I use Evernote on both my home computer and office computer to bookmark my favourite websites into an online store. After reading this Evernote tutorial you will be able to do the same too.
What is Evernote and what does it do?
The beauty of bookmarking sites is they are location-independent, which means you can reach your documents and bookmarks from anywhere in the world, with only a computer and ain internet connection.
Evernote is a web clipping tool that helps you store your favourite web pages in a virtual notebook. It comes in two major forms:
- an online version: the most famous one. This allows you to access your files from any device connected to the internet,
- a desktop version: this is a software that you donwload and install on your computer. I only tried the Windows version. It can be set to synchronize with your web account and download the files that you clipped while surfing the web.
Evernote can be used to store the following purposes:
- songs
- technical articles
- motivational quotes
- collaboration/shared documents
Account types
There are three types of Evernote accounts:
- Free: you get 60MB of online storage,
- Premium: costs 5$ per month,
- Business: this one is for collaboration work within a team or a company. I don’t know if this option will one day replace Microsoft Sharepoint.
Creating an account
- Go to this link and click on Sign Up Now
- Fill in your email and a password to create an account
- At this stage, Evernote will ask you if you want to continue to the application or download the Windows software. I choose to continue to the application
Login to your account
After you create your account, there are two ways to login to it:
- by going to www.evernote.com and filling the form with your information,
- by logging to either Evernote Clearly or Evernote Web Clipper.
Here’s what your Evernote will look like when you get familiar with it:
Account settings
To check or modify your account settings, simply go to the upper right corner of the Evernote window and click on your email. Then, click on Account Settings
From there, you can see a summary of your account, change profile settings and even upgrade to premium.
For example, you can change your Evernote account picture by going to Account Settings -> Profile
There are two parts to using Evernote:
- the browser addon
- the online store
The online store
Evernote calls the online store “notebook”. You have by default one notebook. But you can later add many others.
Once you complete the registration process, you need to install the Evernote Web Clipper addon into your browser.
The browser addon
Whether you use Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome, there is an instance of Evernote for each web browser.
You don’t need to do my mistake and manually search for Evernote Web Clipper for every browser I have, on my computer. Simply go to the following link and it will automatically detect what browser you are using.
For example, if you are using Firefox, the link will detect that and will suggest you to download the Web Clipper for Firefox:
Or, if you use Chrome, the same link will suggest to download the extension for Chrome:
The rest of this tutorial will use the Firefox addon.
Once you have Installed the addon (just like any other Firefox addon). You will notice a small elephant icon on the upper right of the browser:
Bookmarking a web page
The purpose of Evernote is to add a currently opened webpage to your Evernote notebook. Let’s assume you like ice cream and you have just found out a nice recipe:
To save it to your notebook, click on the Web Clipper.
As you will see, there are many clipping modes: Article, Simplified Article, Full Page, Bookmark, Screenshot.
Each mode is demonstrated in the following figures.
Article mode
This mode allows you to capture only the center article. It will include all theme colors and layouts.
Simplified Article mode
This is my favourite mode. I usually want the content without side advertisements or links. This mode is characterized by a grey background and black text. It’s almost like reading from a Kindle.
Full page mode
In this mode you get the full page, including fonts, layouts and colors. This mode is useful if you want to preserve everything on the page.
Bookmark mode
This mode allows you to only save the bookmark and is the fastest clipping mode.
Screenshot mode
I rarely use it. But it may be useful if you need to capture a specific part of the page.
I hope now you have a good idea on the different clipping modes.
You have some Web Clipper tricks? Please share them below!
