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Evernote for Mac v6.0 and v6.0.1


SoftwareMarcus

Idea

Today we released version 6.0 for the Mac App Store and 6.0.1 for direct download customers.

 

First off, Mac App Store customers are going to get all of the really cool benefits and features that direct download customers have had for a month.  This means faster sync, improved note editing with resizable tables and images, work chat, presence, context where one can see content related to their notes, and great new presentation mode features.

 

The other huge update is a sleek new Yosemite look for Evernote.  We previewed some of this at the Evernote Conference last month.  This means we’ve taken out the black side bar and changed it to the cool translucent Yosemite look and feel, took out all of the textures and big icons and switched them to clean and simple designs and in addition everything has higher contrast and is easier to read.  Overall the word “clean” comes to mind when you see the new design.  I really like it and we hope you do to.

 

We also continue to fix issues and improve existing features.

 

Work Chat Improvements

  • We now have pop-ups and some visuals to educate customers about work chat.
  • Fixed a number of bugs with the chat window and continue to polish the look.
  • Added support for sharing notebooks via work chat.
Bug Fixes

  • Improved handling of really long URLs which used to make the note extend off the screen.
  • Lots of other miscellaneous bug fixes
 

Why is the Mac App Store version different?

  • We had to submit the Mac App Store version of Evernote to Apple some time ago for their review and approval so we could release it today.
  • The direct download version includes the changes we've made in the last week.
  • We'll submit 6.0.2 to Apple today for release next week.
 

As always, please post feedback to this new release on this thread to make it easier for me to spot issues.  Also state whether you’re using the Mac App Store version or the Direct Download Version since they are different.

 

You can also download the software at: http://bit.ly/14SxwPz
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For those of you that would like to see higher contrast or more legibility can you tell me specifically in what parts of the app?  It doesn't help me if you say the entire app.  

 

3) What about snippet view?

 

Regarding snippet view: for me the summary text is and too small and too light grey. Hardly readable. I feel strain in my eyes when focussing form large titels too small summary.

 

 

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What is the point of showing the small, low contrast text in the Snippet view if you can barely read it?

It should be enough to just make it a smaller font size than the Title.

 

We need to be able to quickly scan down the list of Notes to find the one of interest.  If I have to stop and study carefully, closely, slowing at the subtext in the Snippet then it has little to no value.

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Here's my issue/frustration from the upgrade to Evernote 6.0:

 

Notes are not showing contents for a *very* long time in all views that actually show the note contents (card view, list view, snippet view, top list view).

 

This happens upon opening Evernote, selecting notes, opening notes in a new window, etc. The note appears empty, and it takes up to two minutes or so before the contents suddenly appear. If I choose another note after the contents appear, I have to wait for that note to populate the contents area. If I quickly choose another note to view, then come back to the originally selected note (which had finally loaded the contents) the contents are gone again, and I have to wait for them to load once more

 

This happens to every note I choose, in every notebook - and makes using Evernote very frustrating.

 

Evernote was upgraded via the app store on a MacBook Air running 10.9.5 (I can't upgrade the OS as this is a company owned laptop, and there are issues with Yosemite and tools we use at work at this time).

 

1. Same here... I thought it was happening only for the first time you open a note, some kind of "upgrade" delay... but not, you switch between notes and all are slow, with no content for a while. Hopefully this is solved soon.

 

2. A +1 to complain about the color. I like the sleek design but I was loving the to-do check marks in blue.

 

3. I won't get tired of saying this, especially with so many people bitching about this upgrade:

 

YOU GUYS ROCK.

 

Let's not forget this is a free software and this company keeps on paying close attention to this forum. Not like the Apple Discussions forum, with tons of complaints about same old thing and still you don't see one Apple employee showing up to clarify or thank or even consider what people say.

 

Have a great weekend everybody.

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Let's not forget this is a free software . . .

 

Well, to set the record straight, it's not really free.

Your use of the product is paid for by us Premium account owners, who do pay.

 

Allowing you to use the product for free is just a sales gimmick to get you to upgrade to Premium.  ;)

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Let's not forget this is a free software . . .

 

Well, to set the record straight, it's not really free.

Your use of the product is paid for by us Premium account owners, who do pay.

 

Allowing you to use the product for free is just a sales gimmick to get you to upgrade to Premium.  ;)

 

 

That's true! But free or paid, sometimes people complain like Evernote is a human right (and I'm a first class complainer... but here, just thank you and suggestions...)

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The snippet view text is unreadable in the new Mac desktop client. The colors delineating sections are so weak it makes me feel cross-eyed, and I'm not that old.

 

I've been using Evernote since weeks after it's initial release, and have been a paying member under multiple accounts. Recently, I let my last account revert to non-paying and above is exactly one of the reasons I'm glad I did. I don't mind paying so long as the product actually improves; I heard the long-term promises of being an external brain and trusted in that, then it pivots into some business type software like the now defunct backpack. No thanks.

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I'm in agreement with those who do not like the drab colors and small fonts used in the new UI. Evernote had a distinctive look and feel that was part of the software experience. The new UI is not inspiring and is hard to read and hard to distinguish from other apps. I'm not sure why the developer that commented on here thinks that following rules or following Apple replaces good old user testing. Plus, people like choices which Evernote used to provide. Seems like in terms of the UI, users got less with this upgrade.

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I'm in agreement with those who do not like the drab colors and small fonts used in the new UI. Evernote had a distinctive look and feel that was part of the software experience. The new UI is not inspiring and is hard to read and hard to distinguish from other apps. I'm not sure why the developer that commented on here thinks that following rules or following Apple replaces good old user testing. Plus, people like choices which Evernote used to provide. Seems like in terms of the UI, users got less with this upgrade.

 

Agree with this.  Between this and the recent Penultimate upgrade for iOS Evernote needs to fire the design/review team and start over.  This is just bad UI for a modern OS.

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Once again, I'm gobsmacked by just how many first-time posters have been motivated to find this forum, sign up, and post. And every one of them pointing out the problems with this "upgrade".

 

Surely that should cause concern at Evernote HQ, that they have taken a wrong turn, and are not listening to what their users actually WANT?

 

Somebody at said HQ really needs to accept that they have royally screwed up - they stuffed Penultimate (which I used to use, but no longer do), and now they've continued to stuff up Evernote itself.

 

Jack, Marcus, everbody - please listen!  Take a step back, accept that you've got it wrong, that Evernote is NOT a collaborative work or business tool exclusively, for probably the majority of users, and that this new interface is total cr@p.

 

Fire your interface design team, fire all those who think that blindly following the trend to being "cool" with translucency etc, just because Apple said so, is a good idea. It would be interesting to find out how many of those who have upgraded to Yosemite actually have translucency turned off. Personally, I completely fail to see why anyone would want to see THROUGH something that you're working on.

 

But the problem seems to be that we are given no choice - this fits with Phil Libin's view that we shouldn't be given choices.  And that is a BAD, REALLY bad idea. People LIKE to have choices, we like to be able to create our personalized way of working and the appearance of software.  Why do you think "skins" are so popular for so many apps? And who's bright idea was it to do away with Evernote's green, which has become a symbolic recognition factor for the brand? Brilliant..! That's like Cadbury's Chocolate suddenly deciding to do away with the colour purple!

 

To all those who have taken the trouble to come on here and post your thoughts, keep it up. The "apology" from Evernote about the stuff-up of Penultimate was the result of massive user blowback. The core Evernote app now needs the same treatment!

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BUG REPORT:  Search Box Disappears on Small Window

 

The Search Box disappears when the main EN window becomes too narrow, like one might have on a laptop.

 

This is definitely an issue.  This only occurs when one shrinks their window to be very narrow and they have a long note name.   To work around this just make your window wider.  In full disclosure, I don't think many people run into this issue and there is an easy work around so I've prioritized it low.  I think there are a number of other issues people have brought up in these forums that I would prefer we focus on.

 

 

Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

 

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

 

Classic note links are gone! 

 

As another poster reported, just click the Option button before right clicking on the note in the note list and Copy Classic Note will appear.  We're fixing this to work when clicking the Option button while the menu is up. 

 

Bug: attachment (can't) rename bug from 5.7.1 still present in 6.0.1

 

We thought we fixed this in 6.0.1 but it looks like you can still get into a state where the menu becomes disabled.  On one of my machines it works fine.  On another it's grayed out and I can't make it enabled.  Not sure why it's different so this is going to take more investigation.

 

 

I´d like to have the option to have a shortcut to share notes via good old email and not some social networks. 

 

You can right click on a note in the note list and select More Sharing -> Email Note to send a note via email.

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Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

 

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

 

 

Marcus,

 

First of all, my thanks to you for your usual candid response.  We may not always agree, but your upfront candor and receptive attitude is greatly appreciated.

 

My main concern is the hiding of "All Notes".  Just a few versions back, this was an (optional) button on the toolbar.

IMO, it should be on the toolbar and always prominent.  Otherwise it is too easy to get confused about what Notebook, tag filter, and/or search is active.  The "All Notes" button allow us to quickly make sure that, well, all notes are being shown.

 

While I'm talking about toolbars, can you explain why EN Win has a user-configurable toolbar, but EN Mac does not?  Configuring toolbars has been a long-standing feature of the Mac -- almost all apps support this.

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Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look.  I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues.  I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help.  I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed.  I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

 

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks).  The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like.  On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes.  On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation.  I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

 

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see.  This includes the date and other header text.  We're going to darken this text.  Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit.  Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

 

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light.  We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring.  For some reason they are different colors for different icons.  Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

 

Thanks again for this open discussion.  We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree.   Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening.    In addition, some things are easier to change than others.  The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

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Hi Marcus :)

 

Like JMichael, I really appreciate you interacting on here, even though we may disagree on various things. I'm also aware that you have to represent the company line, so even if you agree with some of our complaints, you may not be able to say so.

 

The idea of presenting us with a list of proposed changes is excellent - why not do it before each major upgrade, and get feedback on them BEFORE you push out the upgrade and then cop a heap of complaints?

 

Are you going to bring back your signature colour scheme of green and grey? Or are you going to stick with the completely bland, no-brand version with grey, grey, and more grey? 50 Shades of Grey, anyone? (Somebody had to say it!)

 

What about coloured icons, you know, like they used to be?

 

And as JMichael pointed out, and as I keep banging on about - what about that configurable toolbar? If the Windows version can have one, why not the Mac version, especially when toolbar configurability is virtually a Mac standard?

 

Good to see some response to the points made on here.  But more please... (yeah, yeah - I know I'm never satisfied) :P

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My main concern is the hiding of "All Notes".  Just a few versions back, this was an (optional) button on the toolbar.

IMO, it should be on the toolbar and always prominent.  Otherwise it is too easy to get confused about what Notebook, tag filter, and/or search is active.  The "All Notes" button allow us to quickly make sure that, well, all notes are being shown.

 

Got it.  Let me give that more thought.  

 

While I'm talking about toolbars, can you explain why EN Win has a user-configurable toolbar, but EN Mac does not?  Configuring toolbars has been a long-standing feature of the Mac -- almost all apps support this.

