News

Windows Beta update: Evernote 3.5 Beta 4

Posted by Andrew Sinkov on 03 Dec 2009

Posted by Andrew Sinkov on 03 Dec 2009

Evernote 3.5 Beta 4 is packed with major improvements and enhancements. Check for updates or download it now. Here’s the new stuff:

Firefox clipper

ffclip

Evernote’s Firefox clipper extension now supports Evernote 3.5, allowing you to clip webpages right into Evernote on your desktop. This single Firefox extension supports both versions of Evernote for Windows, Evernote for Mac, and, in the absence of those, it will send your clips to Evernote Web. That’s one smart clipper. Get the Firefox extension »

Emailing notes

email

Emailing notes gets a lot simpler in this release. Instead of relying on a desktop mail application, Evernote now sends your notes straight out of the web service. This is great for those that don’t have desktop email clients installed. It also means that we’re able to have a much more consistent look and feel for notes emailed from any version of Evernote you use. If you want a record of your email, simply check the “CC me” box. This will send a copy of your emailed note to the address we have on file for your account.

Looking good

views2

The latest Beta introduces a ton of user interface enhancements. Among the numerous improvements, you will see a much cleaner Note Info panel (just tap the little chevrons to expose it), as well as a snazzier Mixed View.

Other improvements

  • Addressed PDF document search issues
  • Added new hot-keys for formatting notes and adding to-do items
  • Added an item to the Options window to auto-update to pre-release versions
  • Improved installer
  • Fixed ENScript support for searching for notes

Download Evernote 3.5 now »

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61 Comments RSS

  • Derek —

    still no password protection for the desktop client?

    • Andrew Sinkov —

      @Derek We suggest using the standard Windows user password protection.

  • Dierk —

    Looks nice, a few notes:

    – Include a tip how to change the language [you have to delete, move or rename your country’s folder in the Evernote directory].
    – Let the user choose his preferred lkanguage during installation.
    – I’d like to have the old view as an option, currently it looks a bit overloaded with the three panes.
    – Why is everything so large? Even when switching to icons only these are rather big, the text below [Viewing xx notes …] is good to read from miles away, the text in the sorting field is humongous!
    – Any way to get bigger thumbnails?

  • Cata —

    No, really, this is such a downgrade, the UI sucks and I can’t change the language back to English! I’m back to the origins…

  • Dylan —

    Second the old view option!
    Will there be an option for the “time band” in the new release?

    Once it was removed I realized how often I used it…

  • Shannon Wagner —

    A few notes..

    The install process was confusing. It seemed to fail silently, but completed successfully anyway. Not sure what happened. The first startup after the install took several minutes, with no progress indicator, which confused me since I had never actually gotten a “Finish” button on the installer – wasn’t sure if it actually completed.

    I LOVE the new email feature. The old email never worked for me since it would bring up Gmail (not my Google Apps for Domains account).

    There seems to be a strange bug while typing the title of a note (happened on both of my computers). The cursor keeps jumping back to the beginning of the line as I am typing. Most frustrating typing experience I have ever experienced (which is sort of impressive, I guess..). Everything else seems to work great. :-)

    Thanks for the hard work!

  • moming25 —

    3.5 Beta can’t work in my laptop.
    System:windows7 64bit
    error message: CLR20r3

    Is that anything I could to fix it up?

  • ADF —

    When I’m running the installer, it asks about a location for the database. Will this overwrite the existing database? Don’t want to lose my notes…

    And to @Derek’s question: does that mean 3.5 does not include the password control over syncing that is part of 3.1?

  • Scott —

    I dont recall this happening with v3.0 but when I run it on my laptop and then close the top while Evernote is running in the background and then open the top back up Evernote is front and center on the screen but nothing can be done. It shows a black screen, it can be minimized but can’t be closed with the close out X icon. The only way to get it back is to right click the icon in the Task Bar on the bottom of the screen and hit ‘Open’ and then its back to normal.

    Sorry for the long winded question.

    Thoughts?

  • Philip Constantinou —

    @ADF – Evernote’s security has not changed. A username and password is still required to sync.
    @ADF – You should place your database in a separate folder from your Evernote 3.1 databases. We’ll given you an option to copy your database at startup.
    @Dierk – The slider at the bottom of the window allows you to scale your thumbnails in thumbnail view. You can adjust your note sizes in the Options panel.

