The Evernote Editor

PeeJayTee · September 22, 2015

Hey everyone,

This is P.J. from the Product Team at Evernote.

I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a project that we've been working on for quite a while. As some of you may have noticed, the note editor changed in the Windows 5.9 release. Though it introduced a relatively small number of new features, it represents a larger body of work that will significantly improve note editing in Evernote.

Years of writing the editors of our clients independently of one another has taken a toll on the the consistency and quality of Evernote’s editing experience. We recognize this and we’re fully committed to making it better. We’ve created a dedicated team focused on improving the note editor and we’re hoping you notice the difference. In the coming weeks and months, you’ll start to see the fruits of this labor appear in all of the things you do to create notes in Evernote—typing, bullets and lists, tables, images, copy and pasting are just a few of the things we’ll be working on to start. Bigger improvements will follow. For more on the thinking behind this project, check out this blog post.

We can’t promise to get everything right the first time, but we can promise to listen to your feedback and work tirelessly to make every version of Evernote’s editor better than the last. If you have feedback on the editor, we’re here to listen. Feel free to comment on this thread or DM me.

Thanks!

alejandro5042 · July 8, 2016

I've never posted here but was guided here with the price increases.

I'm willing to pay the price increase if Evernote would focus on what is the most important part of the app: the note taking editor. It's crazy how I've used Evernote for years but the note taking abilities have languished. OneNote feels so great in comparison even though I very much dislike the freeform note writing. Please focus on Evernote becoming a pleasure to use. Please update the typography, spacing, etc--make it look like I'm typing a masterpiece and not using Notepad. Please add a dark theme that's easier on the eyes if you type notes all day. I don't care about Work Chat or Presentation Mode... nobody I know uses these features. We use Evernote as a much easier note taking app than Notepad[++], Word, or random online things. Reduce or hide the cruft... just focus on the main part of the app: the notes! ....the reason I came to it in the first place!

WeCanLearnAnything · July 8, 2016

On 7/7/2016 at 8:01 PM, alejandro5042 said:

I've never posted here but was guided here with the price increases.

I'm willing to pay the price increase if Evernote would focus on what is the most important part of the app: the note taking editor. It's crazy how I've used Evernote for years but the note taking abilities have languished. OneNote feels so great in comparison even though I very much dislike the freeform note writing. Please focus on Evernote becoming a pleasure to use. Please update the typography, spacing, etc--make it look like I'm typing a masterpiece and not using Notepad. Please add a dark theme that's easier on the eyes if you type notes all day. I don't care about Work Chat or Presentation Mode... nobody I know uses these features. We use Evernote as a much easier note taking app than Notepad[++], Word, or random online things. Reduce or hide the cruft... just focus on the main part of the app: the notes! ....the reason I came to it in the first place!

I agree. I've been using OneNote more and more recently and anything involving typing, tables, font, font size, kerning, formats, copy/paste, printing, etc. is dramatically better and easier. (Only Evernote's superior tagging is keeping me around.)

Evernote employees ought to use both for a while to get a feel for the quality gap.

I'm not sure, though, how important the note editor really is to the Evernote team or user base. Perhaps you and I and the people we know primarily use the note editor, but the majority of the user base uses it so sparingly that they don't run into all the glitches you and I do. Perhaps there are a lot of happy WorkChat and Evernote-branded socks-wearing people out there who do not post in these forums and thus those users are the real priority for Evernote. That would explain why bugs in Evernote's note editor have endured to celebrate so many birthdays.

ObviousBob · July 8, 2016

13 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I agree. I've been using OneNote more and more recently and anything involving typing, tables, font, font size, kerning, formats, copy/paste, printing, etc. is dramatically better and easier. (Only Evernote's superior tagging is keeping me around.)

Evernote employees ought to use both for a while to get a feel for quality gap.

I'm not sure, though, how important the note editor really is to the Evernote team or user base. Perhaps you and I and the people we know primarily use the note editor, but the majority of the user base uses it so sparingly that they don't run into all the glitches you and I do. Perhaps there are a lot of happy WorkChat and Evernote-branded socks-wearing people out there who do not post in these forums and thus those users are the real priority for Evernote. That would explain why bugs in Evernote's note editor have endured to celebrate so many birthdays.

Wow, I agree completely; I've never understood two things: how an app with "note" in its name could have such a bad note editor, and why Evernote users aren't more demanding about it getting fixed. On iOS, where I've used it for years, still very basic things don't work: copy/paste, font sizes, checkboxes.. I don't understand how people can use this editor day in and day out without noticing. But maybe people just don't use Evernote for notes - at least not on mobile. This is why I'm hard pressed to justify paying $45 a year for Evernote - why think that the editor will suddenly get fixed if it hasn't for the last five years?

To be fair, they have fixed some editor bugs in iOS, and greatly improved the Android editor, and I find the Mac editor quite usable. But iOS is still inferior to almost any other iOS editor you can name, so paying a yearly fee for its use it pretty hard to swallow.

WeCanLearnAnything · July 9, 2016

12 hours ago, Bob in NV said:

Wow, I agree completely; I've never understood two things: how an app with "note" in its name could have such a bad note editor, and why Evernote users aren't more demanding about it getting fixed. On iOS, where I've used it for years, still very basic things don't work: copy/paste, font sizes, checkboxes.. I don't understand how people can use this editor day in and day out without noticing. But maybe people just don't use Evernote for notes - at least not on mobile. This is why I'm hard pressed to justify paying $45 a year for Evernote - why think that the editor will suddenly get fixed if it hasn't for the last five years?

To be fair, they have fixed some editor bugs in iOS, and greatly improved the Android editor, and I find the Mac editor quite usable. But iOS is still inferior to almost any other iOS editor you can name, so paying a yearly fee for its use it pretty hard to swallow.

According to the OP, Evernote has a "dedicated team" that's working on the note editor. I don't know what "dedicated team" means. Hopefully it means a group of 10+ people working full-time and exclusively on fixing the editor. I hope it does not just mean a bunch of employees with full-time obligations who are dedicating spare time to the endeavor.

According to the blog post, they've been working on this project for nearly 3 years now... I wonder if there is anyone to tell which milestones have been reached, if the project is still underway, etc.

JMichaelTX · July 9, 2016

7 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

According to the blog post, they've been working on this project for nearly 3 years now.

If that is correct, it is incredible! I can't imagine it taking 3 years for a dedicated team to write a good rich text editor.

It's not like this is some new technology -- it's been around for decades, and there are a multitude of good examples.

Claude33 · July 10, 2016

On 08/07/2016 at 1:01 PM, alejandro5042 said:

I've never posted here but was guided here with the price increases.

I'm willing to pay the price increase if Evernote would focus on what is the most important part of the app: the note taking editor. It's crazy how I've used Evernote for years but the note taking abilities have languished. OneNote feels so great in comparison even though I very much dislike the freeform note writing. Please focus on Evernote becoming a pleasure to use. Please update the typography, spacing, etc--make it look like I'm typing a masterpiece and not using Notepad. Please add a dark theme that's easier on the eyes if you type notes all day. I don't care about Work Chat or Presentation Mode... nobody I know uses these features. We use Evernote as a much easier note taking app than Notepad[++], Word, or random online things. Reduce or hide the cruft... just focus on the main part of the app: the notes! ....the reason I came to it in the first place!

I can't agree with this post more strongly. I have always resisted moving to a paid plan with Evernote because although I find the syncing, nested notebooks and tagging functions incredibly useful, the editor constantly drives me nuts. Every few years someone says something about fixing it, and usually it just gets worse. I mean, it's basically an HTML editor, for crying out loud, but they can't even iron the bugs out, let alone add useful features like styles, markdown, or even superscript. Personally, I'd settle for being able to hand-edit the code so I could at least tidy up the mess, but although most embedded HTML editors will let you do that, Evernote won't. I know there's probably some weird XML in there because Evernote have tried to add all sorts of bells and whistles to notes, but seriously, it just suggests a company that doesn't care about getting the foundations right.

By trying to force me to pay for a useful but insanely frustrating product, what Evernote are really doing is forcing me to take my frustrations seriously. If they fixed the basics, I would pay without hesitation. Multi-platform note-taking with good organization and search tools is extremely handy. But you have to get the basics right. Time to look for a new option.

WeCanLearnAnything · July 11, 2016

12 hours ago, Claude33 said:

I can't agree with this post more strongly. I have always resisted moving to a paid plan with Evernote because although I find the syncing, nested notebooks and tagging functions incredibly useful, the editor constantly drives me nuts. Every few years someone says something about fixing it, and usually it just gets worse. I mean, it's basically an HTML editor, for crying out loud, but they can't even iron the bugs out, let alone add useful features like styles, markdown, or even superscript. Personally, I'd settle for being able to hand-edit the code so I could at least tidy up the mess, but although most embedded HTML editors will let you do that, Evernote won't. I know there's probably some weird XML in there because Evernote have tried to add all sorts of bells and whistles to notes, but seriously, it just suggests a company that doesn't care about getting the foundations right.

By trying to force me to pay for a useful but insanely frustrating product, what Evernote are really doing is forcing me to take my frustrations seriously. If they fixed the basics, I would pay without hesitation. Multi-platform note-taking with good organization and search tools is extremely handy. But you have to get the basics right. Time to look for a new option.

Let us know if you find anything!

I like the way OneNote handles all the word processing aspects of notes, but dislike the notebook/section/page stuff and the inconsitent and hard-to-use tagging features. If you find something better, please message me!

WeCanLearnAnything · July 11, 2016

On 7/9/2016 at 3:31 AM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

According to the blog post, they've been working on this project for nearly 3 years now... I wonder if there is anyone to tell which milestones have been reached, if the project is still underway, etc.

On 7/9/2016 at 10:34 AM, JMichaelTX said:

If that is correct, it is incredible! I can't imagine it taking 3 years for a dedicated team to write a good rich text editor.

It's not like this is some new technology -- it's been around for decades, and there are a multitude of good examples.

Rich text editors are not new technology, but I'm sure it's harder to make a uniform experience across Android, iOS, Macs, Windows, BlackBerry and various browsers.