 

 

Well the simple answer is that it's entirely different code so what is available in Windows is unrelated to what is in Mac and vice-a-versa but I think your more important point is why doesn't the Mac team make it a priority to add a customizable toolbar.  Quite honestly I don't know the specific answer for Evernote because I just joined but I do have some experience with this at Microsoft.  For Word, Excel and PowerPoint we had crazy levels of customization with every single menu item as part of the toolbox to add and customize on a toolbar.  As a software developer it's extremely difficult and time consuming to maintain and test.  If you add a new feature then you have to add a new customizable button and then you have to test it.  If you change a feature you have to go back and fix all of the buttons related to this feature.  If you change the look of your icons, you have to change all of the millions of icons in all of these custom toolbars.  At Office even with all of the resources we had, we couldn't test all of these custom buttons for every release.  This wouldn't be bad if people used them but the vast majority of people don't.  Most don't even know the feature exists.  It's a lot of work for a really really small percentage of people.

 

For Evernote I think we should have a discussion about what level of customization customers want and I think the answers will vary?  For some they just want a Print button or they want to remove the Work Chat button or they want to add Strikethrough.  For others they want a way to prioritize features that we de-prioritize.  For example, you may want the All Notes button but for others it might be Email Note.  It's kind of a slippery slope.  My guess is we would all like to say we are talking about a handful of features but I think in the end we would quickly end up realizing that everyone's needs are different and that people end up wanting every feature.  And if we are indeed talking about strikethrough and Work Chat then we might also be talking about 2 different toolbars.  Supporting every single menu item and multiple customizable toolbars gives me nightmares.  It's also a trade off thing.  Do we spend our limited resources on features like speeding up sync that everyone will benefit from or on building a customizable toolbar for a select group of customers.   Now you could argue and I would agree that the people who customize a toolbar are hard core Evernote users and we should support them but there are also high costs that come with the feature.  

 

In any case, I'm open to a discussion but I wanted to provide some perspective from my experience.

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Marcus, thank you for you considered response.  I'll give you and your team more time before providing any further feedback.

Again, I can't say enough how much it means to me, and I think many others, for your candor and willingness to consider our suggestions.  It is very refreshing.

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Excellent thoughts and points, Marcus - thank you.

 

One point from a complete non-programmer: if every function in a program has an associated button, then how hard is it to do a customizable toolbar? On almost every Mac app that I have and use, the principle of customizing the toolbars is the same.  It looks the same, it works the same way on all the apps. Right-click/Customise Toolbar - etc. It's even on Firefox that I'm using to read this forum. And the point is - Evernote USED to have it! But it was taken away.

 

Given that Evernote seem to be following Apple's dictates regarding things like translucency for Yosemite (!), why does the company seem so reluctant to follow what is virtually a Mac standard by having a configurable toolbar?  And even more to the point - although the code is different, the principle isn't, but the Windows version DOES have a configurable toolbar.

 

I appreciate your perspective, and I take your points from your experience of working the Microsoft Office apps. But I'd suggest that in Evernote, the list of options (to go under Preferences) and the list of functions (to go under Configure Toolbar) would be WAY less than the amazing number there are in the Office apps.

 

Good to hear you're open to discussion about it -maybe, just hopefully, this may progress to the point where Evernote seriously considers giving us back the customizing abilities - the more the merrier.  And as Grumpy pointed out on another thread, if we had the ability to customize most of everything from toolbars to colour schemes and fonts, then most of the complaints would simply disappear.  And everyone could then concentrate solely on matters of actual functionality. And that may make Grumpy less grumpy! :rolleyes:

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The idea of presenting us with a list of proposed changes is excellent - why not do it before each major upgrade, and get feedback on them BEFORE you push out the upgrade and then cop a heap of complaints?

 

I'm open to more collaboration.  I'll give some thought as to how this might be possible but keep in mind that the forums represent one point of view.  It's not necessarily the point of view of all our customers even thought it might seem like it.  Like I mentioned before the twitterverse generally loves the new design.  Now it might be because they are a younger demographic but they are also Evernote users and should be part of the discussion.

 

Are you going to bring back your signature colour scheme of green and grey? Or are you going to stick with the completely bland, no-brand version with grey, grey, and more grey? 50 Shades of Grey, anyone? (Somebody had to say it!)

 

What about coloured icons, you know, like they used to be?

 

The simple answer is that we aren't going back.  We will continue to refine and improve the product but our previous design doesn't fit well with Apple's new design direction.  Many didn't like iOS7 when it shipped but I think most wouldn't want to go back because the old UI looks out of date.  If you use Yosemite everyday and use lots of apps, you'll eventually start to spot the apps that feel out of place because they have big 3D buttons and complex icons with lots of colors.  I'm not trying to convince you to like the new design but I think it grows on people.  There's an initial shock regarding change and then after repeated use it starts to feel comfortable.   It's funny because I think there was a big uproar regarding the black sidebar when Evernote shipped that design and many people expressed hatred for that look.  Now people want to bring it back.  Design is a curious thing.

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The simple answer is that we aren't going back.  We will continue to refine and improve the product but our previous design doesn't fit well with Apple's new design direction.  Many didn't like iOS7 when it shipped but I think most wouldn't want to go back because the old UI looks out of date.  If you use Yosemite everyday and use lots of apps, you'll eventually start to spot the apps that feel out of place because they have big 3D buttons and complex icons with lots of colors.  I'm not trying to convince you to like the new design but I think it grows on people.  There's an initial shock regarding change and then after repeated use it starts to feel comfortable.   It's funny because I think there was a big uproar regarding the black sidebar when Evernote shipped that design and many people expressed hatred for that look.  Now people want to bring it back.  Design is a curious thing.

 

OK - appreciate the response, thanks Marcus.

 

I have to admit that I'm really sorry you're not going back to what was such a recognizable colour scheme - it's even here all over this forum. And in your app icon.  And I happen to like 3D buttons and complex icons with lots of colours... :wacko:

 

And on my Twitter feed, the reaction to the new version is very mixed. Lots of complaints about it being slow, a LOT who don't want Chat and who want to get rid of the Chat button, etc etc - very similar to what's been said in here many times. Of course, there are some who DO like it, and there is a heck of a lot of spam - Evernote accessories, competitions, etc etc. I'm not sure that too many constructive comments can be made in 120 characters on Twitter - but yes, you're right, they're users too. I'd suggest, though, that they are a bit less engaged with the company than most of your long term inhabitants of these forums.

 

Keep up the discussions, and yes, we would LOVE much earlier chances to give feedback - but only if there was some likelihood of the feedback not being ignored. I'm not saying for a moment that every suggestion or comment has to be implemented - of course it doesn't. But at least use the collective wisdom and comments from people like Grumpy, Metrodon, Burgers, etc etc to help steer the company direction, and not just go your own merry way regardless. In other words, it needs to be a meaningful two-way discussion, not just a token one.

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Notes are not showing contents for a *very* long time in all views that actually show the note contents (card view, list view, snippet view, top list view).

 

This happens upon opening Evernote, selecting notes, opening notes in a new window, etc. The note appears empty, and it takes up to two minutes or so before the contents suddenly appear. If I choose another note after the contents appear, I have to wait for that note to populate the contents area. If I quickly choose another note to view, then come back to the originally selected note (which had finally loaded the contents) the contents are gone again, and I have to wait for them to load once more

...

Evernote was upgraded via the app store on a MacBook Air running 10.9.5 (I can't upgrade the OS as this is a company owned laptop, and there are issues with Yosemite and tools we use at work at this time).

 

This is happening in Yosemite too. It's making it difficult to use Evernote when I have to wait so long for the note's content to appear.

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Found a bug in the first 10 seconds of using 6.0.1 for the Mac. Print a note, click cancel, note title is changed to "Untitled." Do you guys test your software? I will submit a formal bug report...maybe it's fixed in 6.0.2.

 

 

This also happens if you right-click on a note and choose "Open Note in a Separate Window".

 

I am actually having trouble keep the titles of notes. Even when I revert the title back to what it was later it will return to "Untitled".

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The idea of presenting us with a list of proposed changes is excellent - why not do it before each major upgrade, and get feedback on them BEFORE you push out the upgrade and then cop a heap of complaints?

 

I'm open to more collaboration.  I'll give some thought as to how this might be possible but keep in mind that the forums represent one point of view.  It's not necessarily the point of view of all our customers even thought it might seem like it.  Like I mentioned before the twitterverse generally loves the new design.  Now it might be because they are a younger demographic but they are also Evernote users and should be part of the discussion.

 

Are you going to bring back your signature colour scheme of green and grey? Or are you going to stick with the completely bland, no-brand version with grey, grey, and more grey? 50 Shades of Grey, anyone? (Somebody had to say it!)

 

What about coloured icons, you know, like they used to be?

 

The simple answer is that we aren't going back.  We will continue to refine and improve the product but our previous design doesn't fit well with Apple's new design direction.  Many didn't like iOS7 when it shipped but I think most wouldn't want to go back because the old UI looks out of date.  If you use Yosemite everyday and use lots of apps, you'll eventually start to spot the apps that feel out of place because they have big 3D buttons and complex icons with lots of colors.  I'm not trying to convince you to like the new design but I think it grows on people.  There's an initial shock regarding change and then after repeated use it starts to feel comfortable.   It's funny because I think there was a big uproar regarding the black sidebar when Evernote shipped that design and many people expressed hatred for that look.  Now people want to bring it back.  Design is a curious thing.

 

 

Could I suggest that instead of going all grey and white, like you have now, that you add some light touches of green in the program?  Something that shows this is Evernote at a quick glance and not just some other mac program?   I am sure there are some ways you can do this without going back to what you had before.  Something subtle such as a thin green border or a very light green/grey menu bar on the left size vs the semi transparent window now.  Just ideas.

 

Thank you for talking about this!

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Well the simple answer is that it's entirely different code so what is available in Windows is unrelated to what is in Mac and vice-a-versa but I think your more important point is why doesn't the Mac team make it a priority to add a customizable toolbar.  Quite honestly I don't know the specific answer for Evernote because I just joined but I do have some experience with this at Microsoft.  For Word, Excel and PowerPoint we had crazy levels of customization with every single menu item as part of the toolbox to add and customize on a toolbar.  As a software developer it's extremely difficult and time consuming to maintain and test.  If you add a new feature then you have to add a new customizable button and then you have to test it.  If you change a feature you have to go back and fix all of the buttons related to this feature.  If you change the look of your icons, you have to change all of the millions of icons in all of these custom toolbars.  At Office even with all of the resources we had, we couldn't test all of these custom buttons for every release.  This wouldn't be bad if people used them but the vast majority of people don't.  Most don't even know the feature exists.  It's a lot of work for a really really small percentage of people.

 

For Evernote I think we should have a discussion about what level of customization customers want and I think the answers will vary?  For some they just want a Print button or they want to remove the Work Chat button or they want to add Strikethrough.  For others they want a way to prioritize features that we de-prioritize.  For example, you may want the All Notes button but for others it might be Email Note.  It's kind of a slippery slope.  My guess is we would all like to say we are talking about a handful of features but I think in the end we would quickly end up realizing that everyone's needs are different and that people end up wanting every feature.  And if we are indeed talking about strikethrough and Work Chat then we might also be talking about 2 different toolbars.  Supporting every single menu item and multiple customizable toolbars gives me nightmares.  It's also a trade off thing.  Do we spend our limited resources on features like speeding up sync that everyone will benefit from or on building a customizable toolbar for a select group of customers.   Now you could argue and I would agree that the people who customize a toolbar are hard core Evernote users and we should support them but there are also high costs that come with the feature.  