  • Philip Constantinou —

    @moming25 – It looks like you’ve run into a Microsoft installtion bug. They provide this recommendation:
    http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/04/08/406671.aspx

  • Tom —

    Still having an issue with bullets… Am I the only one? They look horrible (I could live with it…), but nested bullets leave an extra line and blank bullet that cannot be removed.

  • grehorst —

    Are tags listed alphabetically in this newest release?

  • Augustus —

    I’m a premium user and I love evernote, but I feel like I’m one step away from complete evernote bliss: granular sharing options.

    I’m referring to the way Gdocs can share individual docs for editing or viewing, with a permalink. That would be perfect.

  • Dierk —

    @Philip Constantinou

    I am using the middle button view [mixed?!]. And I cannot find an option for Note size – unless you mean teh font size, which isn’t an issue for me.

  • zman —

    The install stops at the second screen where you select the location. I can click the next button but the install does not continue. Operating System Windows Vista Home SP2

  • loosewire —

    I like the autofill for tags, but its seems there’s now no way now to add tags just by typing (or pasting) them in a bunch, separated by commas.

    Other things I think are key:
    – file preview of documents and spreadsheets. It’s available in Windows 7
    – highlighter pen for notes. Evernote is all about annotating, and yet this simple feature is still missing.

  • dean —

    Beta issues,

    Clipper panel is not working? When I alt tab, there is an Standard icon that says web clipper, but I cannot get to it to clip.

    Fonts
    I think you know they look bad. buy also they shrink when pasting.
    If I copy from word, and paste, I go from 10p to 8p.
    If I select all and try to change the size of the font, nothing happens. I can select a subsection and adjust it. but if I select everything (multiple font sizes to start) nothing happens.

    Personally I love the concept and the tool, but I am very conflicted, I am a 2.x owner, 3.x User (yes, a little bitter I lost all respect as an Owner a few months after I purchased 2.x) but it feels like we are not really gaining in UI functionality. In fact the Note editor functionality appears clunkier.

    It might just be the defects in Beta, but I thought I would see what others think.?

  • Mike —

    Still dearly miss the old original ‘continuous scroll’ look. Some of the new thinking works particularly well for things like snapshots, etc…
    But the old setup worked very well for many of us too and I do not like to see it abandoned.
    Please bring back an option for that view and for the side panels to easily retract/fly-out as the old layout did.

  • Philip Constantinou —

    For folks running into installation problems, take a look here at a few of our install tips:
    http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=13327

  • Andrew Browne —

    Hey Evernote team,

    I heard about this software the other day and i must say im really impressed. Im making a film at the moment and this is coming in real handy as a reference gatherer. Like picasa but with text.

    Im using 3.1 but i tried the latest 3.5 beta, will the final release have the “old” 2 pane style available. To me it’s much cleaner. Even on a widescreen monitor it can get a little cluttered having 3 panes always open.

    Plus you cant scroll through multiple notes like the last version. Could you add the option to restore the old interface? I don’t think im speaking alone here. (i this isnt a case of getting too attached to 3.1 since i have been using it less than 24 hours).

    But in all an amazing piece of kit, i have been looking for something like this for a long time.

    -andrew

  • Sharon —

    I have been using the same font in my notes since 2005. In beta 3.5 (two updates I have tried) the font is the same size, but is displayed so small as to be unreadable. It’s a 10 pt font yet displays in the notes as if it were 5 or even 4 pt type. If I change the default, then when I look at the notes on the web or on my Touch it will be too large. The fonts in the other two columns display too small also, but I can change that with preferences (but I’m having to use 18 point type to see them).

  • Frank J. —

    Please bring back the tape view!
    Without it 3.5 becomes unusuable for me.

  • Paul —

    Only issue I’m having, and it’s a big one, is that evernote locks up anytime the PC hibernates or goes into standby. Just get a black screen. Very annoying. Definitely fix this, otherwise I like the new layout.

  • Milan —

    Hey, does the “Clipper” tool (screenshot maker) in “Clipping Mode” support original 3.0 feature “Drawing tool” ? This is a must-have feature for me and I have seen some rumors that it is not present in 3.5 … Please let me know, thanks.

  • ADF —

    I fixed the installation issue, and it installed just fine, updated with my current notes, etc. All good.