I wish I had the software knowledge and expertise to know if 3 years is a long time to develop that, but I don't know. I guess Evernote doesn't want us to know..

nicobro88 · July 13, 2016

If Evernote devs really read this posts it would be nice to have some status update on this. If I understood it, the idea is to have consistency between platforms but in the last time I saw rich links added to the web app, later to the mac client, and that's all...; zoom added to the mac client, later to the windows client... and that's all; code blocks to the windows client, web app, (not sure for mac).... and that's all.

I expected to start to see editor new features, fixes and improvements released in all platforms more or less at the same time.

Maybe i have a wrong idea about the objective of this big change.

s2sailor · July 13, 2016

10 hours ago, nicobro88 said:

I expected to start to see editor new features, fixes and improvements released in all platforms more or less at the same time.

I would be interested in seeing some type of status update as well, though it is uncommon for them to do so.

I don't think I've seen EN commit to editor improvements "at the same time." I believe each OS has its own development team so these are being rolled out independently and I suspect that individual OS nuances make some editor changes more challenging than others so the feature rollout is different. I'm a Windows user and have definitely seen editor improvements on that platform though I look forward to future enhancements.

nicobro88 · July 13, 2016

hace 17 minutos, s2sailor dijo:

I believe each OS has its own development team so these are being rolled out independently

I agree with this, but let's take the example of rich links. They came out first on the web app, i didn't expected to see it the next day in all platforms, but it would be nice to see it in the next available release. Obviously I understand that some features may be more tricky than others but I gave 3 recent examples and none of the got replicated in more than two platforms (correct me if i'm wrong).

hace 17 minutos, s2sailor dijo:

I suspect that individual OS nuances make some editor changes more challenging than others so the feature rollout is different

This also may be true, but that's the point of my post. I am sure that it has been told that they are working in a single core editor that would span across all (or most) the platforms. This is what I would like to have better explained.

hace 17 minutos, s2sailor dijo:

I'm a Windows user and have definitely seen editor improvements on that platform though I look forward to future enhancements.

I'm also a Windows user but I saw more features than improvements added. To me still feels laggy, find strange issues every now and then, or some bug with lost data.

I been a user for a couple of years, and premium the last two. But even before the price increases I started migrating most of my notes to QUIP because that tool provides me the consistency I thought I would start to see in Evernote. Despite this I still hope to see this fixed in Evernote

Gudman · July 19, 2016

I was going to complain about the ink editor. I wish you make the background paper color optional. I like my paper white (and ruled). Having to put up with the yellow paper (for one who loves handwriting) is a major irritant on Evernote. I understand you have a beta for Window which I quickly downloaded but only a few cosmetic changes. Please make a white ruled paper your default.

WeCanLearnAnything · July 20, 2016

It sounds like the employee who started this thread, @PeeJayTee, is no longer with the company. This forum now says that he's "Evernote Alumni"

I hope this change is not representative of the laudable efforts to fix the editor!

Perhaps Evernote can assign another employee to attend to this thread and provide updates and previews regarding changes to the editor?

gazumped · July 20, 2016

5 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

updates and previews regarding changes to the editor

History suggests that Evernote don't (normally) do anything like that. You'll see improvements when (and if) they get released, and not before. Try subscribing to the Beta channels to stay in touch...

Krunoslav · July 21, 2016

22 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

It sounds like the employee who started this thread, @PeeJayTee, is no longer with the company. This forum now says that he's "Evernote Alumni"

I hope this change is not representative of the laudable efforts to fix the editor!

Perhaps Evernote can assign another employee to attend to this thread and provide updates and previews regarding changes to the editor?

So I guess my first response was my gut instinct being right. Evernote's ability to address the features users actually want is appalling. In some instances they showed good will as by the mentioned user but apparently that is not the same as the overall company policy. It would seem he either acted under different management or on his own. So we cannot really put much hope anymore, that the Evernote team will actually finish their, what is it now "4 year" project with a dedicated team working on it. Ha!

DTLow · July 21, 2016

1 hour ago, Krunoslav said:

Evernote's ability to address the features users actually want is appalling.

Edited: I also find the note editor is quite basic and would welcome additional features.

I encourage you to show your approval by voting using the voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion.

Disclaimer: Altough Evernote employees encourage voting, some users say the voting system doesn't work, and no one uses it

gazumped · July 21, 2016

Evernote always have operated on the basis that while they're pleased to keep users in the loop from time to time, they don't employ anyone as a user-facing intermediary. Yet various employees have stopped by here to help out forum members and comment on some issues. It's not a question of "do they care" it's "do they have time?". You may have noticed the company went through some major changes recently...

As to addressing the features that users actually want, I think their problem is that they're swimming in conflicting and confusing requests from users. Evernote are developing their product under a timetable to which we don't have access. If there's a request which can be addressed by a small change in code it will happen quickly. If the change requires a major rewrite of big chunks of the app, it can only be processed slowly through the multiple operating systems and various device specs that we all use. The company has already delivered more updates and bug fixes in the past couple of years than Microsoft, Google and Apple together. It would be polite to give them credit for that, rather than just demand a personal update - which would likely raise more questions and argument and take up more employee time.

gbarry · July 21, 2016

The new editor is live on latest versions of Windows, Mac, Android, and the web client. If you check our forum product release notes (latest is pinned in each individual product feedback area) there are often editor fixes included as we resolve issues or make improvements. iOS is coming very soon, and will have v 1.5 of our latest editor baked in (the others are on 1.0 and will play catch up). PJ may be an alumnus, but we have a new PM managing this project who we'll be onboarding to our forums after we begin to consolidate editor requests and discussions into a global product feedback area.

Krunoslav · July 21, 2016

28 minutes ago, gbarry said:

The new editor is live on latest versions of Windows, Mac, Android, and the web client. If you check our forum product release notes (latest is pinned in each individual product feedback area) there are often editor fixes included as we resolve issues or make improvements. iOS is coming very soon, and will have v 1.5 of our latest editor baked in (the others are on 1.0 and will play catch up). PJ may be an alumnus, but we have a new PM managing this project who we'll be onboarding to our forums after we begin to consolidate editor requests and discussions into a global product feedback area.

That is certainly nice to hear. Can we expect Heading 1,2,3 and paragraph options and ability to apply them easily by right mouse click and some keyboard shortcuts. I haven't used web version of Evernote for some time now, but if I remember correctly there was a right click menu pop up options for text editing. I wouldn't mind that on Desktop.

Preferably not English keyboard layout only for obvious reasons if you will add keyboard shortcuts. Superscript, subscript Ability to change the color of the highlighter tool and uppercase only, lower case only etc. The standard tools found in most text editors. Ability to add styles or quote the text would be also nice, but I can live without that if its too much trouble. Although they are available here in the web editor on this forum, and that is just not right.

Just make it more convenient to write and format text please with more than the very basic set of features. I don't expect full blown text editor like MS Word, but at least make changes to some of the things I mentioned. Certainly ability to assign paragraphs and heading, sub heading etc with a right click and different colors for highlighter tool which would greatly increase the note taking capabilities of Evernote. Thank you.

P.S.
Insert horizontal line is a great feature in Evernote that I use often but the keyboard shortcut is only for English layout keyboards. Its useless on a different layout. (Ctrl + Shift + - ) is not working on my Croatian layout keyboard and I'm sure its not the only layout where its not working. Can that be changes to some other keyboard shortcut or as it would be the best allow users to assign their own keyboard shortcuts. Please do something about that. Thank you.

gustavgi · July 21, 2016

49 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Then again, with only 7 votes (voting buttons in the upper left corner), it might not be that easy to identify what features users actually want.
I think hierarchical folder filing gets more votes. Note: They haven't implemented that either < appalling

I'm pretty sure EN realized pretty quickly that the voting system doesn't work as noone uses it, and I'm sure they are just as interested in number of posts in a thread if it hints to an interest level among the users,

Krunoslav · July 21, 2016

54 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Then again, with only 7 votes (voting buttons in the upper left corner), it might not be that easy to identify what features users actually want.
I think hierarchical folder filing gets more votes. Note: They haven't implemented that either < appalling

2 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

I'm pretty sure EN realized pretty quickly that the voting system doesn't work as noone uses it, and I'm sure they are just as interested in number of posts in a thread if it hints to an interest level among the users,

Thank you! I was writing precisely that.

Aseem Bansal · July 21, 2016

5 minutes ago, Krunoslav said:

Thank you! I was writing precisely that.

I guess people don't vote because Evernote team does not reply. I don't see any comments that they are thinking about things.

DTLow · July 21, 2016

31 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

I'm pretty sure EN realized pretty quickly that the voting system doesn't work as noone uses it, and I'm sure they are just as interested in number of posts in a thread if it hints to an interest level among the users,

They are still encouraging people to vote, and when I'm interested in an issue I try to get it upvoted. I don't see the harm in upvoting a request, and yet every time I try ato encourage voting I get responses like this.

Fine then

+1

gustavgi · July 21, 2016

21 minutes ago, DTLow said:

They are still encouraging people to vote, and when I'm interested in an issue I try to get it upvoted. I don't see the harm in upvoting a request, and yet every time I try ato encourage voting I get responses like this.

No harm in voting of course and I do it myself as well. Encouragement and information is also a good thing. But playing down the importance of threads just because they have little to no votes, is not.

Krunoslav · July 21, 2016

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Evernote always have operated on the basis that while they're pleased to keep users in the loop from time to time, they don't employ anyone as a user-facing intermediary. Yet various employees have stopped by here to help out forum members and comment on some issues. It's not a question of "do they care" it's "do they have time?". You may have noticed the company went through some major changes recently...

As to addressing the features that users actually want, I think their problem is that they're swimming in conflicting and confusing requests from users. Evernote are developing their product under a timetable to which we don't have access. If there's a request which can be addressed by a small change in code it will happen quickly. If the change requires a major rewrite of big chunks of the app, it can only be processed slowly through the multiple operating systems and various device specs that we all use. The company has already delivered more updates and bug fixes in the past couple of years than Microsoft, Google and Apple together. It would be polite to give them credit for that, rather than just demand a personal update - which would likely raise more questions and argument and take up more employee time.

I'll give credit to some of the bug fixes. I agree they have been fixing some of the nasty bugs especially int he last beta release and quickly made an update to that. Kudos.

