Backlinks are a huge part of my workflow in other apps, but haven’t clicked with me in Kinopio. I don’t know why, but my guess is because they feel hidden away at the bottom in the button.
I don’t really have a great answer to how I’d like it handled…
My first thought is just moving “Links” to the top right corner, kinda like the image below.
However, I think the biggest thing for me would be having a way for the Links to be “On”. So if I click the Links button the list shows and stays while I interact with the Space and even if I move to another space (two ways to handle this: either “On” reflects across all spaces, or “On” is the state for just that space when I return). I’d have to click “Links” again to close the box.
This might not be the expected or desired experience for most people and maybe hard to implement, which I get.
The reasoning behind this, for me, is I don’t use backlinks so much as in “I need to return to a space that linked here,” but in the sense that they remind me what has linked to the space and thus prompt me to return to a space that linked here. With that being said, reminders are useless if I have to remember to click a button.
Edit: the top right positioning would also be better for having the “Links” stay “On” because it wouldn’t block any other buttons and would be at the edge of the screen, off to the side.
This might not be the expected or desired experience for most people and maybe hard to implement, which I get.
the code isn’t the hard part, i’m just not sure how to float a user preference/setting/button for making the dialog ‘sticky’. The only thing like that I can think of was an old version of fantastical used an icon to signify that the panel was ‘anchored’ open.
There’s also ‘detach’ which turns a dialog into a draggable window, which would be super cool if i could make into a universal pattern, but maybe not too useful, and def a lot of work.
That was kind of the idea I was after when I was talking about Tag Spaces and “Persistent Tag Cards”.
The idea of being able to have the Links or Tag Dialog as a floating window/card would be my ideal scenario. Then I can place the Links window anywhere I want in the space and have it always open. Same with Tags and being able to have Spaces where I can open up certain Tag dialog boxes and have them always open in different places in a Space. I think that would all be incredibly useful for me.
Given that’s probably a ton of work (not sure what universal pattern means though tbh), I do think the sticky icon would still be useful if the dialog box is placed correctly (ideally a sidebar on the right kind of deal). I believe I’ve seen a Lock icon used for this elsewhere too (I can try to dig this up if it’d be helpful). Or Microsoft uses a Pin icon in Outlook where you can “Unpin” the left bar of icons or “Pin” them back open again (if you’d like visuals of how that works I can gather that as well).
Edit: the Affinity suite of apps uses a Pin icon on the right side to pin various dialogs in the top right. Maybe I lied about the Lock because I can’t find it again. But Obsidian uses a Pin as well to keep it’s sidebars open.
Microsoft uses a Pin icon in Outlook where you can “Unpin” the left bar of icons or “Pin” them back open again (if you’d like visuals of how that works I can gather that as well).
ya if you could get me a screenshot of that, and/or the affinity/obsidian ones that’d be super helpful.
I’m guessing lock isn’t used because it more commonly denotes privacy
There’s also ‘detach’ which turns a dialog into a draggable window,
Would this basically behave/have the same mechanics as a card? Maybe another way to look at this is a special kind of widget? In other words, somehow maintain the concept that everything is a card. Just thoughts
Pin state is constant across all spaces. Pin in one space and have it show in all spaces.
Tags remembers the state of “In Current Space” as well as you bounce around spaces.
Shortcomings:
Location. Location is really key and bottom left is not ideal for something that will be pinned open since the left side is really where you start in any space. The right side always has the extra buffer space to ensure you can see everything and I’d love to see these two get moved.
Dual pinning. Technically you can pin both now, but it will hide links under tags. Would love to see the ability to stack them. (Or ‘detach’… sizing of the boxes will be critical either way)
This is awesome though, really glad this is something you looked at.
icon to signify that the panel was ‘anchored’ open.
