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Evernote 8 Announcement on Evernote’s Blog

Introduction

Recently I accidentally landed upon a view of my blogs stats that I’d never seen before. It showed me every single post or page I’d ever written alongside a statistic for each showing how many times each article had been visited. There were 2 things I was a little shocked by.

My first ‘shock’ reaction was really to the full screen version of the above screenshot. While you can’t really see this in the screenshot above, I’ve written a lot of articles in the span of three years. More if you combine those at my sister website vsatrends. Even though I pretty much work at this 24/7…it surprised me to see the results of  my labors all so nicely contained in one clean screenshot. If you want to you can read more about my discovery and see the whole, full resolution screenshot, which basically shows all the content I’ve written for my entire vsatips website in 3 years time.

The reason I had to publish the full image as a separate post is because the density of the page along with using an image resolution that keeps the text readable makes the file size of it too high to include here. Because it would adversely impact page loading times and people would get bored and wouldn’t ever get to read my article.

My second reaction and the thing that I was really blown away by was how many times my post ‘How to use Different Colored Fonts and Sizes in Mobile Versions of Evernote’ has been viewed…over 8000 times by now!  (At the time I took this screenshot it was 7800+ but I just checked it again.)

Why does that number surprise me?

When I first wrote this I was so certain that it was something a lot of people would want to know about. But after I published it, it remained decidedly ‘unpopular’ for a very long time. I did vaguely notice that somewhere along the line this began to change…but I really had no idea just how significant the change really was.

Of course, if you did visit the full-page listing you probably will note that even 8000 views aren’t very many when compared to my most popular post of all time…which is all about finding out who follows your YouTube Channel. That one has over 20,000 views…and gains 50-100 new ones per day lately.

Unfortunately, my Evernote statistic didn’t just shock me…it made me feel terribly guilty too.

Evernote 8 app for ios

If you’re wondering why it’s because you may notice at the top of that post, written in big Evernote green letters I’d added these headlines:

There’s Super Exciting Big News to

Report from Evernote!

On January 26th, Evernote released a brand new ios app…the app has been completely redesigned!

You Can Now Change the Color & Size of Fonts

from Right Within Evernote’s ios App!!!

The facts that Evernote 8 came out at the end of January and  that it simplifies the process of using various sized fonts as well as colors a lot, combined with my promise to my readers to help instruct them on how to use these new features…and that it’s now July…explains my guilty conscience (I hope.)  So please accept my humble apologies and read on to learn how to use these new features.

How Evernote 8’s Brand New Beautiful Redesign for ios Evolved

When my day began on January 26, 2017, the day that Evernote’s historic new update was released I found myself at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN undergoing my first Executive Physical (which was ironically another post I’d promised to some of the loyal followers of my sister website vsatrends.) While I  haven’t yet finished the Executive Physical post,here’s a link to a story my 91-year-old Dad wrote about my childhood experience at Mayo’s when I almost died and they saved my life…which  I republished  from his blog. Consequently my visit to Mayo’s this time meant that it took a few days before I’d even realized that the new Evernote 8 had finally been released.

Prior to Evernote 8’s release it was very difficult to vary font colors and sizes without resorting to some convoluted methods. I came up with the approach I offered in that first post on my own because I need that kind of variation for my own notes. Possibly because I’m severely ADHD and mildly OCD, and using colors and sizes helps me to quickly absorb a notes’ contents and find any information I’m looking for readily.

I’m a beta tester for the ios platform of Evernote and I had been using the new Evernote 8 in several different iterations for about 3 months prior to the huge release January 26th. Beta testing for the ios platform at Evernote is serious business. We were sworn to secrecy before we were even allowed to participate in the program. Unlike any other update I’d worked on prior to that, with this update we were continually reminded of our obligation to maintain secrecy…so we all knew that this update was a very big deal!

The Evernote Beta Version icon has a ‘B’ on it.