    But I find it very hard to use b/c I find the text very fuzzy. The current PC (and especially Mac) versions are sharp, crisp. In the 3.5 beta, the text feels fuzzy, almost blurry, and slightly faint. That’s the text for the categories/tags on the side, for the buttons and everything else. It’s just hard to look at for very long.

  • Nigeld —

    I have been using Evernote for many years, since the original blue icon version.

    Each successive version has introduced support for more platforms and quite significant functional changes – unfortunately at the price of quality and stability. With each release the product has become (to me) more buggy, less stable, and therefore less useful.

    The latest re-write is a case-in-point. Yes, i get that it is beta, but it should at least sort of work. This version completely kills my system performance, the clipper starts as a minimized task at startup and can only be killed – with some effort – by using the task manager. On return from standby the Evernote screen is always visible, and is always completely black.

    IMHO you have a potentially great product, but it really needs a strong focus on building a quality deliverable. Design an interface and stick with it, and use LESS GREEN.

  • Frederic Ducros —

    It’s starting to get funny. No. It’s not working. Still not. Was a paying user. Nope. Not anymore. Bye bye.

  • Andrew —

    * It’s slower in general in Win XP.
    * Interface looks ugly, font smoothing is different. Make it the way it was, please.
    * I miss filtering by several tags with ease by selecting them and it also doesn’t highlight the tags used in selected notebook and how many notes are tagged by this tag.
    * I also miss seeing several notes and the ability to scroll through them.

    I don’t see this beta as an improvement for my notekeeping. I can’t use it as 3.1 replacement, and if these points will not be adressed, unfortunately I’ll have to find different solution.

  • Frederic Ducros —

    No your installer is still not working, and yes, it is lame to censor users from sharing their disappointment.

  • everyempire —

    Hi,

    Have you tried to disable your anit virus before installing? this can help with a lot of installations

  • evernoter —

    Unexpected behavior.

    In the main evernote window, I double click on the title of a note to open it in its own window. In that new window, I select File->print. It prints whatever notes are highlighted in the main window. It seems like it should print the note in its own window.

  • Alexey —

    tape view +1

  • dean —

    It looks like some key issues for people :
    1. Tape/Scrolling View
    2. Fuzzy look
    3. Inability to paste (makes it small/wierd fonts)
    4. Return the previous clipper functionality, though I do like the new selection model, the right click functions are a key function.

    Any comments or are we talking in the wrong area…

    Any thoughts?
    .

  • Gleb R —

    Am I the only on who finds the saved searches to be a pain just because you have to scroll all the way down the left sidebar? Can we have it as a floating widget in the sidebar so that I can put it closer to the top?

    Another thing I’d REALLY like to see is better management for location – I have many notes which were taken without GPS, yet I’d love to assign them location. It would be great if I could reuse/copy location info between notes, and assigning cities/countries based on the coordinates would be another step forward – for many notes I don’t need specific coordinates, but just being able to pick a city and/or country from a drop-down menu would be ideal.

    The last thing I’d like to ask for is better documentation. For example, if new shortcuts are introduced – is it possible to specify them somewhere? The manual is updated, but hard to match up against beta update announcements.

    Thanks for a great product! Look forward to further improvements!

  • Andrew —

    dean, me, I mostly use it for text, so I don’t need or care for note list with pictures, though I see that it looks ugly as hell with text, same in online version.

    Ok, I can choose note list the way it was (sort of, it’s uglier now). Here I want scrolling back. When I have many small notes or not that small, it’s good to be abble to just scroll and see several of them at the same time.

    I don’t need word freakin processor toolbars available right away on the screen to style my notes like crazy, this is not why I use this program! If I want to style them more, it’s perfect to open the note in seperate window the way it is in 3.1. But I want scrolling!

    I want the ability to easily see, scroll through, tag my notes. Ctrl+Shift+T, Ctrl+Shift+D were perfect for tagging and other options.

    And also highlighting tags depending on the notebook I am in and showing number of entries tagged by these tags. This is really important.

