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General brainstorming for Note-taking software
superboyac:
Hi nevf, good to see you post again. For those not familiar with nevf, you should read his writings, because he talks about the philosophy behind his designs, which is interesting because a user can follow how an author implements the features in his software.
I've just tried the most recent Surfulater version. It still looks like Surfulater has the best underlying foundation for being the best note-taking software to date, but there are still things that are lacking, I think. The reason I say this is because the "engine" under Surfulater is obviously very flexible and can do a lot of cool things, especially being able to change the virtual tree structure. But there are a few issues that I've talked about before that still make me wish it were a little different. And I suspect that a lot of what I say is pretty subjective, so please, everyone, chime in and let me know if you agree/disagree with my points:
--Surfulater's edit mode/pencil thing is much better now. But it's still just a little annoying simply because there IS an edit mode. I think edit mode should be assumed for all things. So I should be able to click right in the area and begin editing. Not even the fraction of the second that I have to hold the mouse. It should be immediate. All other outliners and note-takiing software do it this way and I think most of us expect it. Evernote is immediate, mybase is immediate, all the dozens of regular tree-heirarchy programs are immediate, I think Suruflater should be immediate also if it is to be a note-taking application.
--Basic Interface. I'm still not a fan of the header columns for every note (title, description, comments, etc.). I just don't like the space that is used for it and the structure it forces me to have (just listen to my part of the podcast!). I'd rather have a completely blank slate. The headers may be good for organizing collected webpages, which was Surfulater's initial purpose, but for notetaking, I think we want just a blank slate. And nevf was kind enough to make a "note" template for me, but even that had to have a row taken up just for the header that said "note". I know it's very picky, but still. For collecting notes, I like the interface to be as compact as possible and just the blank rectangle that is immediately editable as soon as I click on it.
--The scroll design. Surfulater and Evernote both implement a scroll design. Surfulater's design is more advanced because it can be sorted many ways, not just chronologically like Evernote. but I don't think the scroll works for me. I like to see just the one note that I'm focuse upon. However, I know that other people love the scroll, and I can't deny it's practical usefulness. So I'm just being really personal here. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't like the scroll, but if I had to use a scroll, I like the way Surfulater does it.
--Focus "jumping". In Surfulater, when you edit a note, the screen jumps to position the note you are editing automatically to the top of the screen. I find this frustrating. I'd rather just have the screen stay wherever it is when I decide to edit a note. This is especially annoying combined with the fact that it is a scroll display, so if you edit something at the bottom of the page, then all of a sudden it jumps to the top, and you kind of lose track of it for a split second.
--Webpage capturing. This is probably just a problem with me or it should go under the official "bug" thread on the Surfulater forum, but I'll just mention it here. I've always had a problem having the pictures show up when I capture content from Surfulater. I always get the broken red "x" icon for pictures, I don't know why. The same content appears fine when captured in Evernote or Mybase (for an actual example, I just recently tried capturing the frontpage content of cnn.com). I think Evernote captures webpages the best out of all three programs, I've never had problems with it. Another thing I like about Evernote's handling of captured webpages is that once the page is captured inside Evernote, it handles like a note instead of still acting like a webpage. For example, when the cursor passes over a link, it doesn't turn into the hand (where one click will send you to the webpage). The only way to follow a link is to double-click on it. Both Surfulater and Mybase do the opposite with captured pages. It still acts just like a webpage with the one-click hand thing. I don't like that because once I'm out of my browser, my mentality reverts to double-click mode. For reference, I also did not like when Windows introduced the web-like one-click mode for the Windows user interface, where everything in Windows acts like a webpage. I hated that and turn it off always. I have trouble when people have it turned on their comptuers, and you forget that single-clicking a file will actually open it and if you just want to select it, you just leave the mouse briefly hovering over the item. That's how I feel with applications that bring the webpage feel to the software. That's why I prefer Evernotes handling of captured content to Surfulater or Mybase. I am also positive that I may totally "old-school" in my thinking on this, and there are tons of people who think otherwise.
In conclusion, I love Surfulater, and I love the design that is at the foundation of the program, but I have major trouble committing to it because of several minor, superficial issues. I really feel a lot of physical space is wasted in surfulater because of the headings and other interface elements. I know that when I use the typical outliner like Keynote and Mybase, I can fit 3 times the amount of text and content on one screen than I can with Surfulater. I even feel Evernote is just a tad bulky also, but not as much as Surfulater since it doesn't have any headers and stuff.
superboyac:
Just to provide an example of what I'm talking about in my previous post, here are some screenshots of the three programs (Mybase, Evernote, and Surfulater). I know it's subtle, but it shows what I mean by wasted space.