However I can't agree with they don't have the time. Take Wunderlist to-do-app team. If I'm not mistaken they are just as small if not smaller team than Evernote. But they have one person who is in the comments section and his entire job is to communicate between the developers and users. He is authorized to answer all the users about what the team is doing. He takes as much time as needed and answers virtually every comment, no matter how rude or polite the comment might be. I respect that. And its a two way communication because he takes the user requests to the team in meetings. They have a whole functional system in place for this. And its only one person.

Heck, with the number of dedicated user in Evernote and people like you who is counting " 16,242 posts" with no pay I imagine. All they have to do is ask someone like you to act as ambassador between the developers and users. Let them authorize you and problem solved. They have no time is not an excuse I can agree on. I'm sorry. You always have time for things you put first. And Evernote has a long sad history of not putting its users where it should. To quote Henry Ford here: “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” Judging by the financial troubles in Evernote, maybe its time that some decision maker at the top takes that quote to hearth. With all do respect off course.

DTLow · July 21, 2016

7 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

No harm in voting of course and I do it myself as well. Encouragement and information is also a good thing. But playing down the importance of threads just because they have little to no votes, is not.

Got it; Encourage voting, without indicating it has any importance

I will amend my post

s2sailor · July 21, 2016

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

The company has already delivered more updates and bug fixes in the past couple of years than Microsoft, Google and Apple together.

Glad you think so but where did this come from?

I appreciate the recent fixes with the new editor but to me they are still playing catch up. The editor was basically ignored or such a low priority that not much happened for several years. This new editor does give them a frame work to build on but is long, long over due and except for a few changes, IMO currently just has feature parity with the old editor. I'll start getting excited when I see some long requested enhancements show up.

gustavgi · July 21, 2016

2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Got it; Encourage voting, without indicating it has any importance

Who said that sarcasm doesn't work on the internet?

Just because someone has 0 dollars in their bank account, doesn't mean that they are broke. But it might indicate that they are broke if they have no other visible assets..

Votes do have importance, it's just not the only indicator. So a thread with 3 replies but 25 upvotes will of course easier get some notice than the same thread with no votes. But a thread with 120 replies and 1 upvote will probably get more attention than both..

s2sailor · July 21, 2016

1 minute ago, gustavgi said:

Votes do have importance, it's just not the only indicator. So a thread with 3 replies but 25 upvotes will of course easier get some notice than the same thread with no votes. But a thread with 120 replies and 1 upvote will probably get more attention than both..

I think it would be best if EN just abandoned the current voting mechanism and put a more meaningful process in place for collecting online user input.

gustavgi · July 21, 2016

3 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

I think it would be best if EN just abandoned the current voting mechanism and put a more meaningful process in place for collecting online user input.

I agree. Hopefully they have something like that in mind when refering to a new global feedback forum.

Krunoslav · July 21, 2016

1 minute ago, gustavgi said:

I agree. Hopefully they have something like that in mind when refering to a new global feedback forum.

Me too. Although I think that anyone who is interested and observant can see the request and make educated guess what the users want the most. So far it seems the company had either unauthorized forum moderators or disinterested decision makers. Probably both. After all one would explain the other.

s2sailor · July 21, 2016

2 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

Hopefully they have something like that in mind when refering to a new global feedback forum.

Let's hope so.

JMichaelTX · July 21, 2016

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

The company has already delivered more updates and bug fixes in the past couple of years than Microsoft, Google and Apple together.

What is the basis for your assertion? Frankly, to me it seems patently false, and quite outrageous.

DTLow · July 21, 2016

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

I think it would be best if EN just abandoned the current voting mechanism and put a more meaningful process in place for collecting online user input.

I started a topic so this could be discussed

WeCanLearnAnything · July 21, 2016

4 hours ago, gbarry said:

The new editor is live on latest versions of Windows, Mac, Android, and the web client. If you check our forum product release notes (latest is pinned in each individual product feedback area) there are often editor fixes included as we resolve issues or make improvements. iOS is coming very soon, and will have v 1.5 of our latest editor baked in (the others are on 1.0 and will play catch up). PJ may be an alumnus, but we have a new PM managing this project who we'll be onboarding to our forums after we begin to consolidate editor requests and discussions into a global product feedback area.

I'm very happy to hear that progress continues.

JMichaelTX · July 26, 2016

On 7/21/2016 at 0:04 PM, gustavgi said:

I'm pretty sure EN realized pretty quickly that the voting system doesn't work as noone uses it, and I'm sure they are just as interested in number of posts in a thread if it hints to an interest level among the users,

I'm not sure how you can be so "sure" of what Evernote knows, or is interested in. Unless you are an Evernote employee, or have seen specific statements from Evernote management, I'm pretty sure what you have said is just a guess, your opinion.

OTOH, Evernote did ADD voting as one of the major new features when they updated this forum software. Unfortunately, until now, there has not been any direct communication from Evernote about this voting system. But now there is:

I will add that, IMO, voting should not be the only means of determining new features, new design, or changes to the Evernote products.

gustavgi · July 26, 2016

On ‎26‎.‎07‎.‎2016 at 9:11 PM, JMichaelTX said:

I'm not sure how you can be so "sure" of what Evernote knows, or is interested in. Unless you are an Evernote employee, or have seen specific statements from Evernote management, I'm pretty sure what you have said is just a guess, your opinion.

OTOH, Evernote did ADD voting as one of the major new features when they updated this forum software. Unfortunately, until now, there has not been any direct communication from Evernote about this voting system. But now there is:

I will add that, IMO, voting should not be the only means of determining new features, new design, or changes to the Evernote products.

Well the addition of "pretty" suggests that it was guess on my part that Evernote had realized that the system wasn't working. And I see the new thread that you have linked to as proof that Evernote had realized that the up-voting system wasn't working. Why else would there be a need for a thread like that now? The thread is a call for people to start using the system, in hope that they can still use it to pin point good suggestions in the future. And like I wrote above, I am all for a working voting system and I do vote myself. So I hope the thread will lead to users starting to use it more.

But the votes have not been crucial to getting Evernote to implement new features, and I am sure about that since recent history shows that you can ask to have a feature implemented and get through without the presence of any up-votes at all. But in most cases you might need some support to back up that other users will benefit from your suggestion as well, and a larger number of votes is of course a good case for that.

WeCanLearnAnything · October 1, 2016

I am still experiencing all the same note editor bugs and quirks that I've been suffering from since before this thread started. I stuck with Evernote's bugs during the CE's long development process assuming the CE would fix them. Why, I figured, would any major revamp hold on to those bugs?

Off the top of my head, Evernote's editor's enduring bugs and quirks include:

Cursors leaping all over the screen randomly, something Jason Kincaid famously reported on in 2014.
Frustratingly random font size changes, including to font sizes that are not supposed to be possible, such as 17. This bug is years old.
Difficulties formatting text that I copy/paste from other sources. Evernote is the only mainstream text editor that has these formatting issues. Libre Office, Google Docs, MS Word, One Note, etc. all handle such text formatting with no problems, at least in my experience. Sometimes extremely basic functions such as delete and backspace fail. I believe these bugs are many years old. David Pogue reported on this in Oct. 2015.
Major failures and glitches to the undo function in tables. I believe this is years old.
Printing remains so broken that I'm forced to copy-paste my Evernote content into other programs to print, well, anything. This issue is many years old.
Text not appearing properly on screen, such as parts of italic letters disappearing for some reason. Not sure how old this bug is.
Inability to add or remove rows or columns from tables in Evernote's browser version. I believe this issues is years old but am not sure.
Again in tables, the up key moves the cursor left and the down key moves the cursor right. I'm still waiting for Evernote to share the names of the people who thought this was a good idea to start out with and who decided to keep it around (perhaps forever?). I think this quirk is years old, too.

I thought that the whole point of the Common Editor was to get rid of all these weird glitches. [EDIT. And a second purpose: create a more consistent editor experience across platforms.]

Or perhaps the CE fixed some huge list of other bugs I'm not aware of (if so, bravo!) and the ones I listed are just not a priority?

JohnLongney · October 7, 2016

hello to you all,

I'm relatively new to Evernote but one of my first thoughts was "what a sub-standard editor" even under Windows, never mind Android.

After reading quite a number of your comments I am wondering whether the Evernote teams are really concerned about some blatant deficiencies in their relationships with customers.

What got me really quite cross today was that a feature proudly announced with the latest Win build simply is not working at all and though several users, including myself, posted such in the 6.3 announcement thread over a week ago, no tech support statement as to whether a patch will be supplied shortly has been forthcoming to date. Google supplied this thread here on one of my points of dissatisfaction with the actual software. The added poignancy is Evernote's apparent disrespect to customer wishes. I, too, am a paying member and what's more, subscribe to Office 365. Whilst many things happening around Windows 10 as OS do not please me overly, the grade of quality in the traditional Office software is still superb. As I am not a fan of OneNote I stayed on with Evernote after a year of premium membership given away as a promotion by German Telekom.

However if the current editor is the result of 3 years of development I shudder to think how long it will take to raise to a kind of standard level. Annotation in a pdf-file is so attrocious to produce a warning by Adobe Acrobat as faulty parts of coding added.

However what delights me is to read @Krunoslav here. The world is a small place. Through one of his fantastic tutorials I got an idea about dodging and burning & beauty retouching in Photoshop. One of main uses of Evernote is collecting and consolidating tipps and tricks on Photoshop & LR for my own use.

Cheers

John Longney

DTLow · October 7, 2016

4 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

I'm relatively new to Evernote but one of my first thoughts was "what a sub-standard editor" even under Windows, never mind Android.

I think it depends on your purpose in using the product.
If you intend to do word processing or spreadsheet activities - you have picked the wrong product; it's also not a great product for photo retouching
I find it adequate for notes, and assembling attachments into a note; the additional editing features are a bonus

gazumped · October 7, 2016

4 minutes ago, JohnLongney said:

a feature proudly announced with the latest Win build simply is not working at all and though several users, including myself, posted such in the 6.3 announcement thread over a week ago, no tech support statement as to whether a patch will be supplied shortly has been forthcoming to date.

Hi. This feature would be??

5 minutes ago, JohnLongney said:

Google supplied this thread here on one of my points of dissatisfaction with the actual software.

Which thread where..

5 minutes ago, JohnLongney said:

The added poignancy is Evernote's apparent disrespect to customer wishes.

How exactly?

