Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / March 2005

No, I wouldn't say that -- I have encountered a few bugs that seem to be
genuine bugs (one that causes the program to quit unexpectedly), but
nothing seriously disastrous or that loses data.  

It's more in the nature of many awkward, poorly designed or poorly
thought out interface decisions, that seem to make the latest very
unnecessarily complex or hard to use.

For example, EndNote now offers 38 Reference Types (of which I only use
14, even with a diverse database of 3200 scientific references), and
each of these reference types can now potentially have 52 -- count 'em,
52! -- different data fields (of which I use fewer than 20).

That means the Reference Table now has just under 2000 re-label-able and
editable cells -- with no way to edit or even view this table as a
whole, in Excel-like fashion; no way to scan horizontally across one row
of it; and no way to even compare any two columns of it side by side.

This also means that many of the drop-down menus in the rest of the
program are 38 items or 52 items long, when they don't need to be.

I can accept that some users might genuinely need all one thousand nine
hundred and seventy six (1,976) of these reference types and field names
-- but I'd make a small bet that a "Light" option with half as many
types and fields would meet the needs (and simplify the lives) of 90+%
of EndNote users.

As a second example, the reference window (for looking at and editing a
single reference) has a new fixed format with unnecessarily large
spacings between fields such that it's impossible to see all of the
occupied fields of a given reference in the Reference Window, without
extensive vertical scrolling, especially since some of the most
important fields like Keywords, Abstract and Notes are way down in the
list of fields -- and there do not seem to be options or preferences to
minimize the fonts and spacings in the Reference Window, or a global
display option to put the Field Names and field contents in line in the
window, or to not wrap at the window width, so it's one line per field,
or maybe a global option to not display any named but empty fields in
the Reference Window.

There are many other just awkwardly or incompetently programmed little
glitches, e.g., when you tab off the bottom of the reference window it
jumps up to the top field in the window (the Author field) -- but with
the window not quite scrolled all the way to the top, so the top half of
that top field is out of sight under the menu bar, and you have to
hand-scroll the rest of the way.

There's a lot of other discussion on the EndNote mailing list.

Thanks . . . looks like that's what we have to live with.

As I said (or intended to convey, anyway), EndNote 8 is not really "bad"
-- just seems to have a certain number of less than thoughtful design
decisions, implemented with less than fully meticulous programming.