Day 1-3 of free note usage:
I was met with great frustration while trying to write with a stylus on the screen using the English three line method. The main problem was that I was placing my hand on the screen as as I was writing, the "ink" would shoot from my word to the last location of my palm. I soon learned to tip the tablet on my lap or against some books so that I could write easily without touching the screen. The hand writting does take some getting use to espically with how large to make your words and what lines to use. The first picture that I have attached shows an arrow pointing down to a dotted line. This is where you want to write your sentences and distinguish your capital letters from lower case (picture 2). For letters that normally drop below the line, like j,p, and q, you should continue the letter below the dotted line. This would also apply to cursive characters (picture 3). Once I knew how to properly write using the program I was very excited!! I soon realized though that this was just the tip of the ice berg for my problems :( Often when I write, I tend to pause to make sure I spelled something correctly or to think longer on an idea. The program will only wait so long until it tosses whatever is in the box onto the page. This is inconvienent if you haven't written a full word because you can't line up the characters. For example if I write, Hello my name is Mitch and I have an itch, but pause and really write, Hello my na me is Mitch and I ha ve an itch, you would have to completely delete all the characters of the incorrect words. na, me, ha and ve all count as a single character, not individual letters. The same goes for the rest of the words. Anything written in the box is treated as a single character, so if you make a spelling mistake while writing, you have to wait until it is "placed" on the page, then delete it and re-write it
Day 4-5 of Freenote usage
Besides the character issue, there was one other feature that caused me great frustration. When you do an extensive amount of writing the "writing area" overlaps what is written or what is currently being written. In my screen shot I have a full page of text but my cursor is placed at the bottom where the newest words will appear. The "writing area" is located in the middle of the page and obscures what I wish to write! See picture 4 for an example of this frustration. Even though this was an issue, I came up with a solutiong that works pretty well! When you get close to the center of the page where the overlap will occur, hold down enter to increase the page length. This will allow you to scroll up to where your input is located and keep the "writing area" below so overlap is not an issue!! Figureing this out made me very happy and changed my opinion of the program considerabily.
There are many other great features in Freenote, like the ability to resize imported pictures or images that you draw and adding audio notes. There is a bit of a learning curve to the program and some settings may have to be tweek'd before you see the results you want, but over all this is a fantastic program!! I would reccommend this to anyone who has a tablet and wants to try writing on it.
Schedule for next week, I review another note taking app called Tabnote. This will be a micro review because I hope to find another app to do as well!
(I apologize if the pictures are our of order or mixed up, i am learning how to blog in mobile format as well as at my desktop)
I was met with great frustration while trying to write with a stylus on the screen using the English three line method. The main problem was that I was placing my hand on the screen as as I was writing, the "ink" would shoot from my word to the last location of my palm. I soon learned to tip the tablet on my lap or against some books so that I could write easily without touching the screen. The hand writting does take some getting use to espically with how large to make your words and what lines to use. The first picture that I have attached shows an arrow pointing down to a dotted line. This is where you want to write your sentences and distinguish your capital letters from lower case (picture 2). For letters that normally drop below the line, like j,p, and q, you should continue the letter below the dotted line. This would also apply to cursive characters (picture 3). Once I knew how to properly write using the program I was very excited!! I soon realized though that this was just the tip of the ice berg for my problems :( Often when I write, I tend to pause to make sure I spelled something correctly or to think longer on an idea. The program will only wait so long until it tosses whatever is in the box onto the page. This is inconvienent if you haven't written a full word because you can't line up the characters. For example if I write, Hello my name is Mitch and I have an itch, but pause and really write, Hello my na me is Mitch and I ha ve an itch, you would have to completely delete all the characters of the incorrect words. na, me, ha and ve all count as a single character, not individual letters. The same goes for the rest of the words. Anything written in the box is treated as a single character, so if you make a spelling mistake while writing, you have to wait until it is "placed" on the page, then delete it and re-write it
Day 4-5 of Freenote usage
Besides the character issue, there was one other feature that caused me great frustration. When you do an extensive amount of writing the "writing area" overlaps what is written or what is currently being written. In my screen shot I have a full page of text but my cursor is placed at the bottom where the newest words will appear. The "writing area" is located in the middle of the page and obscures what I wish to write! See picture 4 for an example of this frustration. Even though this was an issue, I came up with a solutiong that works pretty well! When you get close to the center of the page where the overlap will occur, hold down enter to increase the page length. This will allow you to scroll up to where your input is located and keep the "writing area" below so overlap is not an issue!! Figureing this out made me very happy and changed my opinion of the program considerabily.
There are many other great features in Freenote, like the ability to resize imported pictures or images that you draw and adding audio notes. There is a bit of a learning curve to the program and some settings may have to be tweek'd before you see the results you want, but over all this is a fantastic program!! I would reccommend this to anyone who has a tablet and wants to try writing on it.
Schedule for next week, I review another note taking app called Tabnote. This will be a micro review because I hope to find another app to do as well!
(I apologize if the pictures are our of order or mixed up, i am learning how to blog in mobile format as well as at my desktop)