... Not to be unwelcoming, but if you can explain more precisely what you would like to see, maybe we can offer some work-arounds.

Evernote, currently serving around 200M clients, is a kind of supertanker negotiating around shipping lanes. It has tasks scheduled for the next year or so, but might be tweaked in one direction or another by urgent needs. By definition it can't 'react to customer needs' because it is already doing so - in terms of the last 1,000 or so requests for features and changes. Requests received today will be processed in a few months....

WeCanLearnAnything · October 8, 2016

7 hours ago, gazumped said:

...it can't 'react to customer needs' because it is already doing so - in terms of the last 1,000 or so requests for features and changes. Requests received today will be processed in a few months....

How about the many bug-fixing requests that have been coming in every few months for 5+ years? e.g. Making font sizes work, fixing printing, basic formatting, etc? Will Evernote refuse to fix those bugs (feature addition seems to be a higher priority) for another 5+ years?

DTLow · October 8, 2016

7 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

How about the many bug-fixing requests that have been coming in every few months for 5+ years? e.g. Making font sizes work, fixing printing, basic formatting, etc? Will Evernote refuse to fix those bugs (feature addition seems to be a higher priority) for another 5+ years?

Evernote is issuing software updates all the time.

The focus seems to be the highest priority items, and you can influence this by up-voting requests in the feedback forums (voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion)

This discussion currently has 10 votes.

gazumped · October 8, 2016

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

Will Evernote refuse to fix those bugs

Evernote has never 'refused' to fix bugs. Silence isn't refusal, just Evernote's normal disinclination to comment.

Problems with fonts, printing and formatting are all tied up with the problem of making things work in four different operating systems and multiple OEM modified devices. They're not bugs, they're missing features. Which Evernote has actually worked on for years, firstly creating their own editor code which can be grafted into the various clients. Macs have only just had their new editor. Now they're in a position to develop more editor-based features so you should see more improvements in all clients in the next 12 months.

As to favoring new features, Evernote must have a maintenance schedule in place to make sure (as far as possible) that everything keeps running efficiently for its huge customer base. It will also have a separate development team working on ideas submitted via this forum, blog responses, user email, user groups etc. etc. They'll have their own schedule for what can be introduced 'quickly' - requiring minimal effort and preparation apart from user testing and some QA - and what needs a root and branch rewrite of something fundamental to every client - like the common editor. There are presumably several features in development at the same time, and whichever gets through the testing process first will see the light of day.

There's no preference involved, just practicality.

WeCanLearnAnything · October 8, 2016

4 hours ago, gazumped said:

Evernote has never 'refused' to fix bugs. Silence isn't refusal, just Evernote's normal disinclination to comment.

Problems with fonts, printing and formatting are all tied up with the problem of making things work in four different operating systems and multiple OEM modified devices. They're not bugs, they're missing features....

I agree that cross-platform uniformity is a tough task and that some things like normal printing is a missing feature. But many of the other things I mentioned are bugs.

When I'm in the Windows editor and pressing ENTER and using horizontal rules make the font size change to the supposed-to-be-impossible 17, that's a bug, not a "missing feature".

When my Evernote editor sometimes fully displays and sometimes does not fully display italics depending on the arrow key I press, that's a bug, not a missing feature.

When pressing EDIT-UNDO or CTRL+Z causes the cursor to leap from wherever it is all the way to the top of the note while pressing down bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, and highlight, that's a bug, not a missing feature.

When my defaults say to open a note with Tahoma font size 14 but I get a note with font size 13 - which then becomes stubbornly hard to change - that's a bug, not a missing feature.

Evernote's editor contains plenty of bugs to fix.

[Edit: And the Evernote team absolutely does have a long record of refusing to fix bugs. They acknowledge the bugs in the forums and in support tickets - this is not silence - but refuse to fix them, choosing to expend far more resources into adding things like WorkChat, backpacks, Presentation Mode, recipe sharing, UI redesigns, etc.]

WeCanLearnAnything · October 8, 2016

5 hours ago, DTLow said:

Evernote is issuing software updates all the time.

The focus seems to be the highest priority items, and you can influence this by up-voting requests in the feedback forums (voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion)

This discussion currently has 10 votes.

I will definitely be up-voting a lot more bug-fixing requests!

gazumped · October 8, 2016

6 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

They acknowledge the bugs in the forums and in support tickets - this is not silence - but refuse to fix them, choosing to expend far more resources into adding things like WorkChat, backpacks, Presentation Mode, recipe sharing, UI redesigns, etc

What? Please quote me one verifiable statement from Evernote support that says "we're not gonna fix this". And. Backpacks????

WeCanLearnAnything · October 9, 2016

7 hours ago, gazumped said:

What? Please quote me one verifiable statement from Evernote support that says "we're not gonna fix this". And. Backpacks????

I don't have a quote. I'm making this inference by looking at their behavior.

My point is that Evernote has limited resources and can allocate them in various amounts into, say, fixing 5+ year-old bugs. And/Or WorkChat. And/Or backpacks and socks. They chose to put a LOT of resources into the latter two that could have - and, IMHO should have - gone into fixing the Everbugs.

Feel free to Google search Evernote backpacks and socks to learn more. That effort continued for, I believe, two years after Kincaid's famous post.

gazumped · October 9, 2016

4 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

They chose to put a LOT of resources into the latter two that could have - and, IMHO should have - gone into fixing the Everbugs.

I don't think the guy(s?) that were out there sourcing stylish items to rebadge as 'Evernote' bags and socks would have made a great contribution to coding. And at some stage the store was reportedly generating serious income. It may well have put off the need to increase subscriptions for a year or more. It was an experiment which became a distraction - like I said before, probably because of discussions like these.

4 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I'm making this inference by looking at their behavior.

Again, what behaviour? Evernote employees have said quite openly that they're not allowed to comment on ongoing route plans or development, though (very) occasionally they do break the rules. The only development (AFAIK) that Evernote have formally ruled out (at least for the time being) is the creation of a dedicated Linux client; because despite the pressure from that lobby, adding a new client means additional staff / training / support and investment plus an unknown development cost. Although several Linux users have generously offered to start paying for the service if the package is on offer, it's just not a commercial proposition for the company. And Evernote (as you'll note from their behaviour) is now very much a commercial operation.

DTLow · October 9, 2016

10 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

My point is that Evernote has limited resources and can allocate them in various amounts into, say, fixing 5+ year-old bugs. And/Or WorkChat. And/Or backpacks and socks. They chose to put a LOT of resources into the latter two that could have - and, IMHO should have - gone into fixing the Everbugs.

Feel free to Google search Evernote backpacks and socks to learn more. That effort continued for, I believe, two years after Kincaid's famous post.

I wasn't aware of the extent of resources put into the Market, but you should be happy they decided to no longer continue that project.
However, as has been pointed out before, it's not like they reassigned developers to knitting socks.

Personally I ignored the Market project, but it does seem to have caused anguish for some users.
I do applaud the attempt for alternate revenue streams; more palatable than user fees.

WeCanLearnAnything · October 12, 2016

On 10/9/2016 at 4:06 AM, gazumped said:

I don't think the guy(s?) that were out there sourcing stylish items to rebadge as 'Evernote' bags and socks would have made a great contribution to coding. And at some stage the store was reportedly generating serious income. It may well have put off the need to increase subscriptions for a year or more. It was an experiment which became a distraction - like I said before, probably because of discussions like these.

If socks and backpacks were such a big money maker, I'm sure that market would still be around. I'm guessing Evernote closed the market because it lost too much money and may have even accelerated the need to increase prices and cut features (e.g. availability on 3+ devices). Supervision, inspection, man hours, etc. are all required even if you outsource. All those resources could have and should have gone into bug fixes.

On 10/9/2016 at 4:06 AM, gazumped said:

Again, what behaviour? Evernote employees have said quite openly that they're not allowed to comment on ongoing route plans or development, though (very) occasionally they do break the rules...

Someone (or some team) at Evernote is CHOOSING to allocate resources to new feature addition that could have gone into bug fixing. That BEHAVIOR is very obvious because many new features have been added while many 5-year-old bugs are still around. There was obviously no requirement to fix the Everbugs before working on those features. This was a choice. It was a behavior.

Evernote leadership's policy/thinking: "Should we divert resources away from WorkChat development so we can debug font sizing on all platforms? No! Let's keep putting resources into WorkChat dev. That font sizing bug is only 7 years old."

This is a refusal to fix a bug so to work on WorkChat instead.

Even the policy of not being allowed to comment on ongoing route plans or development is a CHOICE. It is a BEHAVIOR. They can CHOOSE to change it. I predict they won't, though, because their own foresight / honest predictions would be too damning. I think they know / intuit that the blank in the following sentence is a huge number.

Everbugs will live for ______ more years while employees add new features.

Earlier in this thread, JMichaelTEX asked for an Evernote employee's assessment on progress made in fixing the basic editor issues mentioned in the OP. Has anyone from Evernote responded? Not to offer predictions on route plans or anything in development or anything in the future at all, but completed bug fixes?

As soon as my font sizes stop changing randomly, my cursor stops leaping around the screen, when formatting buttons don't get pressed randomly, when I can reliably use backspace and delete, when letters are consistently legible, when undo actually undoes stuff, my mind will be changed.

Sadly, I expect a regular stream of new features and all the editor's Everbugs to live up to the nickname I've given them.

I'm amazed that this thread was started in September 2015 and all the editor bugs that aggravate me are still alive and well. So far, my patience with Evernote has truly not paid off.

I think I'll give Evernote until December 31, 2016 to debug the editor's basic features and if they haven't, I'm going to find another note-taking program. I'll give the employees permission to email me when the bugs are fixed and I will likely come back then because the basic idea behind Evernote (the notes, not chatting, not socks, or not presentations) is so good.

Liam Gretton · October 12, 2016

1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Someone (or some team) at Evernote is CHOOSING to allocate resources to new feature addition that could have gone into bug fixing. That BEHAVIOR is very obvious because many new features have been added while many 5-year-old bugs are still around. There was obviously no requirement to fix the Everbugs before working on those features. This was a choice. It was a behavior.

I completely agree. And with new features come new bugs too.

gazumped · October 12, 2016

4 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

many new features have been added while many 5-year-old bugs are still around

.. I may have mentioned before that some things are easy to fix, and have been; other things require major rewrites and need a long time - years in some cases - of careful work to change.

