Introducing Canvas for OneNote

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2/27/2009

Hi! I’m Nathan Fish, (Senior Program Manager, amateur photographer, canvas fanatic). Within Office Labs, we’ve been exploring alternate interactions with software that take advantage of the natural human capacity for spatial recognition in order to help users organize their digital belongings in much the same way that they organize their physical belongings. For example, pptPlex explored how presenting information could benefit from a canvas-based experience. Today we’re pleased to release Canvas for OneNote which explores how you can browse, organize, edit and create OneNote content using a canvas.

How does a canvas make things better? Think about your desk, with piles of papers on the corner and things in certain spaces. You have a lot of liberty to sort and arrange as you want. You know where certain things are, and you can go quickly and easily to those spaces to find them. Our gut feeling is that this canvas-like approach to organizing digital content is really promising, and with this prototype you can help us explore the truth of that feeling through your actual use, interactions, and work flow.

Canvas for OneNote was designed to allow OneNote users to navigate their notebooks more efficiently by using a high-level view of all of the documents, pictures, and anything else they’ve stored in their notebooks. Users will be able to see all their notebook pages and sections at a glance, and zoom into any content for which they want to see more detail or perform edits. It also enables users to organize sections and pages using spatial placement, easily browse and find content based on size and color, and add new sections or pages by simply double-clicking the canvas or using the toolbar. It also provides an Activity View to easily locate pages modified by date.

We feel that the canvas can help users better organize, access, and engage with the work they do, and that it is especially useful for previewing lots of content at the same time. However, we realize it is not the be-all. We know there may be ways that the interface may actually hinder productivity or could be significantly improved. That’s why we need your feedback.

From our research we've noticed that the "value" (or Ah-Ha! moment) isn't fully experienced until people actually try out a canvas interface for themselves using their own data (it’s hard to visually recognize content you didn’t create!). So, we hope many of you will download this prototype and give us the feedback we need to improve productivity solutions of the future.

Ways to give us feedback:

Our forums on this site: We’ll be monitoring and responding in the forums listening to what you like, love, or flat out hate.

On Twitter? We want to know what you think, track the conversation with our Canvas for OneNote hashtag, #C41N

Posted at 6:53 AM by Nathan (Office Labs) | Category: Canvas for OneNote | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (13)

Comments

feedback

This is awosome, I will be using it every day.
Thanks a lot

Rimoz at 2/27/2009 10:28 PM

XP Tablet PC Edition

What about it is Vista specific? Please at least make it work on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition..it has both touch and speech. I downloaded only to find it doesn't run on my XP TPC.

anonymuos at 3/1/2009 8:14 AM

It's rude that this isn't available for XP

Shows MS doesn't care too much once they've got your cash.

Tim.Australia at 5/13/2009 12:25 PM

not all Aussie are rude, and some of us are keepinguptodate ;)

Microsoft are providing Windows 7 release candidate free until mid 2010.

OneNote and canvas rocks on Windows 7

graham833 at 5/18/2009 1:49 AM

Thanks for making useful R&D available

I appreciate that this is the product of early research and prototypes and especially that you are making it useful for distribution, so we get a preview of what's to come. Cheers!

Gandalf at 6/17/2009 4:03 PM

Very good approach!

I like the idea of spatial navigation a lot!
I used to work with mindmapping-software to organize my projects and research-documents. There I could to something like this by placing the branches where I could find them later.
Now I use onenote, but I missed this feature for getting a nice overview.

Unfortunately I cannot test/use Canvas for onenote as XP is not supported :( Otherwise I could give you more detailed feedback!
Will there ever be a version for xp?

Cheers, Andre

andre.lang at 6/25/2009 11:01 AM

Fantastic!

Great add-on!
Makes navigating a large amount of notebooks and pages amazingly easy.

It's just fantastic!

Installed without a hitch on vista.

Thanks!
ps. can you allow the capability to link pages and sections and notebooks to create mind-map like structures?