Notice how in Surfulater, there is a significant (subjective) amount of space being taken up by the headers, borders, and the pencil tool in every field. In the other programs, there is none of that and only the the content of the note is displayed in that pane, which I like. I know that the headers help organize the information, but I like the organization to be done elsewhere, like on the tree on the left or in separate panes, but in the actual note pane, I just want to see the note. I like how mybase makes use of panes instead of weblinks for attachments and other references. Both Surfulater and Evernote use hyperlinks instead of panes for references and stuff. I will admit that it is more efficient and faster, but I don't like the visual organization of it. This is partly due to the fact that i don't like the whole idea of a web-like interface in my standalone applications, in general. To extend this thought further, I've also always resisted web-based applications replacing my standalone applications, because I just don't like that interface for anything besides browsing. I hate webmail, and the thought (that mouser has mentioned before) that software will eventually be run from the web instead of actually installing files on the hard drive actually scares me.
Ok, back to the point. As I said, it's pretty subtle, nothing to make a big hoot about, but notice how I can cram a whole lot more information into the mybase note pane compared to evernote and especially Surfulater. It's also a scroll vs displaying only one note issue.
OK, I'm done for now. Nevf, sorry for the criticism, I mean in the most productive way. And I haven't really mentioned the good parts about Surfulater yet, but there are many and they very much outweigh the little things I'm nitpicking on right now.
thomthowolf:
This is just a thought in passing, but I wonder if Surfulator could allow for turning headers on or off depending on your needs of the moment. I sometimes like having all the header stuff available, but I would also like to be able to create a sort of "virtual page" that would display my notes one after the other with minimum breaks, organized by the outline on the right. That would allow for a virtual first draft of whatever I am writing. That would be cool.
superboyac:
thombthowolf, I agree with your suggestion. It would be nice to be able to turn the headers on and off. Sometimes headers are nice for the organization they provide, but for general note-taking, I'd rather keep it as compact and simple as possible. You can see how there are empty fields that just take up space in the picture I posted. That's why I prefer a blank slate like most other programs would provide.
Also, in Surfulater, the font display is a little different than other programs. Most programs have a choice of font, font size, but Surfulater also has this font style (like I see on webpage applications) and the font size selection is limited to a handful of choices. Again, I see this as leaning towards a webpage-like feel rather than a blank notepad-like interface. For a notetaking application, I prefer having the notepad-like interface. I don't like the whole "style" settings which change the font size and linespace settings depending on whether it's "normal" or "heading 1" etc.
To me, it still feels like the current version of Surfulater is not yet totally committed to being a true notetaking application. It is still strongly leaning towards a web-capturing/application capturing/referencing system with notetaking as an afterthought. Fortunately, nevf seems committed to evolving surfulater beyond this and each version offers significant advances in notetaking. I'm not nevf, or a programmer, but seeing what surfulater can already do, it doesn't seem too difficult to incorporate the typical notetaking features into.
Spivey:
Hi, I'm new here. I guess you can see that this is my first post ever to these forums. I joined because this thread is one I've been looking for, for years.
In describing the Ultimate Note Taking Software several people have been talking about a database engine with a really flexible front end that can be whatever anyone wants it to be (sorry, I know that's over-simplified). I agree that in many respects this would be my dream software as well. However, having used Keynote for the past year and a half I have found another approach also growing in my mind.
One interesting feature of Keynote that few other programs have implemented in quite the same way is its virtual nodes. In Keynote's implementation it is possible for a node on the tree to be a text or rtf file completely separate from the Keynote file itself. It took me awhile to find a use for this, but now that I have discovered its usefulness it is gradually becoming one of the most important features. The key benefit is that it offers instant interoperability with other programs without the need for importing or exporting- the content is right there to be accessed.
This has led me in a different direction in thinking about the design of The Ultimate- something a bit more like a virtualizing explorer/viewer program. Instead of creating a database and bringing whatever I wanted into it, let the file system be that database and use the program to impose whatever forms of order upon it I saw fit.
The key point would be that whatever organizing I did with my data, this would have no effect whatsoever on the actual organization of the files on my hard disk. An example would be like if the Windows Explorer filetree were completely virtual, and I could shuffle the files and folders around to my heart's content without anything being copied or moved. Moreover I could save a variety of alternative filetrees and switch between them. Each would simply be a 'view' I built with a particular organization of a particular set of files I chose to include. The organizational data would be saved in a file separate from the actual data files being organized.
Of course this would not be a worthy notes program unless it also offered instant access to the files being organized. For this it would need a editor/viewer pane that instantly opened a selected file without the need to start up an associated application- probably easiest for things like text, rtf and HTML. New files would also need to be able to be created from within the program.
These are incomplete thoughts still rolling around in my head, but I thought I would throw them out for your consideration.
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