 

In any case, I'm open to a discussion but I wanted to provide some perspective from my experience.

Marcus,

 

In my company just three developers have created highly configurably HMIs. The users can change the look and feel by providing different themes (e.g. for different lighting conditions). They can change fonts and colors, doc and undock parts of the application (e.g when using two monitors), freely configure menus and toolbars.

 

I agree it can be difficult but we use the Netbeans platform for this and it's all there. We don't have to concentrate on all of this any more we can concentrate on the real functionality of the application. And we can use almost identical code on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) because it is based on Java. And even if Java might not be suitable for all of your needs because for some features it might be too slow or you want to re-use exitings code e.g. in C++ that is also possible and we have done this as well. Our decision to use the Netbeans platform was the best we could make and we are so much more productive. The risk of bugs has also been reduced dramatically and our customers are really happy about the features and stability of our programs.

 

Maybe it could help Evernote as well to re-think the strategy to develop a different application for each platform.

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JM I want to know the content of a couple of your notes now!

  • How to expand storage with Micro SD
  • Hard boiled eggs in an oven
  • The meaning of OS X logging downloads

A terminal command will clear your download log. Helpful if you don't want anyone to know what you are downloading. Not a huge concern if you are on your own machine, have it locked down wit file vault, and you use a strong password. I think the micros sd thing is more for macbook air folks, right? i forget. as for hard boiled eggs, that's out of this vegetarian's range of interest. maybe jm can share his notes :)

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Gorgeous new app.

The only thing is that scrolling through notes is no longer smooth (on the mid-2013 Macbook Air). It's not terrible but it's noticeable. I know the Air is not a workhorse machine, but the way it's slightly 'choppy' even in smaller notebooks with few notes suggest that it might be fixable.

 

I'm running OS X Yosemite

 

Shamelessly quoting myself here. Doesn't anyone else have the same slightly chuggy scroll through the notecards now, compared to the previous version? 

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OS X 10.9.5 - Premium account - Just upgraded to 6.0 (451092 AppStore) through App Store and having issues:

- when selecting a note, it takes ages to show up

- when opening the note in a dedicated window the title goes away

- even worst: I can't edit a note! A new or an existing one ...

 

I can't say I'm happy with this update ... =(

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I've downloaded 6.0.1 from the website and installed it and now I can edit notes. I agree with some comments: IMHO you are looking at too many non-related features (Work Chat ... really?). Please continue to focus on _notes_! People are used to best of breed tools, not one-fits-all.

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Notes are not showing contents for a *very* long time in all views that actually show the note contents (card view, list view, snippet view, top list view).

This can often happen right after the migration (which is why we notify you that migration may take some time). We are doing quite a bit of reindexing for our search/speed improvements. Give it some time and let us know if the situation doesn't improve.

 

 

@Jack, a few others have said so since this post, but this is occurring for me as well, along with the other symptoms FMeu cited just above: several situations like simply double-clicking cause note titles to be lost (this is data loss), and I otherwise can't edit notes at all. This means Evernote is effectively unusable. To quantify the "long time", it's a minute or more for me to open each note.

 

I let Evernote run for several hours on the first run after the update, and my note library is not very large. The situation did not change with time. The initial modal progress bar of migration completed, there has been no crash or visible error. I synced, logged out and rebooted as the support Twitter account suggested to another user having the same issue.

 

Spotlight search also does not appear to work for me, searching for distinctive terms in my Evernote content never returns any Evernote results.

 

My specs are essentially the same as FMeu's: Mavericks (latest, 10.9.5), Mac App Store install. I was up-to-date with prior MAS version of Evernote.

 

There are some ugly UI anomalies as well, note the title field and (un-editable) content in this screenshot:

 

Evernote-6-bugs-20141122-220928.png

 

I backed up my old data from:

~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application\ Support/com.evernote.Evernote/old

So if there is any procedure you'd like to try for migrating/reindexing data again, or producing any forensic info about my system, let me know.

 

Interface matters (bugs aside) are mostly subjective, so I'll give it some time, and after running on Yosemite (haven't upgraded yet due to issues with software build environments I need working...). I agree that the text in Snippets view is too light and line spacing is too tight, but Jack and Marcus have addressed that specifically already. After using it for awhile I still don't like icon/button designs in Apple's visual language introduced in iOS 7, but Evernote is just following Apple's platform direction now so it's neither here nor there I guess.

 

As one of the heralded first-time posters, I'm disappointed with Evernote's quality control and aspects of product focus lately, but I do appreciate your candor and responsiveness here on the forums, and hope you'll get through this release without too many bruises.

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  • Level 5*

@Marcus: absolutely nailed it in your last two posts. Programming & design are easy unless you actually have to do it, particularly on a high-wire in front of 10's of millions of users. You have to listen to your users, of course, but in the end, if you can't please yourself as a user of the tools you produce for others, then you're probably in the wrong game

Choice quotes/snippets:

As a software developer it's extremely difficult and time consuming to maintain and test.  If you add a new feature then you have to add a new customizable button and then you have to test it.  If you change a feature you have to go back and fix all of the buttons related to this feature.  If you change the look of your icons, you have to change all of the millions of icons in all of these custom toolbars.  At Office even with all of the resources we had, we couldn't test all of these custom buttons for every release.  This wouldn't be bad if people used them but the vast majority of people don't.  Most don't even know the feature exists.  It's a lot of work for a really really small percentage of people.

A favorite reading on this dynamic: Minus 100 Points. Often quoted by Raymond Chen.
 

...everyone's needs are different and that people end up wanting every feature.  And if we are indeed talking about strikethrough and Work Chat then we might also be talking about 2 different toolbars.  Supporting every single menu item and multiple customizable toolbars gives me nightmares.  It's also a trade off thing.  Do we spend our limited resources on features like speeding up sync that everyone will benefit from or on building a customizable toolbar for a select group of customers.   Now you could argue and I would agree that the people who customize a toolbar are hard core Evernote users and we should support them but there are also high costs that come with the feature.

I've often felt that 100% of say, Word's users use the same 10% of its functionality for 90% of their work, and the other 10% of their work is spread around the other 90% of Word's functionality. Being all things to all people is a lot of work, even for a company with Microsoft's seeming inexhaustible resources.
 

In any case, I'm open to a discussion but I wanted to provide some perspective from my experience.

That's always welcome, from any of the Evernote staff, actually.
 

I'm open to more collaboration.  I'll give some thought as to how this might be possible but keep in mind that the forums represent one point of view.  It's not necessarily the point of view of all our customers even thought it might seem like it.

The forum world is fairly self-selected for people who have issues or problems with Evernote,a fair amount of negativity is built-in. It's a rare day that a topic starts with someone singing "Evernote Everything is Beautiful" and showering hosannas on Evernote. It's OK for the forums to be like that, you just need to understand that that's a common slant.
 

The simple answer is that we aren't going back.  We will continue to refine and improve the product but our previous design doesn't fit well with Apple's new design direction.

Baldly stated, but entirely appropriate. Moving a mature code base to a new design/approach can be a lot of work. Going back to an old design and then iterating forward to the place where you've gotten with the new design is also a lot of work and is also a morale killer. A lot of folks didn't like the Windows V5 design, but I've found it to be cleaner and easier to use overall, and Reminders are a great addition to my day-to-day workflow. I'm sure that V6 is right around the corner, so we'll see.
 

Design is a curious thing.

Truer words...

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Problem: UI is not working properly

 

Description of Problem: All the notes of a notebook in 'expanded card view or Card view' are showing distorted images. The images are fine if I go into edit mode.

 

Troubleshooting: Try to install from mac app store and also direct download. But same problem as shown in the image

post-236687-0-53989900-1416675697_thumb.

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I loved the previous version. Not happy with this one.  It's harder to read (I rely on snippet view a lot and I have to strain my eyes to read what the included lines say). It's boring. Just a gray thing on my screen. No color. Hardly any differentiation. Overall, makes me wonder if there's a point in living.

 

___________________________

 

update: it's been a couple of hours and the shock is wearing off.  I'm slightly adjusting to the new look and I'm beginning to see its merits. It still reminds me so much of the Windows version I ran away from, minus the customizability.  It would be great if you could add more contrast/differentiation, or at least give the user the option.  It really does get depressing staring at gray for extended periods.  My workflow is simple and adaptable so I can't comment much on the troubles the other users are having, but it would be helpful if basic text editing commands like strikethrough weren't hidden two clicks deep in the menu. Little things make all the difference.

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I’ve been your premium user for a while now, but you don’t see me on these forums making feature requests often. The reason is, I don’t feel I’m entitled to every feature I may possibly want. I paid for the app I saw, because the features it offered when I saw it were just right for me. Any new additions from that moment would be just a nice bonus. The problem is, you started to take things away. Somehow each major redesign you make adds a bunch of cool features that I don’t need and takes away something I actually care about. I keep paying same money for the app that gets progressively worse for me.

 
I’m an ordinary computer user, maybe a tad on the power side. As it often happens, I have a bunch of apps open at the same time and I switch between them to get my job done. There are few things I need to feel comfortable:
 
1) I need to be able to swiftly locate the app’s window on my screen or in the bird view (Expose/Mission Control). 
Evernote had that. It had character. It had a face that stood out. Now I’m just lost. My browser window, my Mail client, iTunes and now Evernote - everything looks the same. I’m wasting precious moments of my life on trying to tell them apart.
 
2) I need the ability to find things within the app as fast as possible. I use Evernote many times a day. Seconds matter.
And Evernote had that at some point. The areas of the app had good contrast between each other. My eyes were landing on the target area right away, and with high contrast elements and proper buttons, finding things was intuitive and effortless. Now it’s gone. Now all I see is the sea of sameness and I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why Apple had to remove color from their system a while ago, forcing me to start reading labels and studying exact shapes of similar looking icons, and I don’t know why you had to go and follow their bad example.
 
3) My job is graphic & web design, so collecting stock imagery and visual inspiration is one of the primary Evernote uses for me. And this is the main reason I’m paying for premium as well. All that imagery does weight quite a bit.
Evernote used to have a thumbnail view, where images were showing in full, the titles were displayed as secondary information and thumbs were actually resizable, so I could make them big enough to see the details I needed. You took that away and replaced with the card view that was not resizable, that cropped all the images and made the titles prominent but they at least were taking their own space and that darker background was really nice and allowed imagery to stand out. With your previous redesign you took that medium gray away, replaced it with pale grey and overlayed the title over 1/3 of the already cropped image. But well, at least it was somewhat see through. This update made the background pretty much white and made the titles fully opaque. So now all I see is small non-resizable image thumbs cropped to a square and then nearly halved with a completely unnecessary title overlays, all on nicely whitish background that nothing stands out against. Here is what it looks for me now. How far do you think I can scroll before feeling dizzy? How easy it is to find an image I need when all I see is an awkward and often random fragment of it? Why... it's not like I'm demanding new things. It used to be there and worked.
 
