Simplenote gets a facelift
Both the web application and the universal iOS app of the amazing synchronized note-taking service Simplenote received a facelift recently.
At first glance, it looks purely cosmetic. The web app received a highly welcomed, much wider layout, with the note navigator reaching down on the left-hand side.
Digging deeper, however, reveals a brand new tagging functionality, including the ability to use said tags as a navigational element to navigate your existing notes by folders.
Using tags for navigation basically boils down to using a structural search query in the search field in the top left corner. Clicking the "personal" tag results in a tag:personal search query, meaning you can navigate using the keyboard as well, by just entering such a query on your own.
As far as I can tell, there's sadly no way to use multi-word tags currently. Neither separation of individual (potentially multi-word) tags by comma nor enclosing them in double quotes will do the trick.
One more navigational helper is the ability to pin notes to the top of the list. As your list of notes is sorted by last update by default, important but static notes can get buried deep down in your list. If you pin them, they will always show up right at the top.
Previously available only to Premium users, now seemingly all users get access to a simple version history of their notes, with a slider bar to access the older versions indicating the age of the revision. I can see this coming in very handy.
The difference between Premium and Free accounts here is that you get up to 30 revisions on Premium versus 10 revisions on Free.
Simplenote on iOS
The iOS apps themselves haven't changed much, although they obviously received all the new features available through the web application. This is a testament to good design, since the interface fades away and is available to use when you need it. Apart from the addition of 2 or 3 icons in the toolbar you can barely tell the difference.
One thing that doesn't work in the web app but works in the iOS apps is the ability to share a note. While you could email the contents of notes before, you can now share a note on the web (fully synced with potential future changes) as well as share it with other users of Simplenote (with full editing capabilities for all participants).
Once sharing is enabled, you can use the built-in email sheet to send off a link to your shared note.
Lastly, link detection has been fixed and is enabled by default, so that URLs you use in your notes are automatically "tappable". The "enabled by default" part only seems to affect new users of the app though, as I had to enable it manually.
Conclusion
Simplenote was on my homescreen before and with this update it isn't going anywhere (if there was ever any chance). Remember, this is mostly a free service (and you can totally use it only as that). It's very polished, works reliably and I'm using it daily.