However I see you're happy to believe the worst no matter what, so I won't try to disturb your world view any further..

DTLow · October 12, 2016

8 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Someone (or some team) at Evernote is CHOOSING to allocate resources to new feature addition that could have gone into bug fixing. That BEHAVIOR is very obvious because many new features have been added while many 5-year-old bugs are still around.

6 hours ago, Liam Gretton said:

I completely agree. And with new features come new bugs too.

Would you acknowlege that many users have voted for Evernote to focus on other issues than bug fixes.

As someone pointed out, bugs are not a "crime against humanity"

WeCanLearnAnything · October 12, 2016

10 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

...

As soon as my font sizes stop changing randomly, my cursor stops leaping around the screen, when formatting buttons don't get pressed randomly, when I can reliably use backspace and delete, when letters are consistently legible, when undo actually undoes stuff, my mind will be changed.

...

I'll give the employees permission to email me when the bugs are fixed and I will likely come back then because the basic idea behind Evernote (the notes, not chatting, not socks, or not presentations) is so good.

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

...

However I see you're happy to believe the worst no matter what, so I won't try to disturb your world view any further..

Hmm. I think I set a pretty reasonable bars for changing my mind and behavior.

Perhaps you missed it when reading my post? Or perhaps you think my bars are unreasonable? (i.e. Evernote should do something other than bug fixes to convince me they are willing to fix bugs.)

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

.. I may have mentioned before that some things are easy to fix, and have been; other things require major rewrites and need a long time - years in some cases - of careful work to change.

I recognize that some bug fixes are extremely difficult and/or slow to fix. Perhaps that's why they keep allocating resources to new features while tolerating the bugs. Perhaps the returns to resources having proper font sizing are less than the returns to color tagging features and WorkChat and the next UI redesign. And if that's what the business needs and that's what the user base wants, that's a pretty good sign they won't meet my Dec. 31 deadline and I'll be migrating away soon.

JohnLongney · October 12, 2016

On 8.10.2016 at 1:35 AM, gazumped said:

Hi. This feature would be??

Which thread where..

How exactly?

... Not to be unwelcoming, but if you can explain more precisely what you would like to see, maybe we can offer some work-arounds.

Evernote, currently serving around 200M clients, is a kind of supertanker negotiating around shipping lanes. It has tasks scheduled for the next year or so, but might be tweaked in one direction or another by urgent needs. By definition it can't 'react to customer needs' because it is already doing so - in terms of the last 1,000 or so requests for features and changes. Requests received today will be processed in a few months....

hello,

the grand new feature of Evernote 6.3 Windows, integrating Google Drive content does not work. Not for me, and on the face of it also not for others. How can customers feel happy when the supposed Head of the Development Team does not either acknowledge the problem nor give any idea by when a fix can be expected, I refer to message

What problem did the supertanker encounter here? I can access Google Drive online at any time, I gave Evernote all the required authorization, so where is the problem?

However when it comes to the editor in Evernote even the zoom function leaves more than a bit to be desired. Zoom factor displayed in % ? Even MS Word from the year dot offered better formatting such as easy page numbering, where are all such functions hidden Evernote?

BTW, for being a supertanker enterprise, there are exactly 4 professional Evernote consultants in all of Germany.

Please don't get me wrong, I love Evernote, but I cannot help thinking that usability falls somewhat short versus what one pays, certainly concerning the editing side, which to me is a major feature. When an API such as with Google Drive does not function then I start to wonder why? Are there programmers dealing with things beyond their capability. Surely not?

An Everbug would not do for me.

WeCanLearnAnything · October 12, 2016

8 hours ago, Liam Gretton said:

I completely agree. And with new features come new bugs too.

That would be awful, IMO.

I hope that Evernote's future is not more buttons and more features and more menus and more options and more drop down items and more UIs and more online chat and more Evernote-branded paraphernalia and more PowerPoint competition...

I just want to take notes in a program that doesn't go haywire when I press undo.

Evernote needs bug fixes. Not more complexity, not more bugginess, not more features (bloat).

WeCanLearnAnything · October 12, 2016

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

Would you acknowlege that many users have voted for Evernote to focus on other issues than bug fixes.

As someone pointed out, bugs are not a "crime against humanity"

Of course there are more votes for new features than bug fixes! The very structure and sub-titling of these forums assures this to be the case.

The new feature ideas and new feature requests tend to go into the "Product Feedback" forums where you can vote for them.

You'll find more than FOUR TIMES as many posts and about FIVE TIMES as many threads in the "Help" forums where people tend to report bugs and you cannot vote for these threads.

When it comes to measuring desire for bug fixes vs desire for new features, the structure of these forums guarantees that voting is an ultra biased metric.

Measuring by posts and threads, though, which I presume to be a better measure than votes, bug fixes seem to be the greater concern by a factor of 4 or 5.

The users are speaking and they are speaking clearly.

Or am I missing something?

DTLow · October 12, 2016

1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

The users are speaking and they are speaking clearly.

Or am I missing something?

For sure, you are speaking

other speakers are also speaking, some even agree with you, others want different results

And with all the speaking, only a small % of the users are willing to pay for the product; to pay for the debug work

WeCanLearnAnything · October 12, 2016

48 minutes ago, DTLow said:

For sure, you are speaking

other speakers are also speaking, some even agree with you, others want different results

And with all the speaking, only a small % of the users are willing to pay for the product; to pay for the debug work

I am willing to pay for a (mostly) debugged, non-bloated product. That's not Evernote's current status, though.

I wonder how many people try Evernote, run into all the bugs and glitches and then quit because they think "Why is this note-taking app so bloated and complicated? And why should I trust this buggy software with my data?" I wonder how many paying customers have been lost because of this.

I'd be more than willing to look at any data from paying customers that separates their bug fix requests vs new feature requests as well as any marketing experiments done to see what causes people to pay.

Until such data is released, though, we can only speak about the user base as a whole as measured by data on these forums (or some other source?) and that base seems to want bug fixes a whole lot more than it wants new features.

gazumped · October 12, 2016

3 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I am willing to pay for a (mostly) debugged, non-bloated product.

It's amazing how many comments and queries start out 'while I'm willing to pay if only you added <quote preferred tweak here>'...

While all this impassioned debate is fascinating, the fact remains that Evernote is not a democracy. The company alone will decide to develop what features it chooses, and fix those bugs it can address, at its own speed. The only powers that customers have to show their approval - or otherwise - is to pay and support the company, downgrade to a lower subscription, or vote with their metaphorical feet and use some other software.

The company will see the effect in its figures, and if there's enough movement to cause concern, it will either do something about it - or their competition will swoop on more customers, and maybe the entire company.

All the gleeful speculation about how soon the crash will come may be entertaining but it's not helpful. It's simply evidence of a perennial business problem that all companies wrestle with. Like Samsung forinstance...

WeCanLearnAnything · October 28, 2016

On 10/12/2016 at 4:59 PM, gazumped said:

While all this impassioned debate is fascinating, the fact remains that Evernote is not a democracy. The company alone will decide to develop what features it chooses, and fix those bugs it can address, at its own speed.

Yup. And when it comes to fixing formatting bugs, that speed is very slow. How many bugs from ~2009 are still around? How many promises of higher quality have they all survived?

On 10/12/2016 at 4:59 PM, gazumped said:

... The only powers that customers have to show their approval - or otherwise - is to pay and support the company, downgrade to a lower subscription, or vote with their metaphorical feet and use some other software.

The company will see the effect in its figures, and if there's enough movement to cause concern, it will either do something about it - or their competition will swoop on more customers, and maybe the entire company.

Yup. That's why I'm planning to switch to OneNote in early 2017 unless these formatting bugs get fixed. The Common Editor was supposed to fix them - I thought that was the whole point - but it didn't. Amazingly, it preserved them. And plenty of features, nearly all of which strike me as way less important than functioning backspace, have been added over time since then.

For example, I just downloaded a recent Evernote update. I am now able to change the left-side of my screen to a dark background. This, apparently, was a high priority. I cannot, however, rely on CTRL+Z or BACKSPACE. That must be a lower priority.

Evernote is as busy as ever allocating resources to "left-panel theme" options while those resources could have gone into bug fixes. This is not the kind of product management I want as a big part of my life.

OneNote, here I come!

gazumped · October 29, 2016

6 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

OneNote, here I come!

OK - bye!

netstepinc · October 29, 2016

8 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

OneNote, here I come!

Whew...fortunately for you Microsoft products are bug free. Please report back.

EN function I use daily is Thunderbird email to note with #tags and specific @notebook.
I use it to stash confirmations, receipts and BCC messages I'd like to keep track of outside of email.
I use three different email accounts and frequently designate tags and notebook in the subject line.
I don't think OneNote is as flexible in this case. I also almost always clip the simplified view from Firefox so EN saves the text but not the whole web page. I can see OneNote has some great features now...but pro/con like anything else.

jefito · October 29, 2016

13 hours ago, netstepinc said:

Whew...fortunately for you Microsoft products are bug free. Please report back.

Don't kid yourself, no non-trivial program is bug-free. I'll grant you that Evernote's editing has some quirks and glitches that aren't helpful -- and should absolutely be addressed -- but I use it daily, and it works for me. Anyhow, the trip to OneNote for many is not bound to be trouble-free; you first need to get your notes in there, and its architecture is not really conducive to that, see, e.g., http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/evernote-better-onenote/. I myself tried recently to import my 6000-odd note database into OneNote, and it was a disaster. The folks who wrote the OneNote importer totally mishandled Evernote tags, among other things. It was not "bug-free"..

WeCanLearnAnything · October 29, 2016

15 hours ago, netstepinc said:

Whew...fortunately for you Microsoft products are bug free. Please report back.

EN function I use daily is Thunderbird email to note with #tags and specific @notebook.
I use it to stash confirmations, receipts and BCC messages I'd like to keep track of outside of email.
I use three different email accounts and frequently designate tags and notebook in the subject line.
I don't think OneNote is as flexible in this case. I also almost always clip the simplified view from Firefox so EN saves the text but not the whole web page. I can see OneNote has some great features now...but pro/con like anything else.

