14 DAY TRIAL // Canvas for OneNote is a project made available for download under the Office Labs brand umbrella. According to Nathan Fish, Office Labs senior program manager, the solution is set up to employ the users' natural spatial recognition capacity. In this manner, digital items can be ordered much in the same manner as real world objects. Canvas for OneNote provides nothing more than a solution for users not only to organize their notes, but also to easily browse, edit and create new items. As of February 27, 2009, Microsoft is offering Canvas for OneNote as a free download.
“Canvas for OneNote was designed to allow OneNote users to navigate their notebooks more efficiently by using a high-level view of all of the documents, pictures, and anything else they’ve stored in their notebooks. Users will be able to see all their notebook pages and sections at a glance, and zoom into any content for which they want to see more detail or perform edits. It also enables users to organize sections and pages using spatial placement, easily browse and find content based on size and color, and add new sections or pages by simply double-clicking the canvas or using the toolbar. It also provides an Activity View to easily locate pages modified by date,” Fish stated.
Make no mistake about it, Office Labs is a breeding place of concepts and not a source of finished products. And Canvas for OneNote is only a prototype designed to test how users will manage their content via the high-level canvas-view. According to Microsoft, users will need Windows Vista and OneNote 2007 in order to test drive the Canvas.
“From our research we've noticed that the 'value' (or Ah-Ha! moment) isn't fully experienced until people actually try out a canvas interface for themselves using their own data (it’s hard to visually recognize content you didn’t create!). So, we hope many of you will download this prototype and give us the feedback we need to improve productivity solutions of the future,” Fish added.
Canvas for OneNote is available for download here.