Chat is a nice addition for Evernote business, I guess. Context is probably useful for something. It’s nice to see you, guys, moving forward. But I struggle to find any joy in these nice additions as the primary functionality of the app is deteriorating for me. 
 
As I have years invested in Evernote and it became a really important part of my workflow, I’m still grasping at straws and trying to cope with all the improvements you make. But the way it goes, soon I’ll stop being masochistic and will finally move my imagery elsewhere. Then I’ll try to cope with Evernote’s stylish and very Apple-like design for my text notes and saved articles. But this time for free.
 
Sorry, I’m generally not a person who throws hissy fits over the software, but previous redesign has upset me quite a bit and I really hoped that a new one would ease the pain, but you managed to make it even worse. Evernote is an important part of my life and work, so this situation upsets me more than a little.
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I really hope the design team does not reverse course because of this feedback.

I think the team did a great job and it's one of the best looking apps out there. Design by committee is not the answer, so stick with your vision and don't compromise it just to please people who have no business designing apps and don't know good design when they see it.

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"Internet bitching?" (To quote Limegreen's original comment before s/he editied the above post) is what manufactureres get when they mess up and don't pay attention to their customers.

 

Think about why the forum is here, for feedback. So to moan about that is ridiculous.

 

There's nothing wonderful about a washed out everything removed interface where nothing is discernable. It's a failure not a sucess.

Design by comitee - really? Fine then we'll just go find another product to use. It's the design team that have no business, it's shoddy work, by them and the Evernote team as a whole not to consider implications of changes of this kind.

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I am on Mavericks, foolishly updated to v6 on App store. Besides looking utterly bizarre, the UI behaves in completely erratic ways. Selecting a note from the list shows nothing on the right pane - until after a few minutes have passed... and still it doesn't display properly. Oh, and there's no way to edit! And before anyone tells me "oh maybe it's still syncing" well no, because reselecting the same note means I have to wait a few more minutes. Maybe this is by design too.

 

Do you guys actually have a QA department? On the Evernote about page, I can see it's "built with love" by a long long list of people... I have to tell you that's the worst kind of love I've ever seen. Maybe you should "build with *some* professionalism" from now on. Instead of listening to your users and adding much requested features, you waste everyone's time with nonsense. Configurable toolbar? Editing styles? No, just some hipster *****. And now I have to go looking for a replacement.

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"Internet bitching?" is what manufactureres get when they mess up and don't pay attention to their customers.

 

Think about why the forum is here, for feedback. So to moan about that is ridiculous.

 

There's nothing wonderful about a washed out everything removed interface where nothing is discernable. It's a failure not a sucess.

Design by comitee - really? Fine then we'll just go find another product to use. It's the design team that have no business, it's shoddy work, by them and the Evernote team as a whole not to consider implications of changes of this kind.

 

I like it.  Whether or not I will after use over a period of time is to be seen.  I view it as a success at present.  Usually people offer feedback of their own volition if it is negative feedback, so it would be useful to know what random samples of users think.

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iMac 2009, latest Maverick, Evernote 6.0. I also have the "untitled" note problem. 

 

A am a Premium customer. But even if I were not, this is not OK, you folks at Evernote. Do you not make simple tests of the software anymore? Especially when the new version makes a conversion of the users database. It makes going back two days for my whole system very difficult. 

 

Just like the affair with Penultimate it seems as if your young and inexperienced team of programmers and testers do not realize that the customers actually USE the products and keep many important data in your products. It in unacceptable that the quality of your test is so low that the software immediately corrupts the customers data. - I wonder what it is you actually do with the time you label "test" on your time sheet.

 

It is no small deal that the notes get "re-titled". Because the title is often the place where your customer writes the search keywords they use to find the notes again. 

 

Fix this and do not do it again if you want to keep paying customers. 

 

Right now I will not recommend anybody to use Evernote and it will take a looong time before I do it again. Trust is hard to gain, but can be lost in a second...

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"Internet bitching?" is what manufactureres get when they mess up and don't pay attention to their customers.

 

Think about why the forum is here, for feedback. So to moan about that is ridiculous.

 

There's nothing wonderful about a washed out everything removed interface where nothing is discernable. It's a failure not a sucess.

Design by comitee - really? Fine then we'll just go find another product to use. It's the design team that have no business, it's shoddy work, by them and the Evernote team as a whole not to consider implications of changes of this kind.

 

I like it.  Whether or not I will after use over a period of time is to be seen.  I view it as a success at present.  Usually people offer feedback of their own volition if it is negative feedback, so it would be useful to know what random samples of users think.

 

 

I'm glad you like it.

 

Unfortunately for those of us who don't and choose to complain there is no way to change toolbars or washed out interface settings.

I also wonder, of those that are making complaints "of their own volition" (well nobody is making me complain exept me) how many of them are Premium customers, and how many perhaps wont be for much longer?

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I'm having a miserable experience with the app store version.  In addition to the usability issues other have reported, the content of notes is intermittently disappearing from the view window, even though it shows in thumbnails.  If I leave Evernote on the note long enough, the title is changed to Untitled Note.

 

Really buggy release and poorly thought out design.  On the heels of the recent Penultimate apology and web clipper bugs, and I'm starting to wonder if Evernote is a reliable solution for the long term, or if they've just hit a QC "rough patch".

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It seems that this is an ego thing with Evernote designers. Its not about 'people not liking change' - and the comment about how we will learn to like it is idiotic. We will not learn to like it - we will learn to tolerate the bland white look until a better option comes along. The same way we have learned to ignore the work chat buttons which seems to be cropping up everywhere despite the fact the most people don't use work chat - and context which most people don't use for anything. At least you can switch off context.

 

Why is it so difficult for Evernote designers to understand that people use Finder, Mail briefly. In and out. When we use Evernote, we use it for much longer periods of time - by removing all color you have made it extremely difficult for people to work in Evernote without going blind or losing the will to live!

 

The IOS app has three color schemes. You don't hear anyone complaining about the color for the IOS scheme. Would it take more than 1 hour of programming to add the color options? Or is it an ego thing? Or just plain incompetence? How many people need to complain before you do something? Take a look at the iTunes reviews - they mirror the sentiment on these forums. 

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  • Level 5*

@Marcus:  Please give the above post by laaurora a very careful read and analysis.

 

laaurora seems like a very well-balanced user who is, in general, not very demanding. She bought Evernote because it had a great feature set, and was easy to use.  I suspect that she is a very typical user, who you rarely hear from.  So her concerns and issues don't register in ANY statistics that you might collect.

 

I have highlighted below some of the key points that she made.

 

The bottom line is:

  • With each new release, Evernote has continued to make EN Mac less usable
  • Evernote has removed key features that are essential to the workflow of many of us
  • Evernote has continued to make the UI design harder to read, use, and quickly identify the different sections on the screen

This should come as no surprise to you.  laaurora has stated very eloquently what a number of us have been telling you for well over a year now.

 

 

I’ve been your premium user for a while now, but you don’t see me on these forums making feature requests often.

. . .

The problem is, you started to take things away. Somehow each major redesign you make adds a bunch of cool features that I don’t need and takes away something I actually care about.

. . .
The areas of the app had good contrast between each other. My eyes were landing on the target area right away, and with high contrast elements and proper buttons, finding things was intuitive and effortless. Now it’s gone. Now all I see is the sea of sameness and I don’t understand why.
. . .
How far do you think I can scroll before feeling dizzy? How easy it is to find an image I need when all I see is an awkward and often random fragment of it? Why... it's not like I'm demanding new things. It used to be there and worked.
 
Chat is a nice . . .. Context is probably useful . . ..
But I struggle to find any joy in these nice additions as the primary functionality of the app is deteriorating for me
 
As I have years invested in Evernote and it became a really important part of my workflow, I’m still grasping at straws and trying to cope with all the improvements you make.
. . .
Sorry, I’m generally not a person who throws hissy fits over the software, but previous redesign has upset me quite a bit and I really hoped that a new one would ease the pain, but you managed to make it even worse. Evernote is an important part of my life and work, so this situation upsets me more than a little.

 

 

 

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I really hope the design team does not reverse course because of this feedback.

I think the team did a great job and it's one of the best looking apps out there. Design by committee is not the answer, so stick with your vision and don't compromise it just to please people who have no business designing apps and don't know good design when they see it.

Good design is the design that works before anything. Good design solves problems, not creates them. Aesthetics is only a part of what constitutes great design, and not even a most important one. Any designer worth his salt will tell you that.

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Also, work chat is of no use to me. Can we have the choice of removing it from the top bar next to the search field? The one thing I really loved using was the one-click emailing of notes. Of course, you had to remove that and make me work harder now. The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing how much of a step back this version is in terms of usability.

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I don't really mind the progression of apps towards a flat design interface, but I do note that it can make it difficult to differentiate borders or app buttons at times. I really do miss the green color that I've associated with Evernote for so long. I agree with others that a greater degree of customization would be nice such as toggles for opacity/transparency. I would like there to be three themes: the current one, a green (classic) theme, and a new dark theme would be nice and would fit in with the Yosemite Dark theme aesthetic. Otherwise I'm generally very happy with the software currently. 

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For those of you that would like to see higher contrast or more legibility can you tell me specifically in what parts of the app?  It doesn't help me if you say the entire app.  

 

1) Are we in agreement that the actual note has enough contrast since it's on a white background?

2) List View?  I'm hearing a lot of discussion about list view.  It sounds like it's difficult to read the text on the banding (and I'm guessing a lot of this depends on one's desktop background).  I personally don't have an issue here but I understand the point.

3) What about snippet view?

 

Anyway, it would be helpful and more constructive to provide specific areas of the product you think we should continue to refine vs having larger arguments over transparency.  The sidebar of Evernote will be transparent.  This is not negotiable because this is by definition a part of the Yosemite design aesthetic.  

 

The bottom line is I agree with the sentiment that we should build a product that works for all of our users so help me provide our design team with specific details to work with.   I'm not sure we're going to satisfy everyone but I think we may be able to make things better for some.

 

P.S. It's kind of funny because on Twitter the new design is getting generally great reviews maybe because one can't write too much  :) .

 

Thanks for taking the time to listen and clarify what feedback you're looking for, Marcus. Here's my take (using 10.9.5):

 

1. Yep, notes are crystal clear. Black text on bright white background is very readable. :)

2. I don't use list view, so can't comment.

3. I do use Snippet view, though, and find it to be a big step back in readability and usability from 5.x. The easiest bit of low-contrast feedback is that the actual snippets of note content are very hard to read because the font is small(er than in 5.x) and the text is light gray on a lighter gray background. There is simply very little contrast between the color of the text and the color of the background. The note titles in Snippet view are easy to read, because they use stark black text in a good font size.

 

One other area of low contrast is the contrast between sections of the app. I have a sidebar with Shortcuts and Notebooks in it, with Snippet view to the right of that. The background color of the sidebar and Snippet view are the same, and other than a thin, light gray line there is no separation between them, which just feels ... mushy to me. Also, the lack of contrast in the side bar between sequential items (i.e. the notebook list or the shortcut list) also makes those things a little hard to parse.