I don't use or need any email-related features. I just need the editor to not horribly ***** up tables, backspace, font, undo, copy/paste, etc.

If there are a ton of bugs in OneNote, I'll probably switch to Google Drive/Docs. Maybe even SimpleNote, or Google Keep which don't even have rich text formatting. I'm more interested in products that work rather than products that have lots of features that reduce reliability.

2 hours ago, jefito said:

Don't kid yourself, no non-trivial program is bug-free. I'll grant you that Evernote's editing has some quirks and glitches that aren't helpful -- and should absolutely be addressed -- but I use it daily, and it works for me. Anyhow, the trip to OneNote for many is not bound to be trouble-free; you first need to get your notes in there, and its architecture is not really conducive to that, see, e.g., http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/evernote-better-onenote/. I myself tried recently to import my 6000-odd note database into OneNote, and it was a disaster. The folks who wrote the OneNote importer totally mishandled Evernote tags, among other things. It was not "bug-free"..

I expect to have around ~200 notes. If the importer doesn't work, I can move the notes manually.

netstepinc · October 29, 2016

3 hours ago, jefito said:

Don't kid yourself, no non-trivial program is bug-free

I didn't think I had to mark that comment as sarcasm.

I have 25,168 notes...
I'm not going anywhere for the moment, but I may toy around for a bit with OneNote.

What Evernote needs to hear from this conversation is they need to dance with the one that brought them....a reliable note system.
The feature creep without attending to core needs indicates they are not well managed as a company.
That is my primary concern....that they ***** the pooch at some point and kill this fantastic program.

jefito · October 29, 2016

On 10/29/2016 at 2:40 PM, netstepinc said:

I didn't think I had to mark that comment as sarcasm.

Tone doesn't always come out on the screen the way it does in your head when you're writing it...

On 10/29/2016 at 2:40 PM, netstepinc said:

I have 25,168 notes...
I'm not going anywhere for the moment, but I may toy around for a bit with OneNote.

Might be worth a try, if you've a spare afternoon. I just set it running, and then examined the results later on. Didn't really work out for me, but I'm not really looking to leave Evernote anyhow.

On 10/29/2016 at 2:40 PM, netstepinc said:

What Evernote needs to hear from this conversation is they need to dance with the one that brought them....a reliable note system.
The feature creep without attending to core needs indicates they are not well managed as a company.

As a company, you want to show that you're adding features with some degree of regularity, even if you're not able to solve the tough ones quickly (if they were easy to fix, don't you think that they'd have dome it by now?). Otherwise you look completely moribund. So we've been getting a pretty good stream of nice-to-haves (mainly popularly requested features). Hopefully they'll crack the hard ones some time soon but those can take time.

WeCanLearnAnything · October 31, 2016

On 10/29/2016 at 1:24 PM, jefito said:

As a company, you want to show that you're adding features with some degree of regularity, even if you're not able to solve the tough ones quickly (if they were easy to fix, don't you think that they'd have dome it by now?). Otherwise you look completely moribund. So we've been getting a pretty good stream of nice-to-haves (mainly popularly requested features). Hopefully they'll crack the hard ones some time soon but those can take time.

How much time is reasonable? Many of the basic bugs I've been mentioning have been around for 5+ years. Isn't that an unreasonably long time, whether they are easy or hard to fix? For how many more years will Evernote employees pledge and fail to fix them?

As for adding features, I'm with David Pogue: For years, most of the added features are more bloating than useful.

gazumped · October 31, 2016

I suggested in answer to another query that "Evernote's kind of like a supertanker where someone wants to repaint a tiny patch of hull just above the waterline that would only take a few minutes to touch up... except we're in the middle of an ocean in high seas and doing 17 knots easy... "

Evernote has 200M+ users, and the one thing I'd imagine they take care of above all others, is not to aggravate any more of them than they already have. Changes to big software packages are extremely hazardous to user satisfaction.

The existing code also has to be serviced and maintained, so there's a schedule for that. New features (including the years-long project to write a common editor) have to be developed and tested and introduced. Ongoing support requests have to be dealt with. Without doing anything more than continuing to exist, Evernote is busy.

So finding out why some things don't work - especially if they only affect a sub-set of all users - can take a while. And while some users find some of the new features are just bloat, there's presumably a focus group or ten somewhere that thought they were great.

And. To the best of my knowledge and belief Evernote employees have only once pledged a fix and then been late delivering - and that was after the lawyers stepped in a put a hold on things. In all other cases Evernote policy is to maintain a diplomatic silence despite howls from the floor about timescales and delivery dates.

jefito · October 31, 2016

2 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

How much time is reasonable? Many of the basic bugs I've been mentioning have been around for 5+ years. Isn't that an unreasonably long time, whether they are easy or hard to fix? For how many more years will Evernote employees pledge and fail to fix them?

"Reasonable" is for each of us to decide. If they're a killer to your workflow, that raises the stakes for you; if not, then it lowers them. Development teams -- at least the ones I've been on -- do naturally prioritize showstoppers (e.g. crashes, data integrity issues, etc.), but have to balance with fixing non-fatal usability problems and also, yes, adding new features. You typically don't (or can't) throw everyone onto a single bug, since all team members may not have the required familiarity with the area of the codebase, or expertise in the techniques required to find/fix it. Moreover, some problems are just plain difficult to fix; they might be hard to reproduce in a way that makes it possible to deduce the actual problem (not the effect), or have difficulty coming up with a stable solution or one that performs well, or require an architectural change that would be onerous. There's all kinds of reasons bugs may languish unfixed -- we outside the bubble don't have enough actual information to know the actual reason. So we out here need to go with our instincts and our own experience using the program.

None of the above is to suggest that bugs shouldn't go unfixed; they should if feasible. But you don't just wave your wand and bugs go away as if by magic. It can take time.

2 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

As for adding features, I'm with David Pogue: For years, most of the added features are more bloating than useful.

Um, I think that a lot of people who complain about "bloat" are just overstating it or don't understand how programs are actually used (not that I know how David Pogue feels about it). My take is that many programs have multiple uses and while everyone may use the same core 10-20% of the application all the time, each individual user may use only some percentage of the rest of the features. But different users use different segments outside the core. So for example, in MS Word, a program that I use reasonably frequently, and is one that's often cited as being "bloated", everyone uses the basic formatting functionality, but I might use its Review capabilities a lot (to take a top-level menu item), but never use Mail Merge (another top-level menu item). Mail Merge isn't at all useful to me, but I'd never call it "bloat", since I know that it's extremely useful to a significant number other MS Word users. Not everyone has the same use cases.

In Evernote's case, a lot of the most recently added features that I've seen in the Windows client are ones that have been requested fairly often here on the forums (and elsewhere, since the forums are not the only way of communicating with Evernote). Notebook-specific view/sorting? Check (plus you do the same based on tag or saved search). Hierarchical tag search? check. Dark theme? Semi-check (I think this is a work in progress). I may or may not use these, but I don't call them bloat.

WeCanLearnAnything · November 1, 2016

8 hours ago, jefito said:

...

None of the above is to suggest that bugs shouldn't go unfixed; they should if feasible. But you don't just wave your wand and bugs go away as if by magic. It can take time.

I think 5+ years is plenty of time for a note-taking program to make backspace work.

8 hours ago, jefito said:

Um, I think that a lot of people who complain about "bloat" are just overstating it or don't understand how programs are actually used (not that I know how David Pogue feels about it). My take is that many programs have multiple uses and while everyone may use the same core 10-20% of the application all the time, each individual user may use only some percentage of the rest of the features. But different users use different segments outside the core. So for example, in MS Word, a program that I use reasonably frequently, and is one that's often cited as being "bloated", everyone uses the basic formatting functionality, but I might use its Review capabilities a lot (to take a top-level menu item), but never use Mail Merge (another top-level menu item). Mail Merge isn't at all useful to me, but I'd never call it "bloat", since I know that it's extremely useful to a significant number other MS Word users. Not everyone has the same use cases.

In Evernote's case, a lot of the most recently added features that I've seen in the Windows client are ones that have been requested fairly often here on the forums (and elsewhere, since the forums are not the only way of communicating with Evernote). Notebook-specific view/sorting? Check (plus you do the same based on tag or saved search). Hierarchical tag search? check. Dark theme? Semi-check (I think this is a work in progress). I may or may not use these, but I don't call them bloat.

Perhaps there are a lot of people buying Evernote business socks and lots of people using WorkChat and lots of people using Presentation mode, but I would bet that there are far more people who use tables and need undo to just work. If Evernote has statistics on this stuff, I'm all ears.

jefito · November 1, 2016

10 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I think 5+ years is plenty of time for a note-taking program to make backspace work.

I don't disagree with that. I'm just offering up an explanation of why bugs may languish unfixed in a bug database, and why things that may seem simple from the outside may not actually be so. On the other angle, if it were hindering my workflow significantly, then I'd probably be looking for a replacement myself.

CalS · November 1, 2016

My two cents.

There seem to be some functional issues (just doesn't do what it is supposed to do) that are isolated to the few, some to the many if I use forum input as a barometer. Why those issues affecting the many haven't been addressed across time is what is puzzling to me (outside of performance which has so many other variables attached to it).

I just don't get why EN doesn't establish the capability set for the editor, whatever they want to include, and then just make it reliable. May or may not be easy programmatically, but it ain't rocket science relative to setting/meeting expectations of a feature set. There's an old saying "if one number on the page is wrong, they're all wrong". A funky editor sort of fits the same thinking, "... what else can't I trust....".

All that being said, still a happy EN user, just a bit mystified by some of the priorities ..

decon · November 1, 2016

It's easy to make up reasons for why the development and design of evernote is going the way it's going. That doesn't change that the feedback provided in this forum is extremely valuable, probably more than collected quantitative usage data which is so populare with the Califorina ideology. The bloat thing is true, Evernote have even admitted this by closing down project like that weird food app. In other words, you don't need to argue and explain as to why Evernote haven't fixed this or that bug or feature. People are complaining that Evernote seem, at least from our perspective, to ignore some basic community requests. Instead they focus on bloat stuff like Drive integration (my subjective opinion of course). I don't care about Drive, some might do, but I think that more people would benefit from having an update editor. Drive integration is only for people with Drive, updates to editor is for everyone. I could go on, but this thread is not about discussing development and design processes - instead it is a thread to discuss and provide feedback on the editor (please correct me if I'm wrong).