  • Rob Prouse —

    I am running this beta on Windows 7 Ultimate and have noticed a few issues;

    – After the computer resumes from sleep, Evernote is just a black window and cannot be closed. I need to kill it using Task Manager.
    – It is sometimes buggering the clipboard on my computer. I go to copy something in Evernote and then copy/paste stops working in all programs. The right-click context menu in Evernote no longer appears. To fix it, I run the utility GetOpenClipboardWindow.exe.
    – Tables seem to be nearly unworkable. How do I add/delete rows/columns?
    – If I copy text from a cell in a table, it copies the cell too, so when I paste into a new cell, a new 1×1 table is pasted in.
    – Is the underlying data format HTML? If so, how about a source view so that we can fix problems like the above?
    – Create a new note, tag it with a new tag, then drag that tag to be a child of another tag. The original note is no longer tagged.

  • Gleb R —

    Rob, I’m also using this beta on Win7, and find that the black window issue you describe can be fixed by double-clicking the Evernote icon in the notification area of the taskbar – the window gets refreshed.

  • Bingo —

    I’ve tried to like 3.5, but I just can’t. The thumbnail and mixed views makes no sense for people who primarily make text notes – what good is a thumbnail of text? You can’t read it – you just get a bunch of unidentifiable blurry boxes.

    The list view also doesn’t work unless you actively title each note correctly, which goes against the power of Evernote – quick a easy note taking with passive organization (take the note first, organize it later). I liked being able to visually scroll through my notes in previous versions.

    2.2 honestly had the best interface and tag organizing, but 3.1’s cloud sync was worth the changes. 3.5’s interface is really too cumbersome to use, though.

    Please bring back the 2.x interface. Also, thanks for the great programs you have made, and while I don’t like 3.5, I certainly appreciate the effort. :)

  • Bingo —

    As an addendum to my previous post, two things:
    1) With 3.5 I get the black screen a lot when returning from screen saver.
    2) The feature I miss most from 2.x was the tree view of tags. For some reason 3.x went backwards where you always had to type in tags, potentially making unnecessary tags and mistakes – 2.x had a snazzy interface where you could checkbox existing tags, or create new ones. It made it easy to nest tags as well. Now, I have to actively think of the tag names and type them in, and nesting is practically nonexistent.

    Thanks.

  • brian —

    1. your email does not know my addresses. Give me the option to use my own here.
    2. the clipper was one reason i’m using this with easy resizing of the box and notations on the clip.
    3. your text editor sure does NOT get along with ms word! Though i could do my notes in evernote then just cut and paste to word WRONG even visa vers WRONG

  • Ingo —

    Drag & Drop support seems to be one-way only. I can’t drag an attachment (PDF file) from Evernote into an Outlook Email compose window anymore, now it inserts a URL instead of the attachment.

    That’s a key function for me, I had to go back to 3.1

  • Evgeny —

    I’m a new user and started from recommended 3.5 (3.5.0.862) beta version. Well, THAT blurry look of the GUI made my head aching in very short time. I see here many people complain about it. Well, I’ll give a chance to version 3.1, at least it doesn’t have this fuzzy look problem.

    Please stop playing with fonts, learn from feature-reach Microsoft applications how they do very successful GUIs for Windows, looking neat and elegant.

  • Todd —

    I really like the new UI. Don’t mind the tape view being gone. I love the autofill for tags – that is the best new feature I have seen in here yet – huge timesaver for me!!! :)

    I am running Windows 7 and also have been having the black screen issue others have mentioned. It does not happen all the time but often. I will try the workaround mentioned by Gleb R.

    Keep up the great work :)

  • rich —

    It’s fuzzy

    I miss being able to tag screen clips directly from the pop up notifier

    Can we have more options for what we want to see/use (time band, thumbnails, 3.0 style, etc?)

    The clipper is now much more visible. I sometimes used to lose it. But can we have the floating clipper tool back?
    Thank you Evernote!

  • rich —

    oh yeah. you can’t resize the clipping area the way you could. Once you release the mouse button it’s too late

  • marinoz —

    Am I the only one who lacks the “Subject Date” in the Attributes?

    I am a paying user but won’t be anymore if tha Beta Version does not pan out better and fuller than the current version.

    Still a LOT of work to be done in general, judging from the comments.
    Stop adding platforms and focus on improving the current ones please…..

  • Neville —

    When resuming from sleep on Windows 7, I also get the blank evernote screen problem.

    Also, when editing notes, I find that if I select a few lines of text and then click the ‘To Do’ toolbar button, everything I selected is replaced by a single check-box. This is not intuitive or useful — what I was expecting is that each line gets a check-box, similar to how you can apply bullets to several lines of text in a word processor.

