Ctrl - S Not good enough.

[Grant Robertson]

Pardon the blunt subject line. Ideally SP-1 but I think the sane feature
is only half finished. If I am in tablet mode and don't have the TIP
displayed, then it is way too much trouble to force a save. I want a
button that I can put in a toolbar so all I have to do is tap it.

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote]

Pardon the blunt subject line. Ideally SP-1 but I think the sane
feature is only half finished. If I am in tablet mode and don't have
the TIP displayed, then it is way too much trouble to force a save. I
want a button that I can put in a toolbar so all I have to do is tap it.

I think the Save feature is fairly unnecessary generally, however maybe
you could use something like ActiveWords or MacroMaker to create an icon
or shortcut that will invoke the CTRL+S keystroke for you?

 

[Peter Engrav (MS)]

I may be missing some context here

The design goal of OneNote is that there be _no_ Save feature. We are, after all, trying to replace something as easy and intuitive as all those pads of paper that are floating around your office - none of them requires a "Save". You write something down on paper and it stays there. You type/ink something in OneNote and it's immediately saved

There is of course still "Save As" for making copies of your file in new locations

And of course it's not really the case that we save "instantly". We balance the need to get the user's data persisted to disk "quickly" with the need to not keep your hard drive constantly spinning. And of course we save everything when you shut down the app (or Windows or so forth). We actually make slightly different decisions based on where your data is stored (fast link, slow link, local, etc.)

It certainly can take a little while to get used to this world. Although many (myself included) have found that after a while spent there it's kind of addictive and hard to go back. I've had several awful moments now while I've quit out of some other application without saving and reflexively cancelled my way through all the warning dialogs

All of that said - we did bind Control-S to a trivial little command that schedules the next incremental save to happen "right now". There were a couple of reasons to do this - one is that because Control-S is so ingrained as "save" we can't really expect users not to push it every so often (I still do, even though it accomplishes essentially nothing) and so we needed to make sure we never used that key to mean anything else

Make sense? I guess the question to ask yourself is - do you want a "Save" button because you have a rational need for it or do you just want it because you're used to a world where if you haven't pushed "Save" yet your data is in an unstable state

- Pete

 

[krypticide]

At the same time, my Tablet has crashed on me at very bad times, and I wish
there was at least an option to change the time between saves. My lectures
go way too fast for anything more than a 30 second save (or 1 minute, as is
standard in apps).

The save button would be a nice option, one you could add manually like any
other hidden icon. While I understand the goal you guys are trying to
achieve, for some people it's just not practical to omit a save button. At
least there's a shortcut, but that's still not inadequate, in my opinion.

-Andy

I may be missing some context here.

The design goal of OneNote is that there be _no_ Save feature. We are,

after all, trying to replace something as easy and intuitive as all those
pads of paper that are floating around your office - none of them requires a
"Save". You write something down on paper and it stays there. You type/ink
something in OneNote and it's immediately saved.

There is of course still "Save As" for making copies of your file in new locations.

And of course it's not really the case that we save "instantly". We

balance the need to get the user's data persisted to disk "quickly" with the
need to not keep your hard drive constantly spinning. And of course we save
everything when you shut down the app (or Windows or so forth). We actually
make slightly different decisions based on where your data is stored (fast
link, slow link, local, etc.).

It certainly can take a little while to get used to this world. Although

many (myself included) have found that after a while spent there it's kind
of addictive and hard to go back. I've had several awful moments now while
I've quit out of some other application without saving and reflexively
cancelled my way through all the warning dialogs.

All of that said - we did bind Control-S to a trivial little command that

schedules the next incremental save to happen "right now". There were a
couple of reasons to do this - one is that because Control-S is so ingrained
as "save" we can't really expect users not to push it every so often (I
still do, even though it accomplishes essentially nothing) and so we needed
to make sure we never used that key to mean anything else.

Make sense? I guess the question to ask yourself is - do you want a

"Save" button because you have a rational need for it or do you just want it
because you're used to a world where if you haven't pushed "Save" yet your
data is in an unstable state?

