▲ 12 points

Idea HN: OneNote for the Web?

by wslh·15y ago·12 comments·view on hn ↗

I think Microsoft OneNote is one of the best tools for personal productivity. It can be used as a wiki (linking pages), add checkbox and other "tags" dynamically.

Why nobody is doing a similar tool for the web? (except Microsoft). I believe many are using OSX or Linux and didn't experienced OneNote themselves.

12 comments

ah, OneNote... so much potential, yet such an appalling lack of vision. The online version of onenote you mention is one of the best experiences I've seen in a javascript-based editor - blows google docs out of the water in terms of responsiveness and simplicity. And where does Microsoft put it? Some dark corner of that Windows Live documents/skydrive mess no one ever uses.

I feel OneNote would be better if it acquired that awesome Operational Transformation features that Etherpad demonstrated so well, and shed all that fancy formatting features that requires so much complexity.

Normal people don't require yet another Word clone - a simple editor that supports basic Markdown-like features (bullet points, numbering, headlines) is perfectly sufficient to get the contents of a document rolling (and if needed, Word can be used for adding formatting later), but what _is_ essential is a dead simple way to collaborate.

I've been following the OneNote team blog for quite a while now, and it seems like they're adding more collaboration features in the next version of Office, but don't hold your breath - it looks like yet another incredibly complicated mechanism that requires more trouble than it is worth.

_Sigh_

I feel that OneNote has some specific key elements like the active "tags". It's also a good idea to integrate part of the document with other sources (like your contacts, or online spreadsheets).

In the past I felt that Google Sites (ex JotSpot) would follow that route but it seems it's now in the limbo.

I never found a good usecase for onenote's tags - yes, you can mark them as contacts or addresses, and there are handly shortcuts for that - but what is the use? How do you, for example, just view all elements tagged "contacts"? Or even just pages that have those tags? After all is said and done, it is probably easier to just type in the tag name as part of the data and let the search engine handle it.

(EDIT: cancel that, I'm an idiot. I just found a big honking "Find Tags" button right on the main ribbon that I'd completely overlooked before.)

I never understood the appeal of storing the entire freaking notebook in a single file either. When I started using onenote, I used the webcam recording feature as a sort of video diary, and this completely broke down my backup scripts (I put everything on amazon s3, which doesn't support diffs.)

/ end rant

Back to your comment, I don't quite understand what you mean by the online spreadsheet integration. Could you elaborate? I mean, the contacts integration with Outlook is pretty cool, but is virtually useless with anything else in the universe. What is the advantage here?

Another great use for the Tags - Summary Pages.

Look at the bottom of the Tags Summary panel when you click on the "Find Tags" button. You should see a "Create Summary Page" option. It's a great way to create summary/wrapup's of meetings and projects.

I use the tags everytime because I feel the freedom to mark bulleted lists with checkboxes.

What I tried to say with integration is that you can read from external sources and put the information in OneNote automatically, you need to build some add-on or connect from a scripting language to do that.

I bought a Mac this semester, mainly for use for general university study. OS X is great, but Evernote is nothing compared to OneNote, and I've considered installing Windows on Boot Camp just for OneNote.

Have you tried Evernote?

http://www.evernote.com/

I'm still dumbfounded as to why Evernote doesn't allow you to link to other notes.

I don't know about EverNote but I tried to develop a personal wiki under iPhone more than two years ago (not with markups but with a "rich" editor).

Finally I desisted because [technical rant] While I can use the UITextView (an UIWebView) there was a big possibility to be refused on the App Store after using some hidden methods. The other alternative was building a complete rich editor myself but was outside the project budget.

So, I believe that EverNote must follow a similar route to include links and others features.

Sorry to answer with another question but... have you tried OneNote? :-)

no, I haven't used Windows for years

Just for the experience itself, I recommend to try it on a VM or on a friend's machine with OneNote installed.