My feedback is specifically on the table editor in the current version of the binary client (using mac and win). It lacks options for styling (proper!), easily selection of rows and columns like in spreadsheet software, and tables needs to be editable on Android mobile app. It is currently an awful and stressful experience working with tables in Evernote. Please let me know if I'm missing something - if so, I'm sorry for providing ignorent feedback.

WeCanLearnAnything · November 2, 2016

15 hours ago, decon said:

My feedback is specifically on the table editor in the current version of the binary client (using mac and win). It lacks options for styling (proper!), easily selection of rows and columns like in spreadsheet software, and tables needs to be editable on Android mobile app. It is currently an awful and stressful experience working with tables in Evernote. Please let me know if I'm missing something - if so, I'm sorry for providing ignorent feedback.

The Android mobile app can't edit tables at all?!?! I guess that's not so surprising given that the browser version of Evernote can't add or remove rows or columns. Then again, I thought there was supposed to be a Common Editor now. Too bad core features are neither common nor functional across platforms yet.

Suggestion: Do not use Evernote for tables! Use Google Docs or Libre Office or something like that instead.

decon · November 2, 2016

Correct - it is currently possible to change text in the cells, sooo, that works!

The problem is that I don't want to use 3. party software to do what is soooo basic for an editor. Look at Dropbox Paper to get an idea of how an online table editor could work. Dropbox Paper is a new product, maybe 6 months old atm, and still in "beta". How old is evernote? I know that sometimes, it's easier to start from stratch and design a new editor... But I think this is a needed feature. There are other weird editor bugs that pop up from time to time, will try and capture them when they happen in the future.

I don't suspect Evernote to change the editor anytime soon. Just wanted to put my feedback out there. They will probably add some kinds of integration with other services like the Drive thing they have worked on.

jefito · November 2, 2016

20 hours ago, decon said:

It's easy to make up reasons for why the development and design of evernote is going the way it's going.

This is not made up, nor is it in any way making excuses for Evernote's development process. There are known reasons in the software development world why bugs/feature requests might not get addressed quickly enough for customers. It's all just information for folks who aren't familiar with the software development process (many users of software aren't). A question was asked -- maybe rhetorical -- and I offered an answer. But note that nowhere did I ever claim anything at all about Evernote's internal practices.

20 hours ago, decon said:

That doesn't change that the feedback provided in this forum is extremely valuable, probably more than collected quantitative usage data which is so populare with the Califorina ideology.

Of course forum feedback is important; that's why they have a forum (and it's one of the reasons that I participate). Nobody said that it wasn't important. So is collected quantitative data. It's all grist for the mill. Not sure what your point is.

20 hours ago, decon said:

The bloat thing is true, Evernote have even admitted this by closing down project like that weird food app.

Non sequitur. Evernote Food never had anything to do with any perceived "bloat" in the Evernote application. My take is that it was more of a marketing/branding thing, as well as -- at a guess -- being another, separate testbed for their API, which is a cornerstone of their 3rd-party integration/development efforts. As a product, it wasn't useful to me, but some people liked it.

20 hours ago, decon said:

In other words, you don't need to argue and explain as to why Evernote haven't fixed this or that bug or feature. People are complaining that Evernote seem, at least from our perspective, to ignore some basic community requests. Instead they focus on bloat stuff like Drive integration (my subjective opinion of course). I don't care about Drive, some might do, but I think that more people would benefit from having an update editor. Drive integration is only for people with Drive, updates to editor is for everyone.

Nobody's arguing here, or covering for Evernote. I've said several times here that these bugs should be fixed. And I'd surely welcome more feedback about this stuff from the Evernote folks. But I also believe that new features need to added. You cannot throw a whole team onto a single problem; it just doesn't work that way.

21 hours ago, decon said:

I could go on, but this thread is not about discussing development and design processes - instead it is a thread to discuss and provide feedback on the editor (please correct me if I'm wrong).

You're correct, but again, when forum users go past merely reporting problems in the software to speculating/opining about Evernote's development choices, they've opened the door to discussion on that topic as well. I would hope that I can add to that without it being taken as excuse making. But perhaps not...

We all want a better Evernote, can we agree on that at least?

decon · November 2, 2016

13 minutes ago, jefito said:

This is not made up, nor is it in any way making excuses for Evernote's development process. There are known reasons in the software development world why bugs/feature requests might not get addressed quickly enough for customers. It's all just information for folks who aren't familiar with the software development process (many users of software aren't). A question was asked -- maybe rhetorical -- and I offered an answer. But note that nowhere did I ever claim anything at all about Evernote's internal practices.

Thanks, sorry if I was too harsh in my reply. My point was that it doesn't have to do with the design or development processes as such, it has to do with the decisions made by the Evernote team. We seem to agree.

12 minutes ago, jefito said:

Of course forum feedback is important; that's why they have a forum (and it's one of the reasons that I participate). Nobody said that it wasn't important. So is collected quantitative data. It's all grist for the mill. Not sure what your point is.

My point is that it seems like you were making excuses for why Evernote haven't done this or that. You react to feedback posts and obviously very engaged in this community (which is awesome!), but don't really address the presented issue. Instead you defend, or at least, try to explain why the Evernote team hasn't come around to fix this or that. Such information is nice-to-have, but it doesn't address the problem posted by users. Example:

"As a company, you want to show that you're adding features with some degree of regularity, even if you're not able to solve the tough ones quickly (if they were easy to fix, don't you think that they'd have dome it by now?). Otherwise you look completely moribund. So we've been getting a pretty good stream of nice-to-haves (mainly popularly requested features). Hopefully they'll crack the hard ones some time soon but those can take time.".

I don't see how this addresses the real issue that people post here. However, you do explain (and well) how some companies handle design processes. It's not a common mantra for all companies to "(...) show that you're adding features* (...) not able to solve the though ones quickly (...) getting a pretty good stream (...). My colleagues and I at the Interaction Design group at Aarhus University, all agree that simple features like having the option to have more sub-notebooks rather than just one level should be essential. Is this a hard thing to fix? We stick to Evernote because it is great in many respects, but we all feel like it's been going down hill for quite some times... and yes, it is easy to say that we are a group of people blah blah, you decide if you believe me - don't care.

32 minutes ago, jefito said:

Non sequitur. Evernote Food never had anything to do with any perceived "bloat" in the Evernote application. My take is that it was more of a marketing/branding thing, as well as -- at a guess -- being another, separate testbed for their API, which is a cornerstone of their 3rd-party integration/development efforts. As a product, it wasn't useful to me, but some people liked it.

Fair enough, again we have to guess, but in my opinion is was bloat in the sense that the design team use time and resources on what things that don't really add to their main and great product: Evernote. Call it waste instead of bloat, dunno.

This is my experience from reading your posts, feel free to disagree - neither of us want to waste out time battling out this trivial issue (right?).

*not sure what constitutes a feature here. To me a feature is also changes like "we made huge changes to the editor, like adding new editing options for tables".

37 minutes ago, jefito said:

You're correct, but again, when forum users go past merely reporting problems in the software to speculating/opining about Evernote's development choices, they've opened the door to discussion on that topic as well. I would hope that I can add to that without it being taken as excuse making. But perhaps not...

I see your point. We should stop our discussion here as well, we won't get anywhere or help the future development of Evernote.

And yes Jeff, we can most def' agree on that, and that Evernote is overall a great product Thanks for your nice tone and fine points.

jefito · November 2, 2016

2 hours ago, decon said:

My point is that it seems like you were making excuses for why Evernote haven't done this or that. You react to feedback posts and obviously very engaged in this community (which is awesome!), but don't really address the presented issue.

As an Evernote user and not an Evernote developer, there's nothing that I can do to actually address the presented issue but to 1) present workarounds if they exist, 2) advocate for bugs to be fixed, and 3) vote up the topic. I'm happy to also discuss software development stuff if someone brings it up and if it seems related, since that interests me, but of course that's not actually addressing the issue.

2 hours ago, decon said:

I don't see how this addresses the real issue that people post here. However, you do explain (and well) how some companies handle design processes. It's not a common mantra for all companies to "(...) show that you're adding features* (...) not able to solve the though ones quickly (...) getting a pretty good stream (...).

My point in writing that was -- in response to a question -- to show how some companies, at least, approach a wide range of bugs, issues, feature requests, etc. in their commercial products, with limited amounts of resources (time, money, staff) while adding new features to keep the marketing folks (and hopefully users) happy. Prioritizing that stuff is a balancing act, and you run the risk of losing customers if you're too buggy, not responsive enough, or not implementing customer requested features in a timely fashion, or add features that nobody wants. That's my experience in the industry, anyways, but I don't claim any inside knowledge of how Evernote prioritizes things. Again, this address nothing about the actual problem, but maybe it provides some context for the conversation.

2 hours ago, decon said:

My colleagues and I at the Interaction Design group at Aarhus University, all agree that simple features like having the option to have more sub-notebooks rather than just one level should be essential. Is this a hard thing to fix?

There's endless discussion about this on the forum. My take is that -- evidenced by Dave Engberg's forum comments (he was the original CTO) -- this is a design choice, and not a bug to be fixed (his usual recommendation was to just use tags) Will they ever change that? I can't say. Fortunately for me, I don't need sub-notebooks, so it's all worked out fine for me, and is probably one reason I've satyed with Evernote for the last 8 years. Maybe I'd see that feature, if implemented, as bloat, myself. (OK, in reality I just wouldn't use it).

Anyways, I appreciate the comments, and I do understand the frustration. Cheers.

jaykob · December 1, 2016

I know it has been asked for before, but I really miss paragraph options. In particular, headings and spacing are mandatory imo. The only way to take notes atm is with bullet points, which wastes a lot of spaces (especially on mobile). Automatic line spacing after paragraphs would solve that problem. Headers would be nice, but manually changing font size etc. is a workaround.

For example, I pasted a couple of links into a note and it all looked like a mess. It is impossible to see where a link ends and which line is a new one.

GiacomoLaw · December 6, 2016

On 12/1/2016 at 3:31 PM, jaykob said:

. Automatic line spacing after paragraphs

Would certainly like to see this!

