• Paint has an extremely simple user interface strictly following the desktop metaphor. Because of this, there is no way a user can go wrong with Paint. There is one window, one canvas and one toolbar/ribbon area to deal with. There is the pallet area too (prior Windows 7); but most users are OK with it.
• Paint starts fast: you don’t have to wait a few minutes to use Paint. It has such a small memory footprint and will start before you are done doing with double-click. Another benefit of the small memory footprint is that you don’t need a fancy computer to run Paint on.
• You can only use the most common file types with Paint. Here again, you do something, and save the file in your format of choice without being presented a handful of post-save options. The file is just saved and ready to be used in a few clicks.
• You will never rip apart the Paint UI by accident. Most modern software are designed with ‘total UI flexibility’ in mind so that there are 101 toolbars and menus to a density where people are scared to move the mouse pointer across the screen with the fear of moving one part of the UI and sticking it in another area rendering a total mess in the GUI. Paint doesn’t have this pervasive silliness.
• Paint is ubiquitous. Buy a new computer and Paint will be pre-installed with it; go to a friend’s PC and Paint could be found there; it’s installed by default on every PC since Windows 95. It’s totally available to you during the lifetime of your computer and will never expire asking you for a new serial number.

Certainly these aren’t the only reasons why someone would like Paint. For most people, the main reason to like Paint is its simplicity and availability. A normal user doesn’t fancy sophistication in software. They want their job done, in the easiest way and in the shortest time. Maybe there are the same reasons why Notepad is the most famous text editor for Windows.

OneNote strengths

Although EverNote has managed to surpass Microsoft OneNote in some areas, OneNote is still strong in formatting text, etc. OneNote’s ability to automatically tabulate content as soon as it detects a table like structure is severely missed in EverNote. The default colors and fonts on OneNote goes nicely with the rest of the Microsoft Office suite to the extent where a note entered in OneNote is no different to a document typed in Microsoft Word.

EverNote strengths

The latest version of EverNote is as mighty as you want it to be. Write once, access from anywhere in the world (which requires a registration on the EverNote server) is the best feature you can cheer upon. The new user interface is very simple and user-friendly. Unlike the OneNote UI which is a candy jar in its appearance, the new EverNote UI has a unique touch and a soothing green shade to it. Once you start working on it, you wouldn’t want to go back to another note taking tool ever.

The bottom line

Many note taking tools roamed but none prevailed to be the best among the rest until the days of OneNote. The introduction of OneNote damaged every other note taking tool’s reputation and took note taking to another level with sophistication and novelty. The lessons learnt from OneNote’s arrival have been put in to practice nicely with the introduction of EverNote 3. The next big thing will be to see how Microsoft strikes back with their next version of OneNote. Or will it be just Microsoft Notes?

An interactive CD-ROM sampler designed for IEEE Sri Lanka leg.

nStation Media Player is my very first software GUI design. I made this as a ‘skin’ for my own software MP3 player. This was designed during that period of time where the Sonique player impressed everyone with their skinning abilities. The software was written in Visual Basic 5 and then popular MP3Play OCX was used to do the MP3 playing. I was a Ulead PhotoImpact fan and this skin is done entirely in its mastery.