 

In many UI scenarios (iTunes list views, Evernote 6's own Side List view), the list background alternates between white and medium gray to help break up the list. This helps people scan quickly and keep track of where they are, and I think both the sidebar and Snippet view would benefit from the same alternation. Just doing that would add a lot of usability-enhancing contrast to those two areas, so additional contrast work may not even be needed. But I definitely think the design would benefit from alternating background colors in the sidebar and Snippet view.

 

That's what I have for now, thanks for reading.

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Can you please add an option to hide the "New Chat" button in the top bar? I don't plan to ever use the work chat "feature" and that button is just huge and annoying.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that, Patrick. Many of us have been asking for the return of a configurable toolbar since it disappeared over 2 years ago, to no avail.

 

The ability to get rid of buttons that we don't want, to insert buttons that we do want (eg Email note, Print, etc) and to place them at different points on the toolbar is something that was removed for no apparent reason, and with no explanation as to why.

 

 

Add my voice to the choir on this stuff. No explanation was given, customizable toolbars are a totally standard feature for almost any app I can think of, and now my Evernote toolbar has more buttons that I don't care about and actively wish to get rid of (especially the shared note button, which annoys me to no end and is utterly useless to me).

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.

Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

 

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

 

I used that button all the time. Now it's hidden in a menu. Way less convenient. One quick click has become a menu dropdown and a small entry in a non-obvious place where you would never even find it if no one told you where it was.

 

What was wrong with the old button? How is the new functionality, which is harder to find and requires extra menu actions, better?

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Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look.  I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues.  I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help.  I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed.  I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

 

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks).  The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like.  On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes.  On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation.  I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

 

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see.  This includes the date and other header text.  We're going to darken this text.  Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit.  Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

 

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light.  We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring.  For some reason they are different colors for different icons.  Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

 

Thanks again for this open discussion.  We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree.   Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening.    In addition, some things are easier to change than others.  The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

 

Oops, posted my contrast feedback before seeing this post. Thanks for the update, Marcus, very glad to hear these changes are coming.

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I really hope the design team does not reverse course because of this feedback.

I think the team did a great job and it's one of the best looking apps out there. Design by committee is not the answer, so stick with your vision and don't compromise it just to please people who have no business designing apps and don't know good design when they see it.

 

How can it "one of the best looking apps out there" if it actually doesn't HAVE a "look" of its own? It used to - the green and dark grey look was distinctively Evernote. Now it looks completely anonymous, hard on the eyes going by numerous screenshots, has translucency (give me strength - why would I want to see THROUGH what I'm working on?) etc etc.

 

And your comment about people having no business designing apps and don't know good design when they see it has to be the height of patronising arrogance! If the users - you know, those who actually USE the program - find the design to be lacking, then it is bad design.  Period. You cannot tell somebody that a two-and a half wheeled bicycle that is 12" tall is good design, just because you say it is and it conforms to the design code for 12" bicycles!  It may look OK to some people, but it's completely unusable.  If you see the analogy...

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More on the All Notes button: if you do a search, a "Clear" button will pop up next to "X notes found" at the top of the note result list (at least in Snippet view, which is what I use). This is where the "All Notes" button used to be, correct?

 

Given that the UI already has support for a conditional button in that location, why not move "All Notes" back there? There's already room and support for a button in that spot. Would love to have "All Notes" resurrected from the no-one-will-find it menu location it's at now.

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I tried to read as much as I could in this forum but I just want to know if I can revert back to the old version.  I really really wish I would've investigated before agreeing to update, now even if I re-install the old dmg on my mac, it still does not let me use it?   WHy wouldn't it let me use the old version - it says that the version is too old and being managed by a newer version.   So basically only people who didn't upgrade still have the nice version of this software.   I posted a thread but no helpful input so far and I guess this is where all the talk is.  

The new version is very washed out, hard to read, hard on the eyes and difficult to see.   It doesn't look great either overall, there's hardly any obvious separation between cards/words and the background.  If I wanted to be surrounded by white I can go to the mall and into the Apple store :(  Fromthe post on the top of this thread page I see someone quoted some upcoming changes.  When will we know when the new version is available with the changes?  And is there any way we can get the darker color back for the side bar part?   I can also barely see the lines separating each section - navigation, cards, preview.  The outline of the cards is way too light and I can barely see that too.  For the lines separating sections, if I didn't notice my curser changing I wouldn't even know I was looking at separate panels.  

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  • Level 5

I tried to read as much as I could in this forum but I just want to know if I can revert back to the old version.  I really really wish I would've investigated before agreeing to update, now even if I re-install the old dmg on my mac, it still does not let me use it?   WHy wouldn't it let me use the old version - it says that the version is too old and being managed by a newer version.   So basically only people who didn't upgrade still have the nice version of this software.   I posted a thread but no helpful input so far and I guess this is where all the talk is.  

The new version is very washed out, hard to read, hard on the eyes and difficult to see.   It doesn't look great either overall, there's hardly any obvious separation between cards/words and the background.  If I wanted to be surrounded by white I can go to the mall and into the Apple store :(  Fromthe post on the top of this thread page I see someone quoted some upcoming changes.  When will we know when the new version is available with the changes?  And is there any way we can get the darker color back for the side bar part?   

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/77171-how-do-i-revert-back-to-previous-version-of-everynote/#entry325481

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I made an account just so I could add my voice as I feel very strongly on this - I just downloaded the new version and sad to see there is no contrast between sections, so is uncomfortable to use and look at for even a short period. I'm a UI designer myself, and just can't understand the reasoning for making everything white/very light grey, there's no visual hierarchy as it all just blurs into each other, and it is so painfully bright! Even the line between sections is barely noticeable! Please, please make the sidebar bg darker at the very least.

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Well, now we're getting UI designers creating accounts just to air their voices about how bad this design is. Will that make Evernote actually listen?  Doubt it.

 

But to re-iterate the point made by Grumpy - if Evernote were to give us all the control we need to change the appearance, colours, skin, layout, and yes, the toolbar - then ALL of these complaints would disappear.

 

And we could concentrate on functionality, such as those who are reporting that notes take ages to appear, note titles disappear, notes are not editable, or worse still - notes getting apparently trashed, etc.  THOSE are the complaints that need to be addressed urgently - but are being swamped by the complaints about the UI and the complete lack of ability to change it or customize it.

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I upgraded to 6.0 via the Mac App Store and all my notes have been trashed.  The notes show as blank when I attempt to display them, and the titles of any ones I touched have turned to "Untitled".  And it sync'd, so I assume the server version is corrupted too.  I reported a support ticket but I would REALLY appreciate any advice for recovering my notes.  Right now it seems like a total catastrophe.

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I am a premium user, like many here.

 

I am downgrading because this interface is much too bright for me. 

 

I am not a luddite that arbitrarily criticises change, but in this case I believe there is good reason to ask the developers to reconsider the current scheme, or at least open up the colour scheme to tailored tweaking. I simply must register my concern about the direction Evernote is taking with this new look, I would rather have an easy to use, high contrast, darker theme than a 'fashion of the moment' look that makes me think I am at a ski-field or antarctica without sunglasses during a sunny day.

 

Please, please, please listen. As a solicitor that has instructed my paralegals to use this software for our office, I find myself at work here on a Sunday uninstalling 6.0 on several computers.

 

Please take it from me, as someone that (used to?) stare at Evernote for HOURS every day, upon day, this colour scheme is not easy on the eyes for many of us. Please add a dark colour scheme. Or open up the colour scheme for modification.

 

Please do not lose touch with many of your paying and unpaying customers. This is a legitimate response that is forcing me to revert a version, and consider alternatives.

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I upgraded to 6.0 via the Mac App Store and all my notes have been trashed.  The notes show as blank when I attempt to display them, and the titles of any ones I touched have turned to "Untitled".  And it sync'd, so I assume the server version is corrupted too.  I reported a support ticket but I would REALLY appreciate any advice for recovering my notes.  Right now it seems like a total catastrophe.

 

I'm very much on the same boat as you. I just wish there was a way to revert back to the previous version but that's not an option with this data migration to the new schema. It's just sad that a company like Evernote would ever allow such defects hit their paying customers. Unlike most people in this thread, I'm not complaining about the new washed out look (even though a MAJOR step back). I'm complaining about the fact I CAN NO LONGER ACCESS MY NOTES.

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I'm very much on the same boat as you. I just wish there was a way to revert back to the previous version but that's not an option with this data migration to the new schema. It's just sad that a company like Evernote would ever allow such defects hit their paying customers. Unlike most people in this thread, I'm not complaining about the new washed out look (even though a MAJOR step back). I'm complaining about the fact I CAN NO LONGER ACCESS MY NOTES.

If you look back through this thread, there's a post on how to downgrade to 5.5.2. Some of the paths were wrong for me -- I found my old data at "~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote/old/to-migrate/Evernote" instead of what that post said. I heard a rumor you could also just remove all your local data and start the old version and let it sync back down from the cloud, but that's not how I did it.

When I did all that, I had to replace the titles of all my notes (I think the old version immediately sync'd the bad notes down from the cloud), but I could get back in again.

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I'm running Evernote 6.0 on Yosemite and it's virtually unsuable!

 

Navigation is unbearably slow. Click up or down arrow and the program waits nearly 2 seconds before the key click is registered on screen. Typing is the same - Start typing and it's nearly 2 SECONDS until the characters start appearing in your note. The longer the pogram is open the worse it is but the issue is present even after a complete system restart.

 

Using 2010 Mac Pro with 12 Gigs of RAM. Previous versions of evernote worked without issue.

 

Any ideas? Is something else conflicting with the new version of Evernote? Known issue?

 

karl

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I really REALLY don't understand why the Evernote green has totally disappeared. Even the new beta of the web version of Evernote still has the green, why on earth did you turn to blue in the mac version? This totally beats me.

 

Suggestion: just turn all that is blue now into "Evernote green", and it would be a nice update for me. However, the way it is now is very alien to me. The pleasure of using it has largely diminished. I know this may sound weird to some who prefer function above aesthetics - luckily we are not all the same. To me aesthetics is an important part of the user experience.

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In the sea of companies there are always a few that stand out from the rest and achieve something special. For designers, and especially those involved in interface design, Apple has always been one of the companies to look up to. But I actually feel that Evernote was one of those companies as well. 

 
I was never a big fan of green but you made me develop a great liking towards that particular shade because of how you used it. There was warmth to it. There was life. And it stood out. There were many applications made in compliance with Apple’s guidelines, and Evernote for Mac felt at home in Mac OS, but it also had a face of its own. It made you feel like application’s team had a vision of their own, like they developed something they took pride in and had a full control over, something that promised to last. Recognisable colors, all those patterns and textures you used, all the fun illustrations, little interactions that surprised a user in a good way – those were the parts of one big and rich experience, fun and engaging. You had the brand a lot of companies would kill for.
 
Apple have made a lot of questionable decisions with past few versions of their operational systems. In attempt to get rid of the gloss and some color excess, they also threw away a lot of individuality, engagement and old good usability. But at least they are making their own mistakes. I did not expect you to just follow.
 