On 12/1/2016 at 3:31 PM, jaykob said:

Headers would be nice, but manually changing font size

This is something I have really been pushing for. Whilst yes, you can change font size, its not universal across platforms. Also, iOS does not portray it great. Would love to see headers.

ag14spirit · February 21, 2017

Open source option for function via Atom. Albeit not native, it's fairly powerful and derivative of Markdown with some advanced function such as Multimarkdown: https://github.com/cs150bf/ever-notedown

jefito · February 22, 2017

17 hours ago, ag14spirit said:

Open source option for function via Atom. Albeit not native, it's fairly powerful and derivative of Markdown with some advanced function such as Multimarkdown: https://github.com/cs150bf/ever-notedown

Appears to be Mac-only. Is that true? (this is a Windows-specific subforum).

AndyDent · April 10, 2018

Bump!

It is April 2018 and the current editing experience on Mac is woeful.
I am a "power user" with over 34,000 notes mainly editing on Mac and Windows, some trivial editing on iOS but have given up.

Is the current editor across platforms based on TinyMCE?

Does using a JavaScript editor result in more work having to be done in the main UI thread and hence more conflicts with sync? (that's more of an issue with the iOS version, which is unusable unless your phone is fully synced prior to editing)

I have over 35 years development experience across many platforms, much of it GUI and a lot of editing and text layout experience. Evernote's buggy behaviour tends to trigger my suspicions as to what's going wrong and that it's got a deep architectural flaw underpinning it all.

Edited April 10, 2018 by AndyDent
clarifying comment about iOS

DTLow · April 10, 2018

1 hour ago, AndyDent said:

the current editing experience on Mac is woeful.

Depends on the tools you use.
Mac/IOS come with iWork editors installed.
Evernote comes with an editor that's ok for basic notes; but or serious work, I use external editors; Word/Pages for word processing, Excel/Numbers for spreadsheets...
Files of any format can be attached to a note; Evernote works well with office/iwork documents, pdfs, images, ...

AndyDent · April 10, 2018

I want to edit large clippings. If I can't use Evernote for clipping then I may as well look for a replacement.

I appreciate the range of WP and other writing tools and use some of them but the entire point of Evernote is to have my data available and searchable in one product, across my many devices and locations. If I have to go back to using dedicated document editors just to add some inline comments on a clipped web page, it's lost most of its appeal.

The main thing I ask is that Evernote not go backwards in robustness!

A very large part of my current frustration is because of their hack to fix a sync problem, which makes it sync every few seconds.

DTLow · April 10, 2018

3 hours ago, AndyDent said:

the entire point of Evernote is to have my data available and searchable in one product, across my many devices and locations.

I agree with you on this point, and the primary reason I use Evernote.

The editing function is a secondary point, and easily addressed with the plethora of editors available for use.

>>If I can't use Evernote for clipping

Evernote has a web clipper feature but I'm having problems with the format.

Complicated html isn't always displayed correctly in the Evernote editor.
Trying to insert my editing on top of this code often leads to a mess

I'm looking into using pdf or images as a better format.

CalS · April 10, 2018

5 hours ago, AndyDent said:

A very large part of my current frustration is because of their hack to fix a sync problem, which makes it sync every few seconds.

Which version? I'm using EN Windows 6.11.2 and it "seems" to me that the uncontrolled sync activity has decreased in this version, even though I have sync set to automatic.

jefito · April 10, 2018

14 hours ago, AndyDent said:

Is the current editor across platforms based on TinyMCE?

No. It's based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework, CEF 3, specifically.

dconnet · April 11, 2018

On 4/10/2018 at 12:13 PM, jefito said:

No. It's based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework, CEF 3, specifically.

FYI: CEF3 is the browser framework in which the editor runs (and any other embedded web page we show). It's not the editor itself. (I don't know what the editor is based on - I write C++ not javascript!)

jefito · April 11, 2018

4 hours ago, dconnet said:

FYI: CEF3 is the browser framework in which the editor runs (and any other embedded web page we show). It's not the editor itself. (I don't know what the editor is based on - I write C++ not javascript!)

Thanks. As usual, I appreciate the correction.

In which case, it could very well be based on TinyMCE, but it's gotta be tweaked for the Evernote specific stuff, I'd guess.

(I write C++, too )

rezecib · April 11, 2018

The old web editor (which was rolled back to for Chrome and is still in Firefox at the moment) is TinyMCE based. Everything else should be using the common editor, which I don't think is based on TinyMCE. But like dconnet, I don't work on that part of the code. A cursory look suggests Electron.

AndyDent · April 12, 2018

8 hours ago, jefito said:

(I write C++, too )

Me too, for much of the last 25 years. Plus Swift and C# and GLSL and .... I would rather stay in Swift ;-)

rezcib said

Quote

A cursory look suggests Electron.

Electron is an app framework, not a WP engine.

I'm interested on multiple grounds:

I have a dark suspicion that, particularly on iOS, a JS-based engine is being used which locks up the main thread and that conflicts badly with processing metadata for 34K notes.
I have projects for which I'd like to use a cross-platform WP engine, not a simple non-wrapping text editor.
Going back into the early 90's, I've delivered multiple projects using such engines. Back in 1992 we had custom WP on Mac Classics for a magazine classified ads system. Written in C++ with the c-tree Plus shared database file, it delivered better search and editing experiences in a distributed system than modern web-based code. Hence my deep cynicism about progress. That was just an off-the-shelf (expensive) package no longer available - to get the performance then it was written in 68K assembler. I've also put a lot of time into layout and word-wrapping logic writing my own report-writer, again for vastly less powerful machines than today. I have a fair idea of how hard this can be.

AndyDent · April 12, 2018

On 4/11/2018 at 12:04 AM, CalS said:

Which version? I'm using EN Windows 6.11.2 and it "seems" to me that the uncontrolled sync activity has decreased in this version, even though I have sync set to automatic.

Mac 7.1. I had to upgrade from 6.11 because of other clashes with recent MacOS.

It no longer has any control over how often sync occurs. Both the timing and manual option were removed.

When I am editing a long note, sync during the process means things end up in the wrong place. If I am just typing without using any commands, it usually copes. Copy and paste is a disaster.

AndyDent · April 12, 2018

8 hours ago, rezecib said:

The old web editor (which was rolled back to for Chrome and is still in Firefox at the moment) is TinyMCE based. Everything else should be using the common editor, which I don't think is based on TinyMCE. But like dconnet, I don't work on that part of the code. A cursory look suggests Electron.

Hmmm, maybe Atom, if it looks like Electron?

I can understand you abandoning TinyMCE as the costs go up dramatically but very sad it is still JS-based.

rezecib · April 12, 2018

@AndyDent Not sure-- my JS experience is at the Greasemonkey script level, I'm not really familiar with frameworks available for it (well, I hear about them sometimes, but...). The Common Editor isn't really responsible for sync, though (it's responsible for UI to manipulate ENML), so that would vary more substantially by client.

JMichaelTX · April 12, 2018

On 9/22/2015 at 4:35 PM, PeeJayTee said:

This is P.J. from the Product Team at Evernote.

I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a project that we've been working on for quite a while. As some of you may have noticed, the note editor changed in the Windows 5.9 release. Though it introduced a relatively small number of new features, it represents a larger body of work that will significantly improve note editing in Evernote.

. . .

For more on the thinking behind this project, check out this blog post.

We can’t promise to get everything right the first time, but we can promise to listen to your feedback and work tirelessly to make every version of Evernote’s editor better than the last. If you have feedback on the editor, we’re here to listen. Feel free to comment on this thread or DM me.

From the blog mentioned above:

Quote

For the better part of the last two years, we’ve been undertaking a massive infrastructure project in Evernote.

It is very sad that after nearly 5 years of working on a product that "we've been working on for quite a while", the so-called "Common Editor" is still not finished, still not stable, and in many respects worse than it was before.

GrumpyMonkey · April 13, 2018

2 hours ago, Krunoslav said:

So true. Even back than, I was the first one to post and I posted my skepticism about it. The developer assured me this time it will be differentiate, and it seem that he was honest about his intentions, but I was told later that he was probably fired, when the new management come on board. And that was all she wrote... as they say. Sad state of affairs in Evernote.

Also they keep on sending us emails trying to sell us the wonderful evernote tips and tricks and new features. A marketing team totally out of touch with the development team, which only is good at delivering more bugs and features no one asked for. While the CEO is doing god knows what. It would be embarrassing if it was not corporate America, which knows no embarrassment.

I don’t think there is ever a good time to try and upsell paying customers — I don’t know how the idea of inserting annoying ads into my app ever got out of any committee. And then, someone apparently thought it’d be a good idea to make it so that you get the same ad on each platform, and you have to dismiss each one individually. If I was considering spaces before, I’m not today!

I don’t care if the editor becoms the gold standard in the industry, the marketing gimmicks will always annoy me. For reference, I’ve been around ten years now, I actually argued to keep the original ad scheme (very smart to assign it an out-of-the-way location and make it easily opt-in / opt-out). “Ads”aren’t bad, but the annoying implementation is.I think it can be done better, don’t you?

The same thing goes for the editor. On good days, it works great, and then there is a rewrite from the ground up (how many times now?), lots of broken stuff that will get fixed on the way to great things (so we are told), and yet a simple bullet list still reliably fails on multiple platforms. After ten years, I think a lot of us are expecting a more professional, measured approach that has no tolerance for ironing out the bugs after the shiny new thing has rolled out — we’re paying professionals who want to get work done. I’m actually not in the least bit annoyed or troubled by the editor at the moment . I’m working around the problems. I just think it’s long past time for Evernote to change things up a bit.

Try herding all of your cats into a room, working out the existing bugs, incorporating user suggestions, and releasing something solid that lacks any bugs (or , at least, no significant ones).Once is enough. It’ll blow our minds. I imagine the gratitude from users will also warm the cockles of your hearts. Wouldn’t you like to give it a try?

AndyDent · June 1, 2018

On 4/13/2018 at 4:30 AM, rezecib said:

The Common Editor isn't really responsible for sync, though

The point is that if you are relying heavily on JS it is a lot harder to avoid things bogging down an iOS app. (Ironically, WebAssembly would probably make it easier for a pure web client to delegate). I can get up to four keys popped up on my iOS keyboard as the editor bogs down.

The Evernote Editor

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