option for that would be something I would value as well). In fairness, if I got everything including the ability to have tags and dates on seperate lines, then it would in my opinion be a better implementation of mixed view because the one thing that I do like about what you did with snippet view is the new handling of images. I like the way you extract out a single image and show it is a uniformly sized image at the right hand side, that looks a lot cleaner to me that the fairly haphazard thumbnails that used to be at the left in the mixed view and were usually too small to discern any detail from anyhow.

The one final option that I would like would be the ability to have a dummy image (maybe an image that says "Text Only" or similar) that is displayed as the image for any notes that don't have images in them. When scanning down a list of notes I would find the formatting neater if it didn't jump to full width for text-only notes and then back to narrower to include the image for notes where there is an image to display. I accept that I might be being a bit OCD here which is why I definitely put this suggestion last.

- Julian

wow. awesome suggestions!!

[dlu 628]

Thanks for the suggestions Julian

[nova47 60]

The Mixed view was working well for me as a notes list (I find the "List" view too plain and unformatted and difficult to scan quickly). Mixed view was a nicely formatted multi-line summary of the key details of a note with the note title in a distinct font so that it stood out clearly in the list of notes and with the dates and tags neatly displayed on the lines beneath the note title.

/snip(pet) ... couldn't resist

because they merge into the snippets which are often meaningless streams of unformatted text

Agree completely. Visual sorting of text has gone from simple to complex. And as I showed back on page one, visual sorting of pdf documents is often impossible because the image is limited to the center of the document, and that cuts off the letterhead.

Great suggestions Julian and nicely said. Put them together with the image position correcttion and my Opthamologist will be out of a job! The Shrink...well, that's another story.

[jbenson2 2,147]

The reason I prefer the Snippet View is because the content in my notes are what I want to see quickly and easily. The Snippet Version wins hands down, as shown in the comparison below. (Left Panel is toggled off)

If I want to do some housekeeping on the titles, or temporarily change the sort order, I will revert back to List View. But generally I spend 75% of my Evernote time in the Snippet View.

[attachment=1]Evernote snippit.png[/attachment]

[attachment=0]List view.png[/attachment]

[tejaskothari 0]

What a waste of precious screen real estate. Snippets are such a waste compared to normal list view. This is a major drawback.

And we are only talking about the android tablet version of evernote where they dont have an option to change from snippet view to a mixed or a notes view.

People here are talking about the windows desktop version where we have an option of changing views. But shockingly, no such option in the android tablet version.

I sincerely hope that Evernote gives this option ASAP as it is a tremendous waste.

[jefito 5,589]

And we are only talking about the android tablet version of evernote where they dont have an option to change from snippet view to a mixed or a notes view.

This *is* the Mac forum, after all. There's another forum for Android, where your comments are probably more appropriate.

[jefito 5,589]

Just discovered this thread.

Ah,memory can be so fleeting sometimes.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Just discovered this thread.

With some (hopefully minor) changes, the Snippet view would be much more useful to me.

Please see my comments in this thread: Evernote for Windows v. 4.4 RC

Would anyone else find these changes helpful?

[jefito 5,589]

Can someone post a screenshot of the snippet view? I'd like to see it before upgrading.

It's pretty similar looking to the Snippet view provided in the new web interface.

[nova47 60]

Can someone post a screenshot of the snippet view? I'd like to see it before upgrading.

thanks

[richardsugg 16]

I understand your issues with the snippet view, where some of your notes should not be available for eyes looking over your shoulder. It seems that the List view addresses that. I personally really appreciate the new snippet view but have never found much use for the thumbnail view. I don't keep pictures in EN, but if I did, I suppose the thumbnail view my be helpful.

[Pitamakan 2]

I don't really find the thumbnail view to be very useful under most circumstances ... mostly because nearly all of the note title is cut off unless you zoom all the way in, and then you can only see very few notes at once.

So, IMO, providing the end-user with a reasonable number of view options is sorely needed.

Exactly. It really seems inappropriate to me to eliminate a viewing option that many users have clearly grown to rely on over time. If EN really thinks the snippet view is that useful, it really wouldn't hinder the UI to make that a 4th viewing option, rather than eliminating an existing option that people definitely find valuable.

[JMichaelTest 19]

Well, there is clearly a variety of opinions concerning the change from the "Mixed View" to "Snippet View".

I generally prefer and use the List view, so this change does not have that much of an impact on me.

But, I do like/prefer the Snippet view over the Mixed view.

I did not find the Mixed view very useful because the thumbnail was too small to really understand, and the text too limiting to be useful.

If you rely on the thumbnails, perhaps the "Thumbnail View" can provide what you need.

Many of us, in several different threads/forums, have requested a pure, text-only, list view with one line per note in the left panel (to the left of the Note panel instead of above it). If we were given the option of choosing which Note columns to show, we could pick just the ones of interest (like Date Updated, Title) and see at once a long list of Notes, while having the Note editing panel on the right.

I don't consider having several different view options as "bloat". When you have 6 million users there will be large numbers of users that have different needs. Views are like reports. What is needed and useful tends to vary widely with each user.

So, IMO, providing the end-user with a reasonable number of view options is sorely needed.

Just my 2c.

[Pitamakan 2]

Losing the old note thumbnails from the mixed view made me realize how much I relied on them when scanning through my stuff.

[Metrodon 2,184]

No, it has been replaced.

[EvernoteConnoisseur 18]

Is the old view still available? I can't seem to find that option.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Got to say I don't like it much either - an option may be better, but I'm also not a fan of providing a million different options that then have to be supported.

There are constant calls on here for different options and configurations, but in my opinion this tends to lead to ongoing support hell and bloatware. There are a number of different view options available, we just have to pick the one we like the most.

so, in other words, the app should be the way YOU want it, and those who feel differently shouldn't even have the option of enabling the snippet view, even if it works better for them. everyone should just defer to your preferences.

now that's rich.

You completely misunderstand me.

I said I don't like it, I said they could make it a configuration option (of which there could be dozens across multiple platforms), so it's probably best to leave it as it is.

So in this case the app is exactly not how I want it.

[Scooter 11]

I like it. I can see a bit of text, which is helpful in searching

[soundsgoodtome 155]

Got to say I don't like it much either - an option may be better, but I'm also not a fan of providing a million different options that then have to be supported.

There are constant calls on here for different options and configurations, but in my opinion this tends to lead to ongoing support hell and bloatware. There are a number of different view options available, we just have to pick the one we like the most.

so, in other words, the app should be the way YOU want it, and those who feel differently shouldn't even have the option of enabling the snippet view, even if it works better for them. everyone should just defer to your preferences.

now that's rich.

[Pitamakan 2]

The new snippet view gets a thumbs down from me, too. Way too cluttered.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Got to say I don't like it much either - an option may be better, but I'm also not a fan of providing a million different options that then have to be supported.

There are constant calls on here for different options and configurations, but in my opinion this tends to lead to ongoing support hell and bloatware. There are a number of different view options available, we just have to pick the one we like the most.

[soundsgoodtome 155]

The new snippet view is horrible. It takes tons of rooms for nothing, displays bits of information in line, which doesn't make it that useful really and also displays information for all your notes for all to see. I keep sensitive bits of business information which don't require NSA encrypting, but that are not for all eyes either. Please allow at least to have the old view back as an option and don't impose a snippet view because a few liked it.

Thank you!

i love the snippet view. as always, it should be an option set via preferences.