When I look at EN Mac 6.0 I can surely say that it’s modern. I can definitely call this design clean. The way the elements are positioned is pleasingly balanced. But is it usable? Is it engaging? Is it recognisable? Is it something a person can possibly fall in love with? I’m sorry, I’m leaning towards a ‘No’ to all of these. It used to be a big 'Yes'.
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Although I agree or at least understand almost everything NightStalker says - here and on almost any other topic - I myself do not have an immediate problem with the design of version 6. But I can imagine that if your background is on the light side, it may become very heavy on the eyes, which is problematic by itself.

 

I just see it as a missed opportunity to overhaul Evernote for Mac and to set things right generally. The customisable toolbar is a Mac standard too, no? So many people have asked for it: why not bring it back? I think Evernote could use some more colour too as it still looks a bit stale now, even lacking in personality. There is simply a lot more of things to improve in Evernote for Mac and it's a bit of a letdown that it didn't happen right now. As said with many of Evernote's latest updates: please listen to your users.

 

Just like JeanVis I am one who can get extremely excited by design (as well as functionality) but this design didn't get me excited at all. It just left me...meh: it's okay, not good and not bad either. If I truly like a new design, I open the app especially for it: to see it again and to play with it, making me want to write things down. I don't have it with this redesign and many recent updates of Evernote have left me 'underwhelmed'.

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Panic cancelled! - My Evernote 6.0 now works as it is supposed to!

 

I made a shut-down on my iMac. When I started and opened Evernote 6.0 everything works as it should.

 

I have an iMac 2009 running newest Mavericks. And my Evernote 6.0 is downloaded from Mac App Store, not from Evernote's web account. I had the same problems as everybody else: Read-only notes, "Untitled" notes, seemingly disappearing data, slow response if any. So I started to look through my TimeMachine to find an old version of the app.

 

When I installed Evernote 6.0 I let it do it's indexing thing. But I did not guess that a re-boot was required. I know that a re-boot comes naturally to Windows users but as a Mac user I am no longer used to perform this extra step. 

 

So now my wife is happy again! - I am still somewhat annoyed by this bad experience. It could easily have been avoided by Evernote. Either by actually testing this version of the software on regular users computers or by forcing a shutdown (after asking the user for permission, of course!).

 

Sync to all my IOS devices (4) altso works as expected.

 

I have been testing business software for 25 years. I know how a software vendor's offices look like and I know something about what can go wrong. It looks to me as if there has been a lot of testing of the new functionality and the design changes to the interface. It also looks as if some version management failure has occurred. The testing of the installation process has not been done on the version of software I downloaded on the hardware and operating system I use. Someone has been a little to quick to get the job done because of a deadline, I guess.

 

And it should have been tested on my hardware/software. If the upgrade should only be used with Yosemite then the update should have been shown as incompatible software update in my Mac App Store.

 

We all (can) learn from our errors. And this means that the Evernote people now ought to be the wisest guys and dolls in the software business! (Let us not forget the Penultimate folks here!)

 

So please do not give us such a scare another time. And please make sure that you never, never change the titles on existing notes again.

 

Now that I have used the Evernote 6.0 I must admit that it has become extremely fast. When searching it finds my notes really quickly and the synchronization is also very fast. Which is nice now I get to keep my note titles again! I am sure that I also are going to love the "history" function. Evernote makes a copy of my changed notes 4 times a day and I can get the old version back!

 

Of course the interface takes some getting used to. But that is OK. I was warned about that. No complaint there. We'll all get used to it, love it and miss it terribly when they make the next major design change! Just like we always do.

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Hi @SoftwareMarcus and @Jackolicious,

As far as I can tell from your posts you're both working for Evernote. I'm working as an organizational consultant and I'm always intrigued by processes like the one I see unfolding here.

After Penultimate the new Evernote is also (partially) out if sync with its users. So I wonder how come? I mostly see this happen when companies/designers think FOR their customers (inside of the company or team bubble) instead of being in dialogue WITH their customers during the development process. So I would love to know how Evernote's development process is done. And it's not about judging. These things don't go wrong for nothing. I see these kind of symptoms a lot and it's an invitation to revise the way of working. The old ways don't fit anymore. I see both you guys making a real effort to do so. But this is after the facts. I'm curious to see how what happens will inspire Evernote to explore new ways of working. The fun thing is that you are already market leader in note taking. So even if you would open all the gates I'm almost certain it won't hurt you.

But back to my question, and out of curiosity, would you be willing to share a bit about how Evernote does its development so that I/we could understand this better.

Thanks, Jan

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Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look.  I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues.  I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help.  I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed.  I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

 

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks).  The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like.  On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes.  On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation.  I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

 

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see.  This includes the date and other header text.  We're going to darken this text.  Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit.  Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

 

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light.  We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring.  For some reason they are different colors for different icons.  Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

 

Thanks again for this open discussion.  We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree.   Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening.    In addition, some things are easier to change than others.  The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

 

New evernote was really hurting my eyes; glad to hear these changes are coming.

 

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I have a serious question for the devs: are any of you running an OLED monitor on 4700k? If your not do it, and tell me you can stare at that screen for longer than ten seconds. It hurts to look at. It's literally the brightest program I use all day and that NOT a good thing. Can we please have some color back? Pretty please? I design industrial HMI displays for a living and this would get me fired. Color, color, color. 

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I've never posted on these forums before, but version 6 on the Mac (at least on Mavericks, which is what I use) looks awful. So bright. Hard to tell what I'm supposed to look at. The old version with green and dark grey was calming and got out of the way of my thoughts. To echo what others are saying, could we have some preferences to be able to control whether we use a darker theme or this bright white/grey one?

 

I also have to say I'm dubious about the chat functions and Context, especially bringing in context from outside news sources. That scares me. You should focus on making Evernote the leanest, fastest, most robust and bulletproof tool for taking and organizing notes. There are so many other sources for web research and chat that I think development time and energy is wasted on those features.

 

Anyway, those complaints are second to the UI changes in this latest version. I still love Evernote, but please roll back the UI changes. This is depressing to use.

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It would be a lot easier to make these changes if they were configurable in Preferences.  Graphical UI elements like fonts and background colors are almost always things users can change.  Seems like a lot of people's complaints never would have made it to this forum if they could have changed the applications behavior on their own.  I know that was the first thing I did -- check the preferences for how to change the visuals back to what they were before.

 

 

 

Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look.  I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues.  I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help.  I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed.  I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

 

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks).  The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like.  On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes.  On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation.  I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

 

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see.  This includes the date and other header text.  We're going to darken this text.  Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit.  Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

 

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light.  We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring.  For some reason they are different colors for different icons.  Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

 

Thanks again for this open discussion.  We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree.   Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening.    In addition, some things are easier to change than others.  The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

 

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Yes, checking the preferences was my first move, as well.  I just couldn't believe there wasn't a way for me to have a choice in the blinding white confronting me after the update.

 

It would be a lot easier to make these changes if they were configurable in Preferences.  Graphical UI elements like fonts and background colors are almost always things users can change.  Seems like a lot of people's complaints never would have made it to this forum if they could have changed the applications behavior on their own.  I know that was the first thing I did -- check the preferences for how to change the visuals back to what they were before.

 

 

 

Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look.  I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues.  I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help.  I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed.  I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

 

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks).  The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like.  On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes.  On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation.  I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

 

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see.  This includes the date and other header text.  We're going to darken this text.  Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit.  Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

 

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light.  We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring.  For some reason they are different colors for different icons.  Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

 

Thanks again for this open discussion.  We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree.   Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening.    In addition, some things are easier to change than others.  The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

 

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I must have gotten another Evernote update than some of you guys.

 

Mine is completely in line with Yosemite and it's not 'white' at all. Everything except the notes themselves take on the colour of the background due to it's slight translucency. It brings forth the content and It's very restful to my eyes. More so than the previous version in fact, which I considered to be fine if perhaps a bit tacky. 

 

You don't have to make Evernote throw a bucket of paint on it, use a desktop wallpaper that has a warmer colour and voila. There's nowhere in my app that is as 'white' and grating as this very page that you're reading now (except the notes, and they where white previously too). 

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@Limegreen (irony in that name given all the complaints about lack of it) ;)

 

Of course, your opinion has just as much validity as everyone else's opinions, but you do seem to be in a minority of about one (maybe two - I think somebody else posted that they didn't mind the new interface).

 

But why should people have to depend on what is behind Evernote to make it legible at all, especially all those who have not upgraded to Yosemite? And what if the object behind Evernote is something like the Mail app? Even Marcus and Jack (see posts above, on this thread) have admitted that there are problems and that they will address them. But what they propose is only tinkering around the edges of the basic problem. The basic problem being that they changed something that was good, and broke it. And they have taken away or hidden everyday functions (like Email Note) buried in menus, while pushing the "New Chat" button at everyone, even though a tiny minority (I'd guess) would use it.

 

To reiterate once more - they should make the UI as customizable as possible, even to the extent of "skinning" it, and definitely make the toolbar customizable, and if they did that, then all these complaints about the interface would simply go away. I've been on these forums a long time, having been an Evernote Premium user since almost day 1, with multiple accounts. But I haven't seen an outpouring of complaints about a new release as profuse as we are seeing on here. And with so many first-time posters who have taken the trouble to find the forum, sign up, and post. Virtually ALL of those posts are very negative about the new version, while you appear to like it. And you are perfectly entitled to like it. It's just that on balance, the score seems to be many, many on the "dislike" side, with you and maybe one other on the "like" side of the equation.  Each to their own.

 

I should repeat my disclaimer - I haven't upgraded and don't intend to, and my comments are based on what is being said in here, plus numerous screenshots people have posted on various threads.  I also am back running Mavericks, as I did upgrade one iMac to Yosemite and hated it (the appearance, plus, more importantly, what they've done to the Mail app which I use, along with the well-documented WiFi issues) so I reverted using Time Machine.

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I'm running Evernote 6.0 on Yosemite and it's virtually unsuable!

 

Navigation is unbearably slow. Click up or down arrow and the program waits nearly 2 seconds before the key click is registered on screen. Typing is the same - Start typing and it's nearly 2 SECONDS until the characters start appearing in your note. The longer the pogram is open the worse it is but the issue is present even after a complete system restart.

 

We suspect that for some people the indexing takes a really long time.  This occurs in the background and is very computer intensive and could lead to slowness.  Please try leaving your computer on overnight to allow Evernote to finish indexing.  For some it might take a full day to fully finish.  After this Evernote will work faster than before.   Also there was a customer who rebooted his system after the indexing and that seemed to help.  Please keep in mind that most people are not running into this issue because they don't have the specific data that you have or there could be some sort of issue in your data that is causing the indexing to take longer than normal.  The forums make it sound like everyone is having the same issues and this is not true because the millions of people who have upgraded with no issues don't have a reason to come to the forums so you don't hear of an alternative view.  Please write back to this forum after a few days of indexing to let us know if this did or didn't fix the issue.  If it's not the indexing issue then we want to figure out a solution.

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  • Level 5*

I found the below Evernote (ver 3 I think) screen shot while reading another thread.

 

I love this UI design.  What was so wrong about it?

And if you want/need a "cleaner, less distracting" view, then just open the Note in it's own window!

 

REF:  http://arstechnica.com/apple/2008/06/evernote-talks-to-ars-about-public-beta-announcement/

 

EN-Mac-3-UI-Design.jpg

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  • Level 5*

I found the below statement from another thread to be particularly well put.

