I received my Office 2003 beta kit today, incl

[gsnethen]

I received my Office 2003 beta kit today, including OneNote 2003.

The basic design of OneNote seems good. However, it appears to me that some of the intended features either aren't working or are disabled and that this may be resulting in many of the complaints I've read about -- including "all the damn boxes."

When I draw a picture in OneNote, it identifies it as a drawing and places a gray box around it. As soon as I click somewhere else, this box vanishes, leaving a very clean drawing behind.

OneNote also draws a gray box around text, but the box doesn't vanish when I click elsewhere, which results in unattractively shaded handwritten text all over the page. I don't think this is intended behavior for the final product.

Based on the rest of the interface, I think the gray text box is supposed to vanish (as it does for drawings) and only reappear when that block of text is selected. This would make pages of notes *much* cleaner looking, although the boxes are still annoying (IMO) while actually writing text. I'd personally prefer it if the boxes only appeared when I selected the text to manipulate it.

If I'm wrong, and this isn't the intended design, I would probably never use OneNote. However, assuming I'm right, it may prove to be a nice product, although I still need to see how it handles large volumes of data.

I think that the engineers at Microsoft should look more closely at traditional paint programs for inspiration on digital inking tools. For example, it seems odd to me that Microsoft chose to use these ugly pen icons with colored lines beneath them when the traditional PhotoShop-style brush icons (that show the shape of the brush tip) are so much more intuitive.

---Gary

[markpayton]

I suspect that they are still trying to get the paradigm shift right in their own heads and what you are writing is INK hence a PEN!

<mindless technical ramble>I've noticed with students and our headmaster who've been testing out the tablets we have that this is really a significant paradigm shift. I'm betting that for most people learning to fully utilize a tablet as tablet is as disruptive as going to a computer in the first place is. So many computer skills to unlearn. (I liken it to snowboarding, where a rank beginner actually has a less challenging learning curve than an experience skier who has to unlearn all of his skiing behaviors.) The same could be true for the developers. </mindless technical ramble>

Mark

[markpayton]

I suspect that they are still trying to get the paradigm shift right in their own heads and what you are writing is INK hence a PEN!

<mindless technical ramble>I've noticed with students and our headmaster who've been testing out the tablets we have that this is really a significant paradigm shift. I'm betting that for most people learning to fully utilize a tablet as tablet is as disruptive as going to a computer in the first place is. So many computer skills to unlearn. (I liken it to snowboarding, where a rank beginner actually has a less challenging learning curve than an experience skier who has to unlearn all of his skiing behaviors.) The same could be true for the developers. </mindless technical ramble>

Mark

[yvilla]

I think you're on to something there, markpayton.

[yvilla]

I think you're on to something there, markpayton.

[gsnethen]

After watching a couple demo reels of OneNote "in action" and playing with OneNote (beta 2), I'm left feeling hungry for a more usable version.

I suspect that Microsoft intentionally made the background of all text/handwriting gray as a debugging aid. The presence of the gray boxes make it painfully obvious that OneNote does not yet properly handle automatic merging of hand-written text boxes.

On many occasions, I've been writing text, and OneNote will get confused and start a new text box. Once this occurs, it is more likely to happen with each additional character I write. Often, this cascades into a dozen or more gray boxes all partially overlapping each other.

Does anyone know if Microsoft is planning to release another beta of OneNote before it goes public?

---Gary

[gsnethen]

After watching a couple demo reels of OneNote "in action" and playing with OneNote (beta 2), I'm left feeling hungry for a more usable version.

I suspect that Microsoft intentionally made the background of all text/handwriting gray as a debugging aid. The presence of the gray boxes make it painfully obvious that OneNote does not yet properly handle automatic merging of hand-written text boxes.

On many occasions, I've been writing text, and OneNote will get confused and start a new text box. Once this occurs, it is more likely to happen with each additional character I write. Often, this cascades into a dozen or more gray boxes all partially overlapping each other.

Does anyone know if Microsoft is planning to release another beta of OneNote before it goes public?

---Gary

[andriesse]

I just read that OneNote will not be a part of Office 2003.

It will be released as a separate product around the same time as Office 2003 (Summer 2003)

Regards

Nick

[andriesse]

I just read that OneNote will not be a part of Office 2003.

It will be released as a separate product around the same time as Office 2003 (Summer 2003)

Regards

Nick

[Fenster]

Is Beta 2 a usable version ?

or should I wait for a full release- I am axcited about the application idea !

David