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote]

At the same time, my Tablet has crashed on me at very bad times, and I
wish there was at least an option to change the time between saves. My
lectures go way too fast for anything more than a 30 second save (or 1
minute, as is standard in apps).

I *think* the default for OneNote is 30 seconds. I'd have to check tho.

The save button would be a nice option, one you could add manually like
any other hidden icon. While I understand the goal you guys are trying
to achieve, for some people it's just not practical to omit a save
button. At least there's a shortcut, but that's still not inadequate, in my opinion.

-Andy

Yes, I'd be fine with an icon that would be off by default but which you
could add to the toolbar if you really, really wanted to.

 

[Grant Robertson]

I may be missing some context here.

The design goal of OneNote is that there be _no_ Save feature. We are, after all, trying to replace something as easy and intuitive as all those pads of paper that are floating around your office - none of them requires a "Save". You write something down on paper and it stays there. You type/ink something in OneNote and it's immediately saved.

All of that said - we did bind Control-S to a trivial little command that schedules the next incremental save to happen "right now".

Make sense? I guess the question to ask yourself is - do you want a "Save" button because you have a rational need for it or do you just want it because you're used to a world where if you haven't pushed "Save" yet your data is in an unstable state?

- Peter

Peter, are you on the OneNote design Team? You speak as if you are but
your post looks like it came from a newbie using the incredibly awful web
interface MS created.

I understand that the design philosophy is to make OneNote as easy to use
as paper. But, until computers are as reliable as paper I feel it is
incredibly unwise to trust them completely. I don't like the idea of
setting OneNote to save my files every 30 seconds because I know this
will waste battery and reduce the life span of my hard drive. (And don't
anyone give me the lectures about hard drives lasting forever these days.
I have been doing this a long time and have seen plenty of them just wear
out.)

Most of the time I am content to not have something saved to disk for 5
or 10 minutes. But sometimes I really need to know that it is saved NOW.
The fact that the Ctrl-S was added proves that the design team
acknowledges this is a valid request. However I don't think the finished
the job. They ignored the demographic that OneNote seems to be most
prominently directed towards, Tablet PC users. How difficult can it be to
add one more button to the list of buttons in the toolbar customize
dialog. I'm not asking that it be on the toolbar by default. Just make it
available in the customize list.

By the way, it should save all the open section files not just the one
currently being viewed. That is, unless choosing a different section
already saves the one that is pushed to the back.

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote]

Peter, are you on the OneNote design Team?

Yes, he is.

Most of the time I am content to not have something saved to disk for 5
or 10 minutes. But sometimes I really need to know that it is saved NOW.
The fact that the Ctrl-S was added proves that the design team
acknowledges this is a valid request. However I don't think the
finished the job. They ignored the demographic that OneNote seems to be
most prominently directed towards, Tablet PC users. How difficult can
it be to add one more button to the list of buttons in the toolbar
customize dialog. I'm not asking that it be on the toolbar by default.
Just make it available in the customize list.

I think that seems reasonable.

 

[Peter Engrav \(MS\)]

Yup, I'm the OneNote dev manager. And indeed, I was trying out the web
interface to the OneNote discussion group.

It turns out that we agree that 5 to 10 minutes is way too long - our
standard auto-save interval is in fact 30 seconds. So explicitly requesting
a save via Control-S is useful only if you expect to do it more frequently
than that. Which seems unlikely. And 30 seconds has proved fast enough
that even the OneNote team (and we tend run
raw-off-our-own-development-machine builds, so lots of crashes are sort of
par for the course) has ceased to worry about data loss as a result of
crashes.

We actually originally wrote the Save command (the one that runs when you
press Control-S) for the simple reason that we needed a way for our testers
to write "automation scripts" for the form...

1. do edits
2. force a save
3. verify that the file we just saved is correct.

