Patterns on the covers, a search box that is simply there, roomier margin notes

Four small things about the shape of the app.

Covers can be patterns as well as colours — ruled paper, graph paper,
pinstripe, bands, dots, cross-hatch, linen, washes, a ledger — drawn
entirely with CSS gradient layers. No image files, nothing to upload,
crisp at any size, and offline like everything else. A cover is stored as
an index into that list, so the new ones are appended and never inserted:
renumbering would silently repaint every notebook anyone already has.

Two things the patterns taught. One idea per cover: two crossed diagonals
meant as a chevron came out as noisy plaid at the size a cover is
actually read, and were replaced with plain bands. And the grid has to
scroll — with 27 covers the dialog ran past the bottom of a laptop screen
and took the Create button with it, which a check now holds at 1440x800.

The search box in a notebook is simply there now, and the button that
used to open it is gone. A magnifying glass cost a click and having to
remember that searching was possible at all; a search box is one line and
says for itself what it does.

Margin notes went from 208x74 to 288x112 — from three short lines to
about five. Three lines is a caption, not a remark on a passage, and the
space beside the page was sitting mostly empty.

And the notebook edit dialog was still part German, and would not say
what the server's default number of versions actually is. It names it
now, read from the server rather than written into the interface: it is
set with MAX_VERSIONS_PER_NOTE, and a hardcoded "50" would quietly start
lying the day that changed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

frontend/src/features/notes/NoteList.jsx

@@ -346,7 +346,6 @@ export function NoteList({
 }) {
   // Opened by the button and kept open while there is something typed in it, so
   // a search never disappears because the box collapsed under it.
-  const [searching, setSearching] = useState(false);
 
   return (
     <div
@@ -405,17 +404,6 @@ export function NoteList({
         </div>
         <div style={{ display: "flex", gap: 4, flexShrink: 0 }}>
           {!isTrashView && <SortMenu T={T} mode={sortMode} modes={sortModes} onChange={onSortModeChange} />}
-          {!isTrashView && (
-            <button
-              onClick={() => setSearching((v) => !v)}
-              data-search-toggle={searching || query ? "on" : "off"}
-              title="Search this notebook"
-              aria-label="Search notes"
-              style={{ ...iconButton(T), color: searching || query ? T.accent : T.muted }}
-            >
-              {I.search}
-            </button>
-          )}
           {!isTrashView && (
             <AddMenu
               T={T}
@@ -450,18 +438,20 @@ export function NoteList({
 
       {/* The search box lives with the list it narrows, not in the sidebar.
           Searching has always been scoped to the notebook you are in; from the
-          sidebar it read as searching everything, which it never did. */}
-      {(searching || query) && !isTrashView && (
+          sidebar it read as searching everything, which it never did.
+
+          Always here, rather than behind a button. A search box is one line and
+          says for itself what it does; a magnifying glass is a line too, plus a
+          click, plus having to remember that searching is possible at all. */}
+      {!isTrashView && (
         <div style={{ padding: "8px 12px", borderBottom: `1px solid ${T.borderLight}` }}>
           <input
-            autoFocus
             value={query}
             onChange={(e) => onQueryChange(e.target.value)}
             onKeyDown={(e) => {
-              if (e.key === "Escape") {
-                onQueryChange("");
-                setSearching(false);
-              }
+              if (e.key !== "Escape") return;
+              onQueryChange("");
+              e.currentTarget.blur();
             }}
             placeholder={`Search in ${title}...`}
             aria-label="Search in this notebook"