One of my objectives is to show how you don’t need to spend a lot of money to use a decent outlining tool. There are some excellent tools out there that are either free or are available at minimal cost, such as the example below:
AllMyNotes Organiser
Windows Only: Free Version, Deluxe Edition ($34)
Website: http://www.vladonai.com
Organisation – 7/10
AllMyNotes is a two-panel organiser with navigation on the left and content on the right. Notes can be organised into folders with each folder holding many notes or folders which can then be viewed by highlighting them in the navigation panel. Notes are Rich text, so you can add formatting such as bold or underlining, generate ordered or bullet point lists.
Perspective – 6/10
Using AllMyNotes allows you to see the framework of the outline you are working on but only in hierarchical form. You can show an hide elements to drill down into detail and expand to get the full hierarchy but this is quite a manual process. On large outlines you would be restricted by the amount of screen estate that you can access.
Function – 8/10
You can easily add a table and there are buttons to insert the current date and time. overall the functions are flexible and full-featured. You can also add reminders to notes so that they generate a pop-up alarm (assuming the program is running in the background). Notes are saved in .ddb format, which could then be synced using Dropbox or similar, though there is a separate backup feature. The notebook files can be protected by a password and the files are encrypted.
Speed – 6/10
The application is fast and responsive and although the buttons are non-standard, it’s not hard to figure out what they do. The active button highlighting looks strange but you get used to it. One issue is the lack of keyboard short-cuts. You find yourself flipping between mouse and keyboard for simple tasks like adding a new note or folder. Also notes or folder are added as peers unless the folder is expanded which you can’t do if it’s a new empty folder. It’s niggles like this that let the product down.
Compatibility – 5/10
The product runs on Windows only and ran well under Windows 7 and 10. There is no version for Android, Mac, or other non-Windows. There are various options to change to look and feel to suit your mood. Content can easily be exported to an HTML, RTF or plain text file, though there are no options to remove metadata like the indent level or title.
Verve – 6/10
Overall AllMyNotes is quite fun to use. Its speed and versatility are attractive, though it needs some usability work to make it really useful.