We decided to leave it in because it was doing no harm and had in fact been
carefully tested. Whereas taking it out would be an actual change that we'd
have to make very late in the product cycle (because after we do so we can't
automatically test save anymore) which is a smidge risky. And we thought it
might provide some purely psychological relief to those (like myself) who
took a while to adjust to a saveless universe.

- Peter Engrav (MS, OneNote Dev Manager)

 

[krypticide]

Wow. 30 seconds isn't a long time. I guess I just write about half a page
worth of notes each 30 seconds. =P

-Andy

after all, trying to replace something as easy and intuitive as all those
pads of paper that are floating around your office - none of them requires a
"Save". You write something down on paper and it stays there. You type/ink
something in OneNote and it's

immediately saved.

"Save" button because you have a rational need for it or do you just want it
because you're used to a world where if you haven't pushed "Save" yet your
data is in an unstable state?

 

[Erik Sojka]

I suppose the bigger question (the answer to which will
make everyone happy in this thread) is: Will the option
to change the default save interval be returned in the
shipping version of SP1? If so, then you can set it to 5
seconds or 5 years depending on your environment and
confort level...

I'd suggest to Andy that in the meantime, try to see what
is causing the frequent crashing of your Tablet. That
can't be too helpful no matter what application is being
used...

 

[krypticide]

I wish it was obvious that one particular program was doing it, but at least
right now I don't have time to figure it out. :-/

-Andy

 

[iFly]

in my case, it doesn't bother me so much. I am okay with the auto save feature.

Anyway, i found that browsing to another section, would trigger a save operation too. Although i am not sure whether it was true or not.
May be Ben or Christ can clarify.

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

Browsing to another section, quitting the app, and a few other triggers will
force a save. Also, we don't save if there have been no changes, so it is
not the case that your hard drive or USB is kept spinning or being written
to all the time unless you really are using the app all the time. In fact,
Ctrl-S does nothing if you haven't made any changes, unlike in Word, where a
full save happens and your entire file is rewritten to disk. The equivalent
to Word's "full save" is what we call "optimize", and only happens when the
proportion of incrementallly saved data gets too high for us to optimally
access the contents of the file. For those who have had a bad experience
with Word's Fast Save - don't worry - there is no connection between the way
OneNote saves and Word does its incremental "fast save" - ours is much more
robust and was carefully designed having learned from the approaches of the
past.

From our field trial, we learned that most people newly adopting OneNote are
a little freaked out by the lack of a Save button, and many of them ask us
for it if we speak to them about Onenote during their first week of use. By
the end of the second week, almost everyone has gotten used to not needing
to save, and it isn't an issue. Since this pattern is repeated over and over
again with each new user, you won't find us too quick to consider adding an
(unnecessary in our feeling) Save button, since pretty much everybody
doesn't need it after about 2 weeks.

Since we're very concerned about bloat, we are not likely to add things just
because there exists someone asking for it (there has to be enough need that
the request is relatively common). Adding it only to the "customize" area
would avoid some of the bloat issue in the UI, but the return on investment
for features that exist only in the customize area is too low for us to
spend time on them when there are other things that most people agree are
more important for us to work on.

Chris Pratley (MS)
OneNote design team

in my case, it doesn't bother me so much. I am okay with the auto save feature.

Anyway, i found that browsing to another section, would trigger a save

operation too. Although i am not sure whether it was true or not.

 

[Grant Robertson]

Since we're very concerned about bloat, we are not likely to add things just
because there exists someone asking for it (there has to be enough need that
the request is relatively common). Adding it only to the "customize" area
would avoid some of the bloat issue in the UI, but the return on investment
for features that exist only in the customize area is too low for us to
spend time on them when there are other things that most people agree are
more important for us to work on.

OK, Chris, though I am a very experienced user and have good reasons not
to trust _any_ software or hardware completely, I will stop bugging you.

I do have to admit that through all of the hardware problems I have had
w/ this new Acer C300 Tablet PC (shutting off instead of comming out of
standby) I have not lost any data in One Note.

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

Feel free to keep bugging me about other things

Chris Pratley (MS)
OneNote design team