So my focus is almost entirely centered around replicating the functionality I already have in Info Select but in an application that is healthy and vigorous and actively moving forward. I use only a small fraction of Info Select features so I'm hoping this won't be too difficult. For the most part, searching and note navigation is all I do with Info Select. All note organizational capabilities are homegrown through a very simple expedient of an organized collection of "keywords" embedded in each note, something AllMyNotes already does quite well.
I have noticed that many of the keystroke sequences are the same for AllMyNotes as they are in Info Select; this is very convenient. Thank you. This couldn't possibly have been an accident, although I did find it very pleasantly surprising.
I have already imported all of my data from Info Select into AllMyNotes; as far as I can tell so far the importation went flawlessly. The appearance of the data is markedly different due to philosophical formatting differences between the applications, but reasonably acceptable. Hyperlinks to websites do not stand out sufficiently in AllMyNotes in my opinion; I hope to find a way to fix that. Having to hold down the control key for an Internet link is an annoyance but survivable.
What follows is what I perceive to be the list of missing functionality that I enjoy in Info Select but which is either missing or I haven't figured out how to do in AllMyNotes.
1. Global Search is fairly close to what I'm accustomed to already but it does not seem to highlight ALL search terms in a note simultaneously but only one at a time. If a search term exists 5 times in a note, then it should be highlighted 5 times when you select that note in the left-hand pane tree view (assuming that it's physically possible to see all 5 instances on a single screen full of information and that some of the instances aren't out of sight below screen visibility). One can more or less accomplish the same thing by clicking within the note and hitting F3, which turns on highlighting for all items matching the search criteria within the note (and which leaves the highlighting on WHILE editing within the note; this is actually significantly BETTER than what Info Select does, which turns the highlighting off when you click within the note; good job AllMyNotes!). Simply highlight all the search terms within a note AT ALL TIMES when filtering is on (whether the note is simply selected in the tree view or one has actually gone into edit the note) would be far better in my opinion.
1a. The F3 key only cycles through all of the Global Search hits within an individual note and rings the bell when you've come to the end of the list of hits. In Info Select, F3 goes to the list of hits in an individual note and when it comes to the end it jumps to the next note and goes to the 1st hit in that and then goes on from there. This is much more efficient than having to jump from note to note in the left-hand tree view pane by hand in between collections of F3 presses. It allows one to rifle through dozens of hits in a multiplicity of notes in a matter of seconds which the F3 facility in AllMyNotes does NOT permit.
2. There seems to be no facility for keeping a single click collection of high-traffic notes. In Info Select, along the bottom edge of the right-hand note pane, one can quickly and easily add and remove tabs that will. Each tab is a "context" consisting of the collection of notes that were visible, and which particular one was selected, when the tab was created or last accessed. In AllMyNotes parlance, this would be the "filtered" collection of notes visible immediately following a Global Search with filtering turned on. If a particular tab is selected and you pick a different note from the left-hand pane tree view, then that note remains associated with that tab. If a particular tab is selected and you change the global search and filter, then THAT becomes the set of information associated with that tab (hence the name "context"). In other words, the tabs are always "live". Whatever searching and filtering you do when a particular tab is selected becomes the "state" of that tab. If you leave and go to a different tab and return, that state is returned to upon selecting that tab again. I use this in a real estate context: I may have 500 customers in my database but I only have 4 or 5 transactions going at once at most, and each of those ongoing transactions is associated with a tab, always available with a single click.
3. The Global Search facility in AllMyNotes lacks Info Select's elegance and efficiency. Info select keeps a list of the most recent searches as a drop-down of the search box. Simply typing somewhere between a single to a few characters (sufficient to differentiate a search term from the other search terms) and hitting down-arrow allows you to quickly jump to any recently used search term. Repeatedly hitting the down arrow jumps to the next item in the list that matches the text you entered as a differentiator. This facility prevents one from having to endlessly re-type commonly or repetitively used search terms.
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The nature of this post is to complain about the things that I use all day every day within Info Select without which I would be crippled in a move to AllMyNotes. Perforce it doesn't list all of the interesting features that AllMyNotes DOES have that Info Select DOES NOT. The ability to add an alarm at any point within any note is simply inspired, as an example. Unfortunately, this little piece of genius is paired with having neglected to have a list of all the alarms that are seeded out there in the database (at least not that I can find). OOOooppps. A list showing all the alarms that are out there with the ones that have gone off highlighted is clearly needed and I'm betting will see that before too long; it may even already be there and I just haven't found it. I can only find a list of the alarms that have gone off. Peculiarly, AllMyNotes seems to allow you to delete the icon of the alarm out of the note while leaving the visually deleted alarm in the list of triggered alarms. I would consider that a bug.
All in all, these are very few complaints which was extremely surprising to me. I thought there'd be many more. If I had to select any particular thing as a great weakness of AllMyNotes, it would be the weakness of the overall search engine mechanism relative to Info Select.
I feel a little guilty for what I've only paid...
Unfortunately, after being accustomed to these facilities for about 22 years, my habits have achieved an extremely elevated level of refinement that depend on these capabilities past a completely conscious level. My fingers seem to know to do these things without my active mental participation. I can relearn habits, but the capabilities themselves in do need to be there in one form or another for AllMyNotes to be a viable option for me. While the needs are very few, they're pretty much cast in concrete. While I could get along without the full range of Info Select search varieties, the absence of a powerful date stamp search facility is probably a dealbreaker for me.
Best regards.
Steve
Thanks in advance for your help. LAH