Last September, the Microsoft OneNote team joined users at Reddit on an Ask Me Anything session and some pretty interesting info was shared. It ranged from the confusion regarding the existence of two OneNote versions on Windows 10, the desktop version and the UWP app, to what we should expect in the future for the UWP OneNote app.
The team explained that OneNote for desktop has been under development for about 13 years and has evolved around users" and businesses" needs. But as it matured, many users started to find it difficult to use, despite its power. So now, harnessing a more modern code base provided by Windows 10 and the Universal Windows Platform, the team stated their goal is to:
"(...) bring in [to the OneNote UWP app] the most valuable features from the classic OneNote app while delivering a more simple and pleasant user experience for users overall."
Furthermore, hints to new OneNote user experience and interface were given by the team. Their main goals here are to unify the user interface among platforms and to develop a new experience which could give users more accessibility and consistency across platforms. Also, they are working to get the Android version on par with its Windows and iOS counterparts.
But now, according to a tweet from William Devereux, OneNote Product Manager Leader, those feature updates are about to be delivered to the public. In fact, they were already released to Windows Insider Fast Ring yesterday:
It"s already rolling out to Windows Insiders on the Fast ring. Slow ring coming soon!
— William Devereux (@MasterDevwi) January 6, 2017
At this stage, some of those new features include:
- A refreshed user interface
- The ability to hide page previews in the Notebook view
- The ability to hide spelling error lines
- An easier way to hide the navigation sidebar on tablets, increasing the area available for inking
- A more visible toggle for enabling full-screen drawings
The actual features being released have yet to be officially disclosed, but according to William Devereux, they are top requests from the community. Stay tuned to see what the OneNote team has been working on for the last few months!
Source & Image: MSPoweruser