Does anyone care about notes layout? We do.

Thursday, 02/10/2011, 12:06 AM by Anton Molokoedov

How does the same OneNote page look on different mobile devices?

We decided to make a short research and compare the results.

Here is the original page:

As you can see, it contains several tags, a table, a picture and a very important handwritten reminder!

Now let us load the page to different mobile OneNote applications and see if they help us not to forget anything and carry all necessary information with us.

1. Participant number one. MobileNoter for iPhone.

Well, everything seems to be in a place. The page does even fit the screen resolution, so you wouldn’t need to scroll. Excellent result.

2. Participant number two. OneNote for iPhone by Microsoft.

Formatting is gone, fonts are not nearly the same and where are the table and inks? The key information - handwritten reminder is absent too. We risk to forget about Mom’s birthday if the page is displayed such a way!

3. The third participant. MobileNoter for Android.

Everything is ok, like in the iPhone version of MobileNoter. Though here we need to scroll a bit to view the entire page.

4. The fourth and the last participant: OneNote Mobile on Windows Phone 7. Ironically, we had to use the iPhone 4 to take these “screenshots”.

Tags and inks have disappeared, but the table stays with us. Outlines order differs from the desktop OneNote and the iPhone version. Also, it is the longest variant – you have to scroll 3 screens to view the page.

According to the research results we can make a conclusion that possibly Microsoft is not going to make pages look on iPhone the same way as in desktop OneNote. Even on their own platform in the native OneNote Mobile application pages look different! Will they change their mind? We don't know, but our priority is to keep users' information as close to the original look as it possible.

2/8/2011 4:27:18 AM #

I can hardly read the text in mobilenoter. I'm trying mobilenoter for iPhone, I must do pinch or double-tap and swipe to scroll vertically and horizontaly repetitively. For me, OneNote Microsoft is far more useful in the case shown above. I think mobilenoter is useful for its searching ability, but I must give up to use this if the mobilenoter team believe their product really looks "excellent". Please consider the size difference between iPhone and PC screen.

excellent? |

2/8/2011 9:00:07 AM #

I strongly disagree with the comment above. Should there be an option to increase text size in mobilenoter? Maybe. The value of keeping the format intact is way too big. Onenote app makes the font size and layout clumsy and awkward. I have both on my iPod Touch and mobilenoter just makes more sense. How can you say that Onenote is more useful when tables, files and tags are either non existent, crossed out or all skewed? You own a mobile product, get used to pinching, sizing and tilting horizontally. In the meantime, perhaps an option to resize or rerender the font would be a great idea. I honestly do not see how Onenote MS app has an advantage. Period.

Mike |

2/10/2011 8:49:54 AM #

I agree with Mike. Anyway, I mostly use the iPad version, not shown in the comparison above, which obviously has a much bigger screen and I absolutely want my MN pages to look exactly like the OneNote originals. One point about the images above - there is no background colour or image in the sample page. At the moment, these aren't appearing on my iPad pages in MN. I use page colouring a lot for colour-coding purposes so it is important to me that this gets implemented.

Craig |

2/10/2011 11:31:38 AM #

Update: Actually, background images are working for me now, it is just the background colours that are being lost. Which is a pity, since it is the feature I'd rather have.

2/12/2011 10:42:14 AM #

Thank you for the report. It seems that background color support has broken down in our latest version. We'll fix it.

amolokoedov |

2/11/2011 5:55:33 PM #

I have OneNote 2010 and an iPad. In my experience simple ink works, e.g. a word or phrase written in one color copies just fine, but I've found it makes a horrible mess of more complex diagrams.

Written notes from my tablet PC written in multiple colors, any charts or sketches, ink written onto diagrams to point out particular features all get messed up horribly. The different colors in particular all go their separate ways and when there is extensive text in particular the result is dreadful.

Travis |

2/12/2011 10:45:36 AM #

We are aware of this issue and will try to improve it if future releases. Thanks.

2/19/2011 8:54:28 PM #

Share Your To-Do List across Multiple PCs with OneNote and Dropbox

Share Your To-Do List across Multiple PCs with OneNote and Dropbox

Al Bsharah |

2/24/2011 1:59:43 PM #

how to pairhere to devices to the wifi sync. when I try to pair a second device the first device was not paired anymore.

Sun |

2/27/2011 11:40:05 AM #

what I meant to say is , how do you pair 2 or more devices to the wifi edtion. when I try to pair a second device the first device get unpaired. do I need to buy more than on wifi sync licence.?

Also where can I get the standalone edtion whereyou just copy the onenote notebook?

Thanx

sun |

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Does anyone care about notes layout? We do.