Evernote’s Big Win(dows) Beta Release

September 24th, 2009

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We have a big announcement to make…the new Evernote for Windows is here, kinda.

Windows has always been a big deal for Evernote. Fully 46% of our desktop users log into their Evernote accounts through our downloadable Windows version, compared with 38% on Mac and 16% on the web. However, over the past few months our Windows users may have felt a little left out, especially given all the rapid development on our other platforms.

It was all part of our cunning plan… Deep inside our secret lair, we’ve been discreetly (errr not so discreetly) working on a complete, from-the-ground-up rewrite of Evernote for Windows. The goal: make it faster, sleeker, more powerful, and—most importantly—easier to enhance in the future. Now, you can see the results in the brand new Evernote for Windows 3.5 Beta. We think it’s pretty neat. Get Evernote 3.5 Beta »

What’s new?

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Evernote for Windows 3.5 has dozens of visible and under-the-hood improvements. In a nutshell, you’ll be able to capture stuff faster, find it easier, store more of it, and manipulate it in more powerful ways. It’s also quite handsome. Here are some of the changes:

Three different ways to view your notes

  • Thumbnail view: Rendered thumbnails showing the contents of your notes, images, and PDFs for easy browsing and filtering
  • List view: Multi-column “List View” with sorting on any column
  • Mixed view: Mixed thumbnail + detail view
  • Can zoom thumbnails to see more detail
  • Can display thumbnail or mixed views in visual groupings by date, size, source URL domain, and start of title

Note editing

  • Auto-complete tagging and easier tag creation
  • Spell checking as you type
  • Better support for advanced markup
  • Can now create tables within notes
  • Can specify default font size for text in notes
  • Better handling of longer text notes
  • Creating ink notes in easier with the new canvas-like layout

More functions available in single-note editor window

  • Detailed note information and attributes
  • Emailing notes
  • Printing notes

Editable description of the search filter

  • Ability to add or remove individual criteria from current search filter
  • Save the current search for use later as a Saved Search

And so much more…

  • Find and Find next/find previous (both within and across notes)
  • Better consistency across the Mac and Windows versions of Evernote
  • New icons and buttons
  • More user-friendly “Folder Import” feature to automatically create notes from a watched folder–great for scanner and other integrations
  • “View on Map” button opens geo-tagged notes in Google Maps
  • Evernote for Windows introduction video included on launch
  • Multi-lingual spell check included in application
  • Quick access to your online account information
  • Improved screen clipping requiring fewer steps, with on-screen explanations
  • Menu options for attaching files to notes without requiring drag-and-drop
  • Extend note search capabilities with ANY or ALL search criteria
  • Remove tags from notes with a single click
  • Advanced note text editor based on Google Chrome
  • Improved synchronization performance via networking optimizations
  • Improved database performance for faster searching and sorting of notes
  • Single binary for all supported languages

Why is it in Beta?

We see Evernote 3.5 as a big (BIG) improvement in terms of features, performance and stability, but it’s such a big change that we want people to use it for a couple of months before it becomes the official version. This means that we won’t be auto-upgrading current users just yet. If you’re new to Evernote for Windows, by all means download and start using the 3.5 Beta. If you’re an existing user of 3.1, you’ll have to follow a few simple steps to migrate to 3.5:

  1. Export any local notebooks
  2. Completely quit Evernote 3.1 (including the taskbar clipper)
  3. Install Evernote 3.5 Beta
  4. Allow Evernote to sync your notes from the server (this make take some time)
  5. Import the local notebooks

Once Evernote 3.5 is ready for primetime, we will allow everyone to automatically upgrade to it. In the meantime, you can use both on the same machine or just keep using 3.1.

Which versions of Windows?

The Evernote 3.5 beta uses the latest Microsoft development frameworks so it runs great on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you’re running Windows XP, particularly on a fairly old computer, you may notice some graphical glitches. We’re working to fix these problems, but if the 3.5 Beta doesn’t work well on your configuration, you should switch back to 3.1.

What’s next?

Now that we’ve made the investment in modernizing the Evernote for Windows codebase, we’ll be able to release future enhancement much more rapidly. Look for lots of exciting features in the near future.

Big, big thanks to the hundreds of people who participated in our alpha testing!

Get Evernote 3.5 Beta »

Updates!

Evernote for Windows Beta keeps getting better: