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Hey Jake, great job on the text selection fix! As far as the jumpiness, its the gestalt of the experience, from a ton of papercuts big and small: 1. I often ha
by npunt 5y ago
Hey Jake, great job on the text selection fix! As far as the jumpiness, its the gestalt of the experience, from a ton of papercuts big and small:
1. I often have the sidebar closed, and whenever the mouse passes over anywhere on the left side of the window it pops open, or will jump open and closed if you're in a particular area. It'll also remain open while the window isn't focus, such as when you pass by it on the way to the window next to Notion. When resizing the window from the left it always pops up and stays up. Rather than just use the app it's constantly making me conscious of it, even if to just avoid accidentally popping it open.
2. The canvas doesn't immediately repaint on resize, it waits until the mouse stops moving. This lack of instant feedback feels like it's perpetually catching up to what I'm doing [1]. I use Notion alongside other apps, so I'm resizing to get the maximum information on the screen with the minimum of UI space taken, but to do this means I have to move, wait and see how it repaints, move again, etc etc. This is exacerbated by the massive left/right %-width window margins, which make it hard to reason about what content will look like until the resize is complete.
3. Hover states everywhere, everything lights up when my mouse goes over stuff. With all corners and most of the canvas containing hover states there's no 'safe' place to move or put my mouse without chrome getting in my face. In small doses this is fine, and hover states are generally helpful to reveal present location, but at some point it's all too much.
4. Related, block grab handles and +'s are distracting and when I'm not paying close attention and clicking somewhere down the page where text is, there's a chance I hit one of those and a menu appears. I never want the menus, nor do I want to carefully move my mouse to avoid hitting these in the margins, I just want to write.
5. When using '/', the menu pops up, same thing. Wish that only did that at the beginning of a block. I don't even know the mental model for what is supposed to happen when I invoke and use it mid-paragraph. Does it affect this para or the next? And if its this para, why would I suddenly convert this para into something else midway through typing?
6. Tooltips. On left menu actions like search, updates, etc. On block grab handles. On formatting menus. Everywhere tooltips, for even the most self-evident of features (bolds[2] italics underlines links etc). These also persist when you no longer focus on the app (move the mouse away or cmd-tab). These are probably only useful for new users, not every time we use every small feature in the app in perpetuity.
7. In dark mode, resizing the window quickly will reveal the edges to have a coat of white underneath (the app's default background-color). Makes for a very non-native, 'barely held together' feeling to the app. Resize sublime, obsidian, vscode, etc and things just reflow and the window is the same color and nothing hits conscious awareness.
8. Making page icons changeable from the sidebar lessens the feeling of solidness, because it's a punishment if you click to go to a page and happen to hit the icon. I feel the same way about rendering the arrows for pages that do not have subpages - they have negative utility because I think there's something there that isn't.
9. If I select text, a formatter menu appears. If I then right click text, a different search/cut/copy/paste menu appears in addition to the formatting menu. Two separate menus in separate places open at the same time.[3]
10. If you click anywhere in a table, it automatically opens pickers / menus. For some % of the time this is a punishment because these menus cover up content, and it gets back to the idea that you can't rest a cursor anywhere without some sort of thing pop up. Airtable on the other hand feels a lot better because when I click on a select field, it doesn't automatically open the picker, it simply makes that box selected, and if I want to edit I click the dropdown or press enter.
I guess the best way to summarize it is using Notion feels like I'm always avoiding the punishment of UI jumping in my face for clicking somewhere wrong (see fitts' law), typing the wrong character, or even moving the mouse in the wrong place.
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[1]: feels a little like this https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/6ctl73/high_ping_in_real_life/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/6ctl73/high_ping_in_...
[2]: the bold 'B' icon isn't bold btw
[3]: There are five distinct context menus in Notion: formatter, Search Google / c/c/p (word selected), Search Google (no selection; why this exists is beyond me), link, and block right click. Just right click around and you can get more than one to open simultaneously.
- sdoering 5y agoGreat an comprehensive writeup. I use Notion (am a paying customer). And would only add that the mobile experience on Android is for roughly a month now abysmal. First the app got stuck on the last page opened before the update. I (and judging from comments on the net many others) could switch to other pages, could create new unnamed pages, but not edit them. The app was basically unusable for weeks. I even wrote to Notion but never received a reply. Then after weeks it got better for about a week. Now, with the latest update regarding the better text editing experience my app seems to be constantly on the verge of or actually regularly crashing. So again unusable to me. When I am not at my desk I use Notion to quickly add to existing documents. Write down ideas for my clients and just use it as a brain dump to later structure when at my desk with a big screen. Currently this part of managing my idea flow in my business just broke. So while I still use them because I get value out of their incline tables and such niceties I am already looking for a suitable replacement. They need to get their quality in order. I expect my tools to work. I need to trust in my tools. Else I have no use for them in the long term. I follow the philosophy of buying cheap the first time I need/try a new tool. And when that breaks on me after some use I know better what I really need and can buy quality items according to my needs.
- jitl 5y agoI'm so sorry we broke your trust – both in the product, and your support experience. I'd appreciate it if you'd email me (jake@makenotion.com) or DM me on Twitter @jitl with your Notion account information so I can look into the breakdown here. Can you tell me more about the app being "on the verge of or actually regularly crashing"? Is it crashing to the OS home screen, showing an "Oops" screen inside the app, or something else? Information about your Android device could also help.
- sdoering 5y agoThanks for reaching out here as well as via email. I really appreciate it. I will answer via email as I can provide my account details there. Kudos and thanks in advance and looking forward to the email conversation.