KNotes Review

very good
key review info
application features
  • Drag'n'drop notes into emails
  • (3 more, see all...)

About six months ago I started to seriously consider doing something about my notes. I had notes all over my desk, written on different pieces of paper, on post-its, on magazines and many in new text documents. You can't imagine but it was a mess and even in that mess I was able to locate my notes when they where not considered garbage by other and thrown away. At some point, I decided to get more organized and the best solution at that time seamed to be a notes application for my Linux desktops. I started to use frequently either KNotes in KDE or Sticky Notes in GNOME. My favorite is Sticky Notes, but I'm going to review KNotes because it has a lot more features which might really come in handy to some and I don't think that, with the current set of features, Sticky Notes deserves a review.

Development for KNotes started about a decade ago and I'm thinking that most of you who used KDE PIM saw it there. I'm also thinking that most of you never gave it any attention because it seemed to be just a useless application. It's not useless at all, and, even if it doesn't attract crowds, it can really help at keeping some things within reach.

KNotes is an integrated component of Kontact, but it can be used independently just fine. Once you started KNotes, it will automatically start itself each time you log into KDE. It helps you by allowing fast and easy access to your sticky notes, which now don't have to be all over the place. An interesting set of features allows notes to be easily mailed, sent to another KNotes application over the network or pasted in the application you work with. KNotes even supports formatting and the best way of using it is to get to know the shortcuts, because using the mouse is not very efficient.

Once you've created a new note, a nicely skinned notes window will appear. By default you'll use basic text editing, but the cool thing in KNotes is that you can also go in the preferences window and enable rich text editing. In rich text mode you'll also have a small toolbar at the bottom of your note and all the common shortcuts you're used to for editing rich text will also work. This is very good, because it allows you to easily emphasize some key words.

Right-clicking the upper border of a note will display a menu with some pretty interesting options. Some of them are the options to set an alarm for a note, to send it to another computer that uses KNotes and that is setup to accept incoming notes, to e-mail that note and to save it as HTML or plain text. Another nice feature is the possibility to keep it below others or above. Considering all this great features, I can say that KNotes is a little over-engineered, but I like this a lot. I use most of these features, especially when working together with some friends on a project, for sending notes over the network.

The default settings associated to KNotes work pretty good for most of you, but it is better if you take a look here because you might like to change some things. In the settings window you are able to select default colors that should be used for the text and the background, a default width or height, or configure your default font. Rich text is disabled by default, but it can easily be enabled. The program is set to send mail with kmail and to add the title as a subject and the text of the note as a body. From the actions screen you can change all this. As a fun fact, you should know that the actions are, actually, only one action. In the network section you can choose to accept incoming notes, select a sender ID for the outgoing notes and change the default port that KNotes uses. You even have a style section with two available styles. One is the default "fancy" style and the other is not actually a style. It just removes all the graphics from KNotes. It would have been really nice if I was able to select from more styles, because this feature has a lot of potential in terms of eye candy.

There are also some things I really don't like about KNotes. When I click the KNotes tray icon I see a list of available notes and I have to select one of the many I usually have there. Since I rarely waste time modifying the title, I usually see many dates that tell me nothing about what I've written in there. Opening them individually takes a lot of valuable time and one of the main reasons I use KNotes is that I want to save time. Here, I would've liked to see all the notes popping on the screen when I click the tray icon. Then, when I click outside a note, I would like to see them all hide. Animations would be nice too. This is the behavior of GNOME's Sticky Notes and even though that software has almost no feature, I like it more, just because of this. In KNotes, shortcuts are assigned for this scope, but there is a bug that limits the functionality of these shortcuts.

The Good

Rich text editing, support for sending notes via network, saving them in HTML, setting an alarm for each of them are some of the greatest things about KNotes. Those features definitely make it the most advanced software for using sticky notes on your desktop.

The Bad

The most important thing for a software like this is to be very well optimized both for the use with the mouse and the keyboard. It should provide fast and easy access all the time to the notes and, unfortunately, it doesn't excel in that.

The Truth

KNotes will not make the classical notes outdated because you can't put your computer in a pocket but, in most cases, will improve your desktop experience. The battle between KDE and GNOME is extended through those very simple but somehow important small applications. Even though KNotes is the most full featured software, I can't say it is the best. That is for you to decide. My belief is that with a little more work on the user's experience, KNotes can be the best.

Check out some screenshots below:

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user interface 3
features 5
ease of use 3
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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