  • Phil —

    Hey guys, great app – been using it for a while now and find it most useful in dealing with customer enquiries and just those random thoughts I have to scribble down.

    Sadly, I too fall firmly in the camp of “hate the new UI”. The continuous scroll (as someone up there put it well) is sorely missed. Making notes now feels clunkier somehow :/

    If it can return as an option, that would be lovely thanks!

    The only other thing I’d like to mention is to not neglect Evernote’s use as a standalone app – I almost never use web sync notebooks, for privacy. But the constant sync checks seem to mess the cursor location up as I’m writing.

    It’s still great though.

  • Herb —

    Like many others, we’re also getting the “black screen” — me under Vista and my wife under Win 7. Works fine for a while but seems, after an extended time of being open, all you get is a black screen when coming back to the app. Have to kill it using the task manager and restart. Very annoying!

  • Steve —

    Hey guys–I crapped all over earlier incarnations of this beta but you’ve addressed my concerns.

    a) Load time and performance overall is much better.

    b) When you minimize a window down to a sliver so you can take notes during a GoTo or other Web conference, Evernote plays nice, just like it used to.

    I’m happy again. In terms of the UI complaints other folks have registered, I appreciate that with this release you guys are attempting a more uniform look and feel between your Windows and Mac versions. I’m in love again. Admittedly it’s a conditional love, but take it for what it is. Peace!

  • Glen Johnson —

    As a person who is very glare sensitive and uses Windows with a high-contrast appearance colour scheme (black background, green / white font) I’ve unfortunately not been able to use previous versions of EverNote. White / light coloured backgrounds on the screen make my eyes hurt and give me headaches. So I hope the developers have finally made this great application compliant to the Windows display accessibility standards, and have made it recognise windows high-contrast schemes.

    Glen

  • Ross Haines —

    Does anyone know why text formatting is utterly random. Whatever I do to the text, the printed version of a note is just random. To test the theory, I formatted text to be all 12pt on one note and them printed it – I got some in 12pt, some in 14pt, some emboldened! Nothing like what was on screen. Text formatting just seems very glitchy!

  • Anders Drejer Madsen —

    Hi.

    I’d just like to know if there is a buglist somewhere, cause I have a problem, but there’s no need reporting it if it’s already on the list.

  • John —

    “Why is everything so large? Even when switching to icons only these are rather big, the text below [Viewing xx notes …] is good to read from miles away, the text in the sorting field is humongous!”

    Totally agree. They(the menu bar and title bar etc) eaten up two much space and make Evernote unprofessional and absurd, wondering if the developers were using 50 in big computer screen.

    The developers should learn from Microsoft Office 2007 using “minimize ribbon”, which manages tons of items, compared to a few items in Evernote. to make working space as much as possible.

  • John —

    Please preserve the goodies of the previous versions, like you can hide notebooks pane, title pane…

    Hiding,Hiding,Hiding,Hiding,Hiding,Hiding,Hiding,Hiding…

  • Ken —

    Love the new beta, but there is a bug in the pop-up new note feature (that you get when you choose “new note” from the system tray). The bug is in the title. When you type it, it lets you get a few letters in and then pops you back to the beginning of the line. Kind of annoying when you don’t want to open up the whole program just to create a quick note. Fix this and I’m in Evernote heaven!

  • Hugh Simpson —

    I can’t get Evernote 3.5 Beta 4 to install on my laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate. I have the latest DotNet Framework 3.5 SP1 installed. When I attempt to install I get as far as the Select Installation Folder dialog but it will not continue when I select Next. I have 94GB free space and the installation only requires 116MB. I receive no error messages. Any ideas? P.S. I don’t have an earlier version of Evernote installed.

  • quimicadelta —

    The new version is much better, but it is very complicated to Edit or resize a picture.

    By the way Windows Mobile users need an app like JotNot for Evernote.

    Thanks

  • Myriam —

    Can’t install evrrnote 3.5 on my laptop running windows xp. I cannot get further than the screen showing the directory selection. No error messages. I have plenty of free space. And I have no previous version of evernote installed. Thank you for your help.

  • Perry —

    Can’t get Evernote 3.5 to install on Windows 7 64-bit. Installer reports “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)”. Fresh Win 7 install, 3.5.0.1258 installer