How 'bout it Evernote, do you not have any accessibility standards that you should (must?) meet?

 

 

. . .

As a designer, if I submitted this interface as a "design", I'd be laughed out of the conference room. There is a point at which un-design goes too far. You found that point. If I designed this for higher-ed on the web, it would likewise be rejected because it does not pass accessibility standards for contrast, for the visually impaired. 

. . .

 
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  • Level 5*

In general, I like the new design. I like the spirit of it, and where it's going. That said, I do have some qualms and issues, which I'll mention below. I have something I do want to say, though.
 
As is CLEARLY evident in this thread and others here on the forums, the Evernote staff DO LISTEN. It's RIGHT HERE. I think the condescension coming from users, and flippant comments like "Will this make Evernote actually listen to its users? Doubt it." do a rude disservice to the staff of a great company who work really hard to bring to you what they think is great software. They're obviously passionate about it, and are making what they think is the best product they can and bringing it to their users. I don't think it helps when the users come into a thread like this one and say flippant, rude, assumptive, and harsh comments about the design, usability, whatever the problem is. I think we can all do a bit better, be a bit nicer, and try to solve the problem instead of just whine. Personally, I tend to find it the case that when "Not to be harsh," needs to be said in addition to comments, there's usually another way to say it where that's not required. It's kind of like when people say, "Not to be rude, but -".
 
I'm incredibly thankful for what Evernote does, as I practically live inside the software. I acknowledge I'm not going to love everything they do, and features will come along that make me groan or even mentally scream into a pillow (Context replacing Related Notes being my personal example of this), etc. And I also recognize that not everyone uses the software like me. We all have different needs, and in general, I feel like Evernote does a fantastic job at letting people create a workflow that works for each person while still being complex and capable software. I love logging in to these forums because it's a large group of users who LOVE this software - how else could we get so upset when something seems to be a step backward, if we don't love the software to begin with? So, I think maybe dropping the assumptive comments like "How hard can *actually-pretty-difficult-feature* be?" and its kin would be good, and instead we keep our comments focused on how things can get better from here. We're lucky we get to talk to EN staff at all - most software, especially at the size of EN, don't offer this.

 

/endrant
 
Moving on...

  • In general, I like the new design a lot. Overall. There are specific instances of usability that can be improved upon that I think, in my not-a-UI-designer/not-an-accessibility-professional way, will help make the redesign shine, and a lot have already been mentioned.
  • I would appreciate a bigger font, especially in the sidebar/note details. My personal opinion is that Apple's Helvetica decision was a poor one (I love Helvetica, but it has its own usability issues as well, like its lowercase L capital I issue ( I, l - which is which??)), but you guys can't help that, except to maybe make the type a tad bigger. I'm 26, only very slightly nearsighted, and have the 15" Retina MBP, and I find the text a bit tough to read.
  • I do not have the contrast issues JMichael pointed out - I have no idea how the text in his Top List View is so pale. Mine is literally BLACK on WHITE (or light grey). Contrast is immensely improved in this version (with the exception of the snippet/card text issue). Remember, contrast in regards to applications is text visibility against the background. Having darker bands or colored backgrounds will, factually, DECREASE contrast, by definition of the word regarding applications. It would definitely add variety and potentially make it easier to read, but contrast, technically, will go down. One of my gripes about the v5 Windows version is how white it is, so I totally understand everyone's view on this. I don't think Mac v6 is as bad as Windows v5 with this, due to - gasp - transparency! The transparency is added because as applications get flatter, shadows disappear, etc. it adds a bit of depth. We see in 3D, and even subtly indicating dept in this way has been shown to make flatter designs easier to understand and use for most people. There was a big hubbub about this when iOS7 came out, so Google is your friend if you want to learn more about it. I've attached a screenshot of EN on a BLACK (#000000) background, and it's still definitely legible. The faint blue dot is a folder on the desktop, and it clearly doesn't impact legibility despite staring at it against the black background is jarring on its own.
  • I am starting to use Work Chat and think it's great. I just gave a talk about Evernote to a bunch of librarians in a talk discussing using technology to improve daily workflows (the library industry, not surprisingly, tends to still be very much paper-based), and faces lit up when Work Chat was mentioned. Currently at my workplace we use Slack, because not everyone uses Evernote (yet), but we users are looking forward to having conversations around specific notes and not needing to go to a 3rd party to have that talk. For business, this is a FANTASTIC feature and seeing as Evernote has a Business version, I think they've got a few users in this field.
  • The Notebook view is not so hot, IMHO. The warm grey of the notebook cover looks a bit... odd... with the cool grey of the application background. There's not enough contrast between their lightness/darkness, so it looks a bit muddy.
  • The Trash icon in Notebook view isn't centered on the notebook. (screenshot attached)
  • I think the background behind the note could maybe be a tad darker? It doesn't look all that bad by itself, but if you look at the Share button (in screenshot), the top of the button almost blends in with the background. I think a bit of contrast here would be nice.
  • Really need a border below the note title. I am definitely struggling with this, even after telling myself verbally (embarrassingly as well, because others were in the room) that "The big text is the note title, the little text the body." I still keep trying to highlight it.
  • One of my biggest "blahs" with Windows v5 is how the title/text overlays image previews on the Card View with regards to blending in with the image preview. Mac v6 is a major improvement on this IMHO (ignoring the pale grey text color which has been brought up).
  • I like the distance under the Note Title in Snippet View and its preview content. It makes it incredibly easy to scan the titles down the list. White space can be our friend, and in this instance, I really, REALLY like it.
  • I do miss some green.
  • I think the alternating background color in the Top List View works really well, but I personally feel... weird... about how the background is always white on selected notes. It could very well just be me, but having it throw off the pattern of the selected note's title background was formerly grey just gives me an itch. (example in the screenshot below)
  • Is there a reason the Notes text in the sidebar is always blue, regardless of whether or not I'm in that view or viewing a Notebook? Seems a bit odd - to me it makes sense to just have it be blue when I'm literally viewing the Notes view. 
  • THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for making the instant syncing faster. I was pulling hair out over the jerky dragging of notes around my notebooks while the app was trying to sync. This is smooth as butter now.

I found v5 too busy and hard to scan efficiently, as so much was going on in just the app design. I personally am benefitting immensely from this redesign, even with its kinks. Congrats to the Evernote team for keeping the app current, progressing, and yet also being so accepting of community feedback. I doubt even those who are livid about these changes aren't grateful for the fact that we have a way to talk to the staff and get our concerns heard. That's just cool. 

 

Trash icon:

nKCvgkmFbn.png

 

General screenshot on black #000000 desktop with folder icon, shown as blue fuzz:

ZJgCKxamav.png

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Thank you JMichael and Nightstalker for advocating on behalf of us users that have difficulty with the new UI - Specifically the readability, legibility, harsh grey on white problems ...

 

Respectfully, I think a lot of trust for paying customers could be restored with more options for customisation of zone colour, or at least, an accessibility theme for clearer text legibility and zone differentiation.

 

I understand that this is particularly a problem if using a pre-yosemite system, so my experience may be exaggerated. I welcome changes that would increase that contrast, because at the moment, white on white was just too distracting that we have had to downgrade, and are reluctant to go any further .... 

 

<sigh> It looks like this trend to make the application look fashionable at the expense of legibility has been happening for a while.

 

I specifically found my way here to post my concerns when I updated, and I am saddened to hear that we are being taken for a ride (whether we like it or not) to a new design standard, where it seems that if some of us have concerns about the new modernist look, this is gently discounted because it is, to be frankly, blasphemous as it is 'not according to the new Apple Design Rules'.

 

Rules, which some may argue are being selectively and arbitrarily applied regardless of actual practicality. 

 

The latest iteration of En is hard to read. Non-stop. I used to use EN because it was my virtual office. I could scan (Scansnap) my files, and there would be a clearly drawn rectangle of virtual paper that I could see. I could tag. I could deal with in the virtual world. Here is your piece of paper. Right there. Its form has changed. But essentially, it's still there, and it is as easy to read as a piece of paper. In my work, if I drafted an affidavit for a client and decided at the last minute to change the font type to size 6 or 8  and change the color of the text to LIGHT grey (on white paper) ... you think a client, or a judge, or opposing counsel would be happy reading this? Ah yes, and I removed the clips and staples and lines on the tables so everything could just float on glorious sexy white ... hmmm....The reason this does not happen in the real world is obvious and if I need to explain it, I'm staggered ...

 

As for the nice comments implying a rude backlash that is not warranted, what do you expect? A lot of us are not using Evernote as a sort of Pinterest style app for a homemade muffin company, we're using it for business or professional use (which is clearly a direction En seems to want to cater for). We are paying good money and desire a direct way to express our views on this great software. Evernote is not an indy or family company, it is a professional player and can take criticism (I hope), as just another form of feedback to help them to make a better product. To paint those who criticise as rude and therefore irrelevant does a disservice to those who have specifically found their way to this board to communicate their views on these changes, and hopefully, provide specific and civil feedback to help Evernote make a better product. 

 

I liked Evernote because the previous interface (En 5 and before) had all the necessary design cues that facilitated an experience where the piece of paper in my hand, a receipt, or a copy of a contract, or an affidavit, or a piece of internet research snipped off the Internet, or a doodle on a napkin, could be scanned, and that piece of paper, or information, could be gently handled and formatted by my distinctive green colored buddy, into the necessary category, and I could see it at a glance where it stood in the hierarchy of things. There were clear borders. The background pane on the left was a firm grounding point for my main categories. The visual cues and size of the fonts provided a legible grounding for my eyes to quickly locate, categorise, and deal with information.

 

This design was good enough to cultivate a trust that my information was just as solid in the Evernote software as it was in my hand. Quite a worthy achievement for something that encourages to throw away paper and trust it to live in the cloud. 

 

Now. It seems like all the text in the world is just floating there on one big white canvass... without any clear visual cues, or delineation of borders, and the text is so small and grey on white ... again, there is a reason why professionals do not print grey text on white paper (why would someone uphold such an impractical design decision?). This new design just puts everything on one big white board ... It's ... more ... work ... I cannot even find the customary Evernote green amongst my various windows which is a bit sad. It was distinctive. The new Evernote UI seems to evoke the worst aspects of "the cloud" in that it looks like a cloud.  It does not look like I have organised my information, it looks like my real paper documents and snippets have been washed, artificially processed and bleached. It looks like the information has been projected on an actual cloud mass of abstract white and grey that is harsh in its intensity and unforgiving in legibility and readability. 

 

Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade.

 

The latest interface has as much substance as a cloud.

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I was auto updated via AppStore to 6.0 and could not see the contents of any of my notes. 

 

On the advice of an Evernote forum, I uninstalled and got 6.0.1 from direct download. Now I can see my notes but a lot of the formatting has been lost. 

 

Line breaks have been removed, so my nicely formatted notes are now a series of giant unformatted paragraphs. 

 

Is there any way to get the former formatting back? This is a real problem and gives me pause before entering anything else into Evernote. Too bad because I've really come to love it and was about to spring for Premium. What happened to your QA team? 

 

Thanks, 

Carolyn V

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This thread has become really long.  Let me try to summarize the top 5 issues I'm reading and talk about if the issues are bugs or not and if there are any workarounds.  And as usual there will be a dash of commentary (That's a joke since I'm typically long winded) .  Let me know if I'm missing anything.

