I always have to change the setting to “Sort with Earliest Date First” for new projects. Why is the default to show the latest (furthrest out in the future) notes first?
Surely the notes for the most immenantly upcoming dates are the most relevant, and should be viewed first instead of having to scroll for them at the bottom of the list?
I agree. Should be "newest date first“.
You can’t have it both, as in, you can’t somehow have the upcoming ones sorted by whichever comes first without then also having all the past ones preceding them (it would be odd to sort the future notes in the inverse order with respect to how past notes are sorted).
The main idea behind Agenda has always been that future and current notes are at the top and as time passes they slowly “sink” to the bottom, becoming a timeline back in time, hence this being the default.
I can totally see the point of the bottom of the list becoming a timeline for past events. But how does it make sense to also have this default sorting for future events? Why would I be more interested in events/notes coming up in 6 months, than the one tomorrow or next week?
Normally I wouldn’t expect one to have many future notes, but even if so, as mentioned, a single list sorted in two different ways would simply be super confusing*, sorry, can’t make much more of it.
*) and we know because that’s actually exactly how the first alpha of Agenda worked, following the same rationale you mentioned, unfortunately feedback was devastating and crystal clear, people didn’t understand the logic at all.
Fair enough, I trust your feedback. I don’t see how it’s a single list sorted in two different ways, because it’s all either newest-date-first OR oldest-date-first.
But if you mean that it would be confusing never to be at the top of the last or the bottom of the list, because you’d always be in the “present” in the middle of the list, then I can see your point.
Have you considered the solution of being able to archive notes older than the current date, except notes that are marked as “On the Agenda”? In fact you could even auto-archive notes with older dates. That way you could have a descending oldest-to-newest sorting (i.e. oldest at the top, newer towards the bottom), but all past / historic notes being hidden / archived, unless marked as “On the Agenda”. Wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds?
Because no matter how you look at it, you’re still showing the most future notes first, making a bet that people have very few notes marked for future dates, because you do have to scroll past those to get to the most current / relevant notes below. If you have any more insights on the topic from past feedback, I’d love to hear it.
Imagine this:
oldest-date-first:
Dec 1
Dec 5
Today
Tomorrow
Next Week
newest-date-first:
Next Week
Tomorrow
Today
Dec 5
Dec 1
Both are consistently sorted, what I understood from your email is that you would want something like:
Today
Tomorrow
Next Week
Dec 5
Dec 1
The problem is that without some visual indication of what are future notes, and what are past notes, or without some spacer/separator between the two groups it would be very odd to see the list switch from next week to Dec 5.
Regarding on the agenda, this you can already do, you can click on the search field and activate the dot next to it to only show the On The Agenda items for that project, hiding everything else.
The alternative is to either use collapsing of notes or pinning of notes to prioritise or declutter.
Next Month <---- Start here
Next Week
Tomorrow
Today
Dec 5
Dec 1
I think there are better good options:
Next Month
Next Week
Tomorrow
Today <---- Start here (and goto with ⌘T)
Dec 5
Dec 1
Dec 1
Dec 5
Today <---- Start here (and goto with ⌘T)
Tomorrow
Next Week
Next Month
Option 1 would probably be most intuitive default with respect to the current defaults.
The current “Today” functionality (⌘T) just changes the Calendar view in the sidebar. You could make it so that it also scrolls to the current day in the Notes list. If some users like to go to Today in Calendar independent of notes view, you could add another ⇧⌘T for “Today in Calendar”, just in the calendar.
I just think the current way is a little problematic; it’s not very intuitive or useful to start looking at notes farthest into the future at the top of the list. The notes just before and just after Today is always the most relevant, so let the default view be there, and allow easy navigation to that spot again?
You’re right that with just a few future notes, the current setup is just fine when combined with collapsing notes. It just seems inadequate when you have more than a few notes scheduled in the future 
Ah, I see now, so it’s not so much about sorting but more where the document is opened. I don’t think we’ll add an “always scroll to today” option as the idea is that Agenda remembers per project where you previously were. A “Scroll to Today” option in combination with a shortcut where it jumps to the note closed to Today does make sense though, I can see that being handy. Will see if that can be added.
I don’t think a “always scroll to today” option is needed either, but a shortcut scrolling to Today in the notes (or the note closest in date to Today) would be very useful. It’s already muscle memory from Calendar to press ⌘T to go to Today 
Wow. That was more difficult than it needed to be.
I think one of the hard things with software development is developers can’t always imagine how users will want to use software. Add to that the issue that of course the developers know how to use it, they wrote it, thus they have their own pre-conceptions but don’t have the distance or perspectives users have.
I think that’s not the case, as we use the app ourselves from day one, so we’re not just the developers, we’re also its users. Where the confusion came from is that the first two messages suggested to change the sort order while in the end we concluded that the only thing that was wanted is to scroll the list to a different position while leaving the sort options as is.
Actually thinking about it, the only bad thing with what I suggested above is that notes, both with and without dates attached, are sometimes pinned to the top. Going to “Today” would then should you relevant notes by today, and then the other half of the relevant notes would still be pinned to the top.
The most straight forward solution would be to either pin or auto-pin notes to the top that have the same date as today? The other solution would be Option 2 above, but where histical notes are hidden / archived unless pinned or marked as On Agenda.
Yes, I assume you would, but I still think a programmer’s insider perspective leaves you knowing to well what to do and how to do it, because you designed/defined it. Intuit (yeah, the big one) was known to be successful because they would test software on newbies for “intuition” before it was released.
Or, a friend got a new iPhone (after having a droid) and he couldn’t figure out how to do something, so he said to himself, how would Steve Jobs do it, and then he was fine. 