Rainio at 10/13/2009 3:25 PM

Unsupported OS's

I've been a fan and user of One Note since it's introduction w/Office 2003. It's a useful tool for research and for people just taking random notes and organizing these notes.
Now it's a real slap in the face here to be told that these tools aren't supported on XP. Vista is dead, long live Windows 7 but it doesn't mean I'm going to go and buy W7 to just get this tool to work.
So what makes this tool so special that it needs Vista and beyond?

OneNoter Since 2003 at 12/20/2009 12:22 PM

Please, please don't stop

Please don't stop development on this. I have been waiting for something like this for so long. It is just brilliant.

ModerateOsprey at 1/6/2010 11:01 AM

Unable to Download

I'm using Windows 7. This seems to be a very useful tool to see all my onenote pages. Unfortunately, selecting "Try It" to download results in nothing happening. I would like to see this project!

rgletter at 2/2/2010 8:59 AM

System.ArgumentException: '0,0,NaN,NaN'

First off what a fantastic idea, only just found out about this, after a week of moving most of my notes to onenote.

This will be great to organise and view the notebook, nice.

But having problems when trying to run the program.
Windows7 Home Premium
Office 2007
64Bit OS

Error

We're sorry. This application must shut down because the following error has occurred: System.ArgumentException: '0,0,NaN,NaN' is not a valid value for property 'From'.

   at System.Windows.DependencyObject.SetValueCommon(DependencyProperty dp, Object value, PropertyMetadata metadata, Boolean coerceWithDeferredReference, OperationType operationType, Boolean isInternal)

   at System.Windows.DependencyObject.SetValueInternal(DependencyProperty dp, Object value)

   at System.Windows.Media.Animation.RectAnimation..ctor(Rect fromValue, Rect toValue, Duration duration, FillBehavior fillBehavior)

   at Microsoft.Internal.Canvas.Controls.ZoomViewer.AnimateToCanvasRect(Rect rect, Boolean fitAll)

   at Microsoft.Internal.Canvas.Controls.ZoomViewer.AnimateToExtent()

   at Microsoft.Internal.Canvas.MainWindow.OnLeftClick(Object leftClickSource)

   at Microsoft.Internal.Canvas.MainWindow.OnMouseLeftButtonUp(MouseButtonEventArgs e)

   at System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs.InvokeHandler(Delegate handler, Object target)

   at System.Windows.EventRoute.InvokeHandlersImpl(Object source, RoutedEventArgs args, Boolean reRaised)

   at System.Windows.UIElement.ReRaiseEventAs(DependencyObject sender, RoutedEventArgs args, RoutedEvent newEvent)

   at System.Windows.UIElement.OnMouseUpThunk(Object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)

   at System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs.InvokeHandler(Delegate handler, Object target)

   at System.Windows.EventRoute.InvokeHandlersImpl(Object source, RoutedEventArgs args, Boolean reRaised)

   at System.Windows.UIElement.RaiseEventImpl(DependencyObject sender, RoutedEventArgs args)

   at System.Windows.UIElement.RaiseEvent(RoutedEventArgs args, Boolean trusted)

   at System.Windows.Input.InputManager.ProcessStagingArea()

   at System.Windows.Input.InputManager.ProcessInput(InputEventArgs input)

   at System.Windows.Input.InputProviderSite.ReportInput(InputReport inputReport)

   at System.Windows.Interop.HwndMouseInputProvider.ReportInput(IntPtr hwnd, InputMode mode, Int32 timestamp, RawMouseActions actions, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 wheel)

   at System.Windows.Interop.HwndMouseInputProvider.FilterMessage(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)

   at System.Windows.Interop.HwndSource.InputFilterMessage(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)

   at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)

   at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o)

   at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter)

   at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler)

   at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.InvokeImpl(DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter)

   at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam)

   at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(MSG& msg)

   at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.TranslateAndDispatchMessage(MSG& msg)

   at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(DispatcherFrame frame)

   at System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(Window window)

   at Microsoft.Internal.Canvas.App.Main()

Hope someone can advice, would love to try this out

Transmitthis at 4/13/2010 7:17 AM

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