14 DAY TRIAL // At more than a year since the initial introduction of Canvas for OneNote, Microsoft has refreshed the project in order to accommodate users that leverage the latest iteration of OneNote. In this regard, Office Labs has kicked up a notch Canvas for OneNote in order to tailor it to OneNote 2010 in addition to OneNote 2007. The latest update, delivered on March 25th, comes with support not only for Windows 7 and Windows Vista but also Windows XP. In this regard, while Canvas for OneNote now plays nice with XP, it will also allow Windows 7 customers to take advantage of the natural user interfaces advances of the latest Windows client.
“If you are still running Windows XP we look forward to (finally!) hearing your feedback. If you want to upgrade to Windows 7 with a touch enabled screen, you will be able to experience Canvas for OneNote and other touch enabled programs in a whole new way. If you can, I hope you also give Office 2010 a spin with Canvas for OneNote,” revealed Nathan Fish, Office Labs senior program manager.
According to Fish, the five members that had initially worked on Canvas for OneNote had virtually stopped development and were simply monitoring feedback. The latest changes delivered to the tool, including OneNote 2010 and XP support were done by a few members in their spare time. According to the tool’s official description, Canvas for OneNote is designed to change the way in which customers navigate and edit notebooks. Users access OneNote notebooks as high-level canvases which support zooming and panning navigation.
“You won’t notice any new features or behavior in this update, but we are listening and really appreciate the comments and feedback we’ve received for Canvas for OneNote. Over 70% of people we surveyed said they preferred the canvas view for navigating their large notebooks. People also told us that a view like this really needs to be tightly integrated into the application. People also really wanted to be able to delete pages -we totally agree and a product would of course ship with such a feature,” Fish stated.
Canvas for OneNote is available for download here.