 

1) People migrating from 5.5 to 6.0  (mostly Mac App Store customers) may run into slowness because of background indexing which may cause notes to appear slowly or the app to feel sluggish and generally unresponsive.  The indexing process can go very quickly for most but for some it can take days but once this is finished Evernote will run as fast or faster than before. We heard similar feedback from direct download customers when they upgraded from 5.5 to 5.6 and 5.7 but these issues seem to have gone away once the indexing was complete.   If this doesn't go away, please try rebooting your machine.  If this doesn't work then please let us know in this thread because possibly there is a different issue in the Mac App Store build that we have to hunt down.

 
2) The Mac App Store version has a bug where in some select situations titles become Untitled.  If you think your note has been deleted please search for the contents of the note and most likely only the title was deleted.  This is fixed in 6.0.1 (on the direct download version) and we've submitted this release to the Mac App Store and are awaiting approval from Apple so we can release this to everyone hopefully in the next couple of days. Most people won't run into this issue but I think the above slowness is contributing to this bug appearing more often.

 

3) Some people don't like the new design.  The bottom line is if you don't like Yosemite you are not going to like the new Evernote Mac design. Apple sets the design direction and all apps must follow.  As an example, some suggested we use green as a UI highlight to support our own branding and to add a little more color.  I get this and I believe it's a perfectly reasonable proposal.  I think the one thing that might not be fully understood is that Apple has decided that blue is the UI highlight color for Yosemite.  Take a look at selected checkboxes and the down arrow for drop down menus.  It's true that we don't necessarily have to follow Apple blindly but I think it's a losing battle to try to be too different than Apple's defined UX language.  Apple sets the standards and in fact if we use standard UX controls we get their look and feel whether we want it or not and Apple wants all apps to comply so that this UX language becomes well understood.  This is NOT fashion or trying to be hip.  Apple defines the Mac world our apps lives in and we can either join or be relegated to Siberia.  This is how all Mac apps are going to look within the next year.  Now you could argue we didn't do a good job of matching Apple's design aesthetic but it's not fair to litigate Yosemite's look and feel in an Evernote forum.  There are definitely tweaks we can and are making to improve readability but this is a major OS design change and we have to and want to follow Apple's lead.

 
4) On Mavericks the app looks washed out.  I think we could have done better here and we'll be making changes to the app to support this.  Unfortunately we're caught in a transition phase.  The new Mac App is designed and optimized for Yosemite so it looks somewhat foreign on Mavericks and below.  And because it’s running on an old OS, it also can't take advantage of some of Yosemite's design elements to add in color like translucency.  In any case, the majority of Evernote users are now using Yosemite.  It's interesting because the number wasn't that high a couple of weeks ago.  I wonder if our less than stellar design on Mavericks spurred people to upgrade.

 

5) Because of the UI changes and some other recent tweaks we made because of work chat, there's a lot of discussion about customization.  I get this.  I'm a power user too.  Earlier in this thread I discussed my concerns at length but we should continue to discuss it.  

 
Of course there are other issues people are bringing up but I think these are the top 5 things I’ve seen in this thread.  I just wanted to summarize things so people didn't have to read through the entire thread.  Let me know if I missed anything.
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I'm really not liking the interface changes in version 6. I already have Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast enabled, and working in Evernote is pretty hard on my eyes. The interface is incredibly stark and the type sizes are tiny and way too grey.

 

I also have no use for the new "chat" feature and wish there were a way to get rid of the "New chat" buttons across all of the Evernote apps (Mac, iPad, iPhone). I was happy to discover that I could right-click in the sidebar and remove the Work Chat entry.

 

Anyway, the point of this post is just to add another plea to rework the interface to make it more legible and give users more options to customize the font sizes.

 

Some green would be nice, too, so I can tell I'm working in Evernote!

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On the advice of an Evernote forum, I uninstalled and got 6.0.1 from direct download. Now I can see my notes but a lot of the formatting has been lost. 

 

Line breaks have been removed, so my nicely formatted notes are now a series of giant unformatted paragraphs. 

 

Carolyn, we completely rewrote our note editor from scratch so that we could support resizable tables and images and a host of stuff we have planned for the future.  However, any big change like this has some translation issues from the old to the new.  A couple of things have come up.

 

1) We took out a line break in front and after bullets.  We felt this was more aesthetically pleasing and some people didn't like that they were forced to have it.  Because of this, there will be some differences in line spacing.

 

2) Some third party apps that people use create line breaks and spacing that we no longer recognize.  

 

Can you tell me how you created the line breaks?  Were you using Evernote or another app? Did you use a standard Return or something else?  Are you seeing the issue in all your notes or just a few?  Can you tell me more about what is unique about those notes that have the issue?   Standard line breaks using return should work flawlessly so if they aren't for you then there's another issue that we'll need to figure out.

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@Marcus: once again, we really do appreciate you coming on here and interacting with us.

 

But I'd like to take issue with a couple of your points:

 

1. You state that "In any case, the majority of Evernote users are now using Yosemite.". How do you know this? According to the IT department at the University I work for (I'm a medico and also teach at the Medical School), which is a large uni that has over 40,000 students, and thousands of staff, most of those using Macs are staying on Mavericks. And even though the initial uptake of Yosemite was higher than on Mavericks, there have been a lot of users who have "Time Machined" back to Mavericks due to intense dislike of Yosemite.  Also, the Yosemite Mail app is seriously broken, especially when trying to work with Exchange servers, which also caused a lot to revert to Mavericks.  So I don't think you can assume that "In any case, the majority of Evernote users are now using Yosemite."  I think that may be a false assumption.

 

2. Yes, the new version DOES look terrible running on Mavericks or earlier. Especially when you consider that it DID look great before.  And your following of the Apple dictates does NOT need to be so selective - if you WERE following them, then where has the configurable toolbar gone? That's a MAC OS X standard too.  You say that "Apple sets the design direction and all apps must follow." But you DON'T have to follow into obscurity. See the next point:

 

3. For an example of how an interface can be beautiful, extremely legible, totally customizable, and an absolute delight to work in, check out Curio, from Zengobi (www.zengobi.com). It is fully compatible with Yosemite, but has maintained its own unique "flavour" and is a joy to work in. And their toolbar is also customizable. Evernote could choose to go this route and maintain a brand identity, instead of being just another grey/white anonymous nothing utility.

 

As has already been stated many times (yeah, yeah, I know we're a bunch of whingers) ;) - if you had many or most of the UI elements customizable under Preferences and Toolbar Configuration, then all these complaints would go away. And more serious matters such as the "Untitled" notes, the line break issues, slow syncs, etc could be concentrated on.

 

But seriously, your interaction is really appreciated, and yes, I take it as a privilege that you and Jack do take the time and trouble to listen to us.

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I upgraded on my laptop. There have been two problems: the missing tags noted above by another user, and none of the notes have data in them, even though all the notes appear to be there. A worry is that when I log in to the web browser version, the tags appear to be missing as well. I'm hoping this doesn't turn out to be a disaster. 

 

Cheers. 

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I found the below Evernote (ver 3 I think) screen shot while reading another thread.

 

I love this UI design.  What was so wrong about it?

And if you want/need a "cleaner, less distracting" view, then just open the Note in it's own window!

 

REF:  http://arstechnica.com/apple/2008/06/evernote-talks-to-ars-about-public-beta-announcement/

 

That was version 1, I believe. 3 looked a bit more refined and lively. I felt at home in that one. Also I actually quite liked the deep grey and green of version 5, despite all the ruined functionality. But we have to be fair here, that version 1-3 IU unchanged would look really dated in modern versions of OS. Even version 5 would feel a tad off. But they could have made cosmetic changes while keeping the color, the brand and usability where they were before. I think version 2 vs 2.5 for another app I use and love is a decent example of that. They have added that Yosemite sidebar, cleaned up the icons and went easier on some gradients, but since they kept the colors and good contrast, there is no loss of familiarity or usability. It's still the same app that I could use even if the language was suddenly set to Chinese. They'll probably ruin it trying to look cool for version 3, but at the moment it's a nice example of not looking completely out of place in a modern OS and not going bland at the same time. There are plenty of examples in the app store and on the web of the interfaces that look modern and yet welcoming and highly usable.

 

Talking about fair, my App Store version of Evernote updated without any issues on Yosemite. All the notes and their titles are in place as far as I can tell, the responsiveness of the application is really good too. Other than frustration with the new UI and new functionality not being much of a use for me, this update was a nice smooth experience.

 

@MarcusSotware

Siberia isn't that bad of a place actually. I don't think it's fair to put all the responsibility for your design team's decisions on Apple. They are not supposed to design the app for you. Using controls that look native to the system is a natural way to go, but is it all that Evernote is made of? Is it going to be some kind of faceless utility from now on? Are you sure you are reading the Apple's guidelines right? Do they really say "have no face, have no color, make sure not to excite your user in any way, make their eyes hurt, make their experience as miserable as possible, make sure they feel like they are locked in a white room with nowhere to go and a job they absolutely hate'?

 

All apps looking the same soon is a horrifying prediction. That would be utterly depressing and very hard to use. I've been a loyal fan of Apple for quite few years now, yet I'd definitely be switching platforms were that to happen. Thankfully I don't think this is the way things will end. 

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On the advice of an Evernote forum, I uninstalled and got 6.0.1 from direct download. Now I can see my notes but a lot of the formatting has been lost. 

 

Line breaks have been removed, so my nicely formatted notes are now a series of giant unformatted paragraphs. 

 

Carolyn, we completely rewrote our note editor from scratch so that we could support resizable tables and images and a host of stuff we have planned for the future.  However, any big change like this has some translation issues from the old to the new.  A couple of things have come up.

 

1) We took out a line break in front and after bullets.  We felt this was more aesthetically pleasing and some people didn't like that they were forced to have it.  Because of this, there will be some differences in line spacing.

 

2) Some third party apps that people use create line breaks and spacing that we no longer recognize.  

 

Can you tell me how you created the line breaks?  Were you using Evernote or another app? Did you use a standard Return or something else?  Are you seeing the issue in all your notes or just a few?  Can you tell me more about what is unique about those notes that have the issue?   Standard line breaks using return should work flawlessly so if they aren't for you then there's another issue that we'll need to figure out.

 

 

SoftwareMarcus -

 

The editor that you talk about has been a source of frustration with me personally.  Specifically around the tables that you mention:

 

1) When creating a table on the Mac it is not possible to adjust the height of the cells from what I can see

2) Table formatting on mobile devices including iPhone and iPad is setup as a default "fit to page" view.  This does not work well with tables with lots of data.  Everything is squeezed together.  Why not reduce the font size or allow me to scroll to the left and right so the table keeps the ratio.

3) Along with the "fit to page" item, if you change the width of the columns in the table it makes the table even worse on the mobile device.  Everything is squeezed even worse.

4) There is not an easy/quick way to add cell colors for things such as column headers.

5) Adjustments of the table are difficult on the mobile device (i know this is new so I am sure that will improve)

 

Just some issues I have been having.

 

Compare this to Onenote and the table formatting stays the same on all devices and does not "fit to page"

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