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The idea of running my business and life without Evernote scares me. You should be using it and if you’re not then give it a try today. It is an essential tool for me in so many areas of my business; podcast show planning, note taking for every conversation of importance, planning digital products, collaborating with my virtual assistant…and lots more. I’m in Evernote every day and I’m a Premium subscriber which costs less than $50 a year. Once you know the power of Evernote you’ll never live without it.
They recently pushed out a public Beta of their Evernote 5 Desktop program and unfortunately I’m frustrated with several of the changes. There are some bright spots as well but for now I may go back to the current version. I know change takes time and there are elements that are growing on me but in so many ways it feels like style beat out function in the development of this version. My gripes;
- No customizable menu bar – I’m an advanced user in a sense that I like to customize almost every part of my user experience. In the latest version Evernote took away the ability to customize the top toolbar’s navigation buttons completely and moved everything to the sidebar. Now I’m forced to keep a column open that I used to close almost every time I used the program. It’s difficult when an update gives you less choices than a past version.
- Notebook lists are difficult to read– The middle ground of viewing my notebooks seems to have been lost in this version of Evernote. Now users are forced to see the notebooks in large icons or in a difficult to navigate text menu. In the last version of Evernote the notebooks weren’t as formatted as the large view and weren’t as stripped down as they are in the sidebar view of the new version. Simply put the new navigation is more difficult to navigate than the last because of not enough formatting in the sidebar or not enough contrast in the larger icon view. Here are a few shots of my notebooks for reference.[nggallery id=2]
- Shortcuts – This feature does solve my gripe about the menu bar partially. You can drop and drag some notes into the shortcuts section of the first column and save yourself a ton of time. I’d still like to be able to add some navigation options to the toolbar but this is nice for getting to notes quickly versus the messy option from prior versions in the toolbar
- Recent Notes – Below the shortcuts are the five most recent notes. This is a no brainer as most Evernote users are using the same notes repeatedly. Great move by Evernote.
- Mixing shared and non-shared notes in the menu – Evernote used to separate them into different menus but I like having them all in one place. I do think we should have the option to separate them easily though in case we share a lot of notes and only want to view our own notes. Sharing gets complicated. Some people want more of it, some less.
- Search feature – They’ve overhauled the search feature and its navigation/power is a great addition to this version.
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What I like:
This is a public beta version so they may be making some changes but I’m doubting they’ll change the styling frankly. The only stability issue I’ve run into is that my cursor will go down a line occasionally without me hitting Enter. I’m also assuming this bug will get fixed. If you want to try the beta version go to their post.
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