~3 weeks studying with the New Experience

I've been able to use the new experience for study for maybe the last 3 weeks. Generally, it's worked okay. I haven't had time to take detailed notes on my experiences, but I'm trying to do a quick dump here for others who are reading and I'm also going to submit a Feedback pointing to this. Unfortunately, I don't have time to take screen shots or go into great detail, but maybe that can be added later if it's helpful for discussion about things I see.

This is strictly using the web site; I haven't investigated how all this works with the LDS Tools mobile app to see if there are synchronization or other issues.

Bugs

• There are encoding/decoding problems in notes. For example, if I type "God's love" in my note, when I see it in the sidebar, I see "God's love"
• If I open a note to read it, the system assumes I have edited it and changes the note's date to today, even if I have changed nothing. I believe this has been an issue for quite some time with the system and isn't a new behavior. It's just more noticeable now because the date of your note is more readily visible in the new system (which I think is a good thing). This is more of a problem when reading a note in the scriptures, as opposed to My Study Notebook. Just opening it from the scriptures updates the date (viewing it in the sidebar does not). In My Study Notebook, I need to click in an editable field for the date to change.
• I have to click on the "related content" icon on every single page to see notes. It needs to remember your current preference across every page.

User Experience Issues

• It's very cumbersome to add a note. There are many more clicks than in the old experience. First a small panel pops up and then from that panel, I need to get another panel to pop up. Now I highlight something, click on style, then choose the style of my highlight. Then I click outside of it to get it to go away. Then I click on what I highlighted to get the first panel to pop up. Then I click on Notes and then a big panel pops up so I can enter notes. It's not a very friendly design, especially since many of the buttons on the first panel open up the same second panel and just put the cursor in a different location. At the very least, please add styles to the note-taking panel so I can do it all with fewer clicks.
• The note-taking panel is huge and I covers the content on which I'm taking notes. With the old experience, I could almost always see what I had highlighted while I was typing my notes. Now I find it's rather difficult to take notes because I can't read the content that I highlighted that impressed me to take a note in the first place. So I click out of the note to re-read it, go back to the note to type more, etc. Again, it's much more difficult to gather my thoughts and write a note. Maybe made it editable in the side panel instead? Or make the window moveable and resizable?
• I keep thinking I'd like an option to have the related content automatically scroll to where I am in the scripture/article. I'd want it to be an option that I could turn on and off. I know some people don't want auto-scroll from a previous discussion, that's why I suggest a button to enable/disable the behavior.

There are probably some other things, but these are the nagging issues that come to my mind pretty much every day when I try to use the New Experience. There are some nice things with the new experience and some things that are fixed that never worked well with the old experience (such as easily being able to add a note to more than one notebook).

You say that it is very cumbersome to add a note. However, I cannot figure out how to add a note at all.
I've added several notes from my phone but cannot find any way to add a note from lds.org. I can see all of my phone-generated notes but that seems to be the limit.
How do I add a note?
Where is stuff like this documented?
If you can help me get started that would be great.

The first step to adding a note in the new experience is to select (highlight) the text to which the note will be attached. As soon as that is done a popup will appear. The second option in the popup is Note. Click that link. A different note popup will appear.

I have found with Firefox that note taking is not possible in the new experience. What happens in Firefox when making a selection in the first popup that the second popup appears briefly then disappears. I have to use Chrome to take notes in the new experience.

dfechser wrote:You say that it is very cumbersome to add a note. However, I cannot figure out how to add a note at all.
I've added several notes from my phone but cannot find any way to add a note from lds.org. I can see all of my phone-generated notes but that seems to be the limit.
How do I add a note?
Where is stuff like this documented?
If you can help me get started that would be great.

Do a click-and-drag operation with the mouse to add a highlight. Or should should be able to do something like just double-click a word and you'll see the user interface.

jdlessley wrote:I have found with Firefox that note taking is not possible in the new experience. What happens in Firefox when making a selection in the first popup that the second popup appears briefly then disappears. I have to use Chrome to take notes in the new experience.

You inspired me to try Firefox this morning in my studies and I agree there are problems, although my experience might be a little different than yours. For reference, I'm using Firefox 64.0 on a Mac.

I find I can highlight a selection and the marking user interface appears; however, once the selection has been highlighted, I can never get the user interface to appear to edit or revise my highlight. If I happened to type a text note, I can get back to the edit window from the sidebar, but I can't change my highlight style at all.

Did you submit feedback about your Firefox issues?

I submitted feedback. FYI I am running Firefox Quantum 64.0 (64-bit) on Windows 10.

I'm using Chrome. What's this about a "first popup" and "second popup"?
I see no way to create a note on Chrome.

Make sure popups are not disabled. If they are, you can set an exception for LDS.org.

jdlessley wrote:Make sure popups are not disabled. If they are, you can set an exception for LDS.org.

"Popups" that you can disable in browser settings are pages that open in a new browser window. The browser setting for popups won't affect elements that appear on the page inside the current browser window (such as the annotation menu).

You need to highlight a word in order to see the user interface for taking notes. As sbradshaw indicated, these are not browser popups.

If you are having trouble seeing the user interface, try the following. I am assuming you're using a computer with a web browser and a mouse. I am assuming you are using the "New Experience." I am assuming you are logged in with your LDS Account. I am assuming you are viewing in English. If you're using something like Windows 10 on with touch screen gestures, your experience may be a little different with your finger.