In fact, the day that all of the beta testers received their very first version of it was a pretty historic day too. Never before had I seen such an outpouring of emotions, comments and camaraderie within the beta tester ranks. Everyone was jovial and excited and we all wrote glowing reports while ignoring any odd or problematic behavior temporarily. I think that maybe this uniquely positive experience was due to 2 main factors. For a long time many beta testers had grown frustrated over encountering the same kinds of problems over and over again, which required us to spend significant amounts of time documenting them, but then never seeing great improvements resulting from our efforts. 2nd, I think that as a group,

Evernote’s ios beta testers offered a ton of unique insights into addressing some of the problems. In many ways Evernote 8 felt to all of us like our work was recognized and rewarded. We all, I think, shared a little pride of ownership in what we now knew was the reason some of our problems had never been adequately addressed.

It was a happy time for anyone affiliated with Evernote I think. But from a beta testing standpoint our work was just beginning. We all worked hard to contribute in meaningful ways to 8’s development so when it was finally released I know I was happy to not think about it and write about it for a while…but to just enjoy using it instead,

Introducing Evernote 8’s New Font Formatting Features

We did enjoy it too…because Evernote 8 is the best thing that’s ever happened to a Evernote since the vast majority of users have been using it.

The new features Evernote added in Evernote 8 for ios include the ability to use three different font sizes and 12 new colors in addition to the old standard black. Below is the new formatting screen which show those new sizes and colors.The way Evernote decided to include these new features is by adding some new screen views that replace the onscreen keyboard…2 in total including:

• One view provides tools for creating ordered and unordered lists, checkboxes, indenting and indenting and their 3 paragraph formatting alternatives of left, center and right orientation.

• One view which provides the 12 color, 3 font sizes, a highlighting tool and bold, underlined and strike through text. The strike-through text, while not something I use often, is a relatively unique tool that comes in extremely handy in certain situations.

How to Use the Font Colors and Sizes

The best way I’ve found to change font size or colors is to first enter the text that you want to format, and then select and format it.

As an example, I’ll demonstrate how to do this for the title of this section above.

• First select the text you want to format

• Next, keeping your selection active, tap on the Capitol A with threes small line next to it to open the colors and size view…see the screenshot above.

Evernote 8’s New font formatting view.

• Now just tap on the color and size you’d like to use. On most of my iPads I need to tap my selection more than once in order for it to ‘take.’ You can tell it’s ‘taken’ because your selection will be highlighted like those below.
• Last just tap on the ABC icon to close formatting view and return to the keyboard and typing.

Below is a screenshot of what my new formatting looks like:

See how simple it is?

Another way you can alter the colors and sizes is by first selecting your desired alternatives first and then just begin typing. In this example I selected the largest sized font in Evernote’s classic green color, and I added bold to the mix too.

There are a few changes that you can make to a font’s appearance without ever opening the new formatting views. These are exactly the same as it’s always been in earlier versions of Evernote.

Traditionally in both Evernote and most other ios apps you’ve always been able to:

• bold / unbold
• use standard or italic letters
• apply underlines to selected text

In all cases you can just select the text you want to change and use either the built-in ios method to change styles or use the shortcut that Evernote provides in the upper right-hand corner of the onscreen keyboard. Refer to the screenshot below.

All My Guides to Using Different Sizes and Colors for Fonts in Mobile Evernote

Conclusion and Additional Resources

Many top tech publications wrote glowing articles about Evernote’s newly released update. One of my favorites was written by Wired Magazine. It’s made clear by reading some of these that it’s not just the beta testers who fell in love with the new Evernote.

Here’s a link to the Wired Magazine’s Jan. 17, 2017  article pictured above.

AppleInsider wrote a great overview of Evernote 8.

Macworld’s article ‘Evernote Overhauls it’s ios app with a Focus on Speed and Simplicity.’

Dotto Tech, a popular screencaster made this awesome video overview of Evernote 8

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