Option 1. Open the scriptures. Double-click on a word. you should see it highlight and see some note indication on the screen.
Option 2. Open the scriptures. Hover the mouse over a work. Click the mouse and then drag it over more words, as you would do in a word processor. Let go of the mouse button. You should see the highlighted text and some indication on the screen of notes.


Maybe if I have time I'll see if I can post some screen shots so people know what's going on. I don't know if the forum will let you post videos or not, but I don't have the tools installed at home to do the training videos. I have some tools at work, but I can't do this on work computers. Maybe the church can post some how-to videos to help members with this stuff?

jdlessley wrote:I submitted feedback. FYI I am running Firefox Quantum 64.0 (64-bit) on Windows 10.

FWIW, I decided to try Safari on a Mac today, and it worked fine for me. Based on responses I've received on previous feedback submissions to the church, they don't support IE/Edge, so it looks like Firefox is the one they need to fix right now. I wonder if they'll add Edge support after Microsoft changes Edge to use the Chromium engine.

Thanks for all your help.
I think my problem is that we cannot open a new note from within an existing note. Working from any article runs just fine but I was trying to do this from within a note.

dfechser wrote:I think my problem is that we cannot open a new note from within an existing note. Working from any article runs just fine but I was trying to do this from within a note.

I'm not completely sure what you're trying to accomplish. Is it one of these?

• Creating a note on one of your existing notes (I wouldn't expect that to ever work)
• Create more than one note on a selection (it's doable, but not always easy)
• Looking at your notes in the sidebar on the right and trying to take a note on those?
• Something else

Your first bullet is what I tried to do.

dfechser wrote:Your first bullet is what I tried to do.

Short of writing articles for church magazines or speaking in General Conference, your thoughts probably will never be in note-taking format on LDS.org. I'm not sure of your goals, but here are some things to consider that might help you:

• You could add to your existing notes on lds.org, kind of like journal entries. You might want to even add dates of your notes. This is the only solution that keeps you entirely on lds.org. I don't know if that's one of your goals or not.
• Try out TheBrain.com. There are free and paid versions. This is an interesting tool that helps you make associations between thoughts, visualize them, and organize them. You can even add links to content on LDS.org, and I believe with the online version, you might even be able to place a URL in one of your lds.org notes back to content on TheBrain.
• Try mind-mapping tools. There are free and paid tools. Straight mind-mapping tools are more linear in thought, whereas TheBrain.com allows various thought relationships.
• EverNote (free and paid) allows you to tag your entries and you can find associations through looking at tags and different notebooks. You could make an attempt to keep your tags the same on EverNote and lds.org, which might help you in connecting thoughts between the two, although that would be a manual process.
• OneNote (free and there might still be a paid version). This is a different type of organization, perhaps more project/task-based. It's more structured (notebooks have tabs, tabs have pages) than the other solutions.
• Personal blog. It can even be private. Different blog tools have different organizational features.
• There are many other apps out there. Search for things like "EverNote Alternatives" or "OneNote Alternatives" and you'll find a bunch of free and paid offerings.
• Depending on how you think and work, something like Trello.com might be interesting.
• I've not used this, but if you want a Windows application, you could check out UltraRecall.
• If you're on an Apple platform (iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac) you could check out Apple's Notes app (it's included, although if you want iCloud sync, you might end . up paying for storage).

As Mevans stated above: "Now I find it's rather difficult to take notes because I can't read the content that I highlighted that impressed me to take a note in the first place. "

I cannot find, in the New Experience, any way to connect the note content with the highlight location. What am I missing?

This is essential to my use of the study notebook, where I have ~5000 entries reflecting years of scripture study.

cynthianielsen wrote:As Mevans stated above: "Now I find it's rather difficult to take notes because I can't read the content that I highlighted that impressed me to take a note in the first place. "

I cannot find, in the New Experience, any way to connect the note content with the highlight location. What am I missing?

I think there may be two different issues in your comment above:

1. Unable to see what you highlighted
This is a significant problem with the new design. I find it greatly reduces usability, but I don't know if they'll ever do anything about it. Here are a couple of ideas on how to deal with it (I don't really like any of the options):

• Highlight the text. Then find your note in the sidebar, click on it, and from the "..." menu at the top of the note, choose Edit. You'll be able to see your content on the right panel and the edit window opens in the middle panel.
• If your screen is big/wide enough, open a separate browser window and put them side by side. Look at the highlighted content in one window and edit the note in the other window.
• Highlight something. Open the comment window. Try to remember what it was that inspired you to take a note and write something. Close the edit window to go back and reread the highlighted content, reopen the edit window and continue trying to make your comment. Repeat until you've completed your note, given up, completely forgotten why you were inspired to make a note in the first place, or gone insane.

2. How to connect the note content with the highlight region
If you have made a tag or added a comment, you'll see either a tag or a comment icon to the right of the text where you started your note. You can click on the icon and your note will open in the right panel.

If you are making notes on scriptures, you'll see verse numbers associated with your note on the right panel. This makes it easy to browse the right panel and find your notes along with footnotes. If you're annotating something else, like a magazine article or general conference talk, this is less useful, because you can see your comment, but you don't know to where it corresponds in the text.