Ability to zoom into a node
Ziggy Tonumaa
i totally support this feature. but the final result would have to be unobtrusive. it's where great apps like dynalist, workflowy and notion go wrong - so much clutter everywhere
Dan Cohen
This is becoming dealbreaker feature for me. Notice a huge cognitive clarity between blank white space and a document full of parent click down nodes.
Considering switching back to workflowy / similar for this feature as the mental output has been noticeable.
Alex MacCaw - Is there serious consideration on this similar to workflowy? If not def would like to know what will never make it to the product roadmap. Thank you for the great work.
Alex MacCaw
Dan Cohen: I understand, but I suspect a strict hierarchy app like Workflowy might be better for your use-case. I'm still not sure if we're going to add this or not, and if we do it takes back seat to more pressing items (like memory perf, tasks).
Carlos McCoy
Alex MacCaw: Another option could be to give the option of a focus mode? Mem does a great job of this, when turned on, all the surrounding UI disappears once you start typing, and then reappears once you move your cursor.
It seems most of us in the comments are looking to solve the problem of focus/cognitive load in the daily note, rather than looking for structural changes to how Reflect works with its hierarchies. Hopefully this might lead to an easier update?
Alex MacCaw
Carlos McCoy: We already have this :)
Carlos McCoy
Alex MacCaw: Yes and I love it :) Haha sorry should have been clearer, Ammar Ammar explains it better:
"some sort of focus option to fade away opacity as you get further away from the selected bullet
i.e.: selected 100% opacity, direct parent 80%, parent 2 60% etc.
Still maintains context and supports free-form a little better, but allows a little bit more focus?"
Carlos McCoy
A masssssive +1 to this one! I want to be able to only focus on one header or bullet in the daily note without having to create a new note and work from there.
This would be so helpful:
- Easier to focus without distractions of the day's other notes (this is big)
- Sometimes I want to show someone something and don't want them to see the rest of the day's notes. So it's a bit of a hassle having to convert it to a standalone note and then move the content. Would be much easier to be able to just focus in on it.
Kai Lovel
Carlos McCoy: Was thinking this is a great example of this usecase! Even screenshotting something doesn't work well if other nodes are visible.
Kai Lovel
Upvote for this. Would give me a greater ability to enter focus mode / flow mode while writing in Reflect.
Kai Lovel
To the earlier points on how this may work in Reflect - if I can collapse a dot point, it feels like I should be able to click in
Dan Peterson
I would love this, but would also love the ability to turn a node into a document. A lot of the time I get started by taking notes inline with indented bullets around a subject but then realize after it gets too large that oh, this should really be a whole new note. It'd be awesome if I could just right-click on a node and select "convert to Note" or something and it's essentially converted to a backlink with everything that is indented below it moved over into that new note.
Maybe I need to create a new feature request for that but it feels related to this one too. Like once I've had a need to "zoom into" a node for focusing, it feels like there's a good chance I should just turn that into it's own note.
Dan Peterson
Went ahead and created a new request for that: https://roadmap.reflect.app/feature-requests/p/convert-node-to-note
A
Ammar Ammar
This would be very helpful as my daily note begins to look very busy. Perhaps instead of a drill down, some sort of focus option to fade away opacity as you get further away from the selected bullet
i.e.: selected 100% opacity, direct parent 80%, parent 2 60% etc.
Still maintains context and supports free-form a little better, but allows a little bit more focus?
Chris Barrell
The problem I'm solving in wanting this (and using it in Roam/Logseq) is that my daily note gets very long by taking notes in a few meetings. So want I want to do, is be able to focus on my current meeting, writing notes, whilst not having to scroll up/down past previous notes.
So if I can focus on notes for a specific meeting within the daily note, that would be ace.
James
Would love to see this as well. Used it all the time in Rome and Workflowy. As for the issue with text based doc versus outline. Consider ignoring the free text and allow zoom on outlined portions of the note. When zoomed in the free text goes away as well. When you unzoom to the top level it appears.
Chris Moore
If you have a look at Logseq and Roam, they have this all figured out. No need to reinvent the wheel here. They do it really well.
It's so important that a TfT note-taking app be able to "drill down" into a bullet/node to work further on those specific ideas (with focus).
In order to do it in
Reflect
, you'd have to introduce a "toggle" icon next to top-level bullets with nested bullets (exactly how Roam and Logseq do it). The "toggle" only shows up when you hover over a top-level bullet point that has nested children under it, like the screenshot below. This allows you to toggle it, but it also always you to click the BULLET to drill down into that set.
So what
Reflect
is missing here is the toggle and the "drill down" feature.
Alex MacCaw
Chris Moore: The issue is Logseq and Roam are fundamentally different from Reflect in that they have a strict hierarchy. Reflect is a free-form document. Given this distinction, do you have any suggestions on how we'd go about implementing something like this?
Chris Moore
Alex MacCaw: Both Obsidian (via a plug-in) and Craft have similar features like this as well, and they aren't strict "outliners" either (they both have free-form documents).
In fact, Craft took things to the next level, wherein they allow you to go "into" ANY piece of content, creating subpages on the fly. I'm not suggesting that here for Reflect (although that is indeed a pretty epic feature).
The way I imagine this working is exactly how I explained above.
You wouldn't be changing the purpose or vision of the app, but you'd just be adding the ability to "go into" a set of bullet points, for the purpose of focus.
So, when there's a bullet point that is nested under another, you would show a toggle to the left of the parent bullet point. If you click on the bullet of that parent bullet point, you can "go into" that set of bullet points (to focus on and flesh out those points without the distraction of the rest of the document).
You would of course need breadcrumbs at the top of the page as well, so that you can get back to the main page.
I think Logseq and Roam have this figured out quite well (in terms of the design mechanics and functionality). You would only be bringing this functionality to bullet points (nothing else).
This would really win over a number of people that have become used to this feature in Logseq, Roam, Obsidian, and Craft, etc. (and again, Craft does things VERY differently here, so they aren't the best example of this particular feature).
Hope that helps to clarify!
f
felixsd
Alex MacCaw Can’t speak for Roam, but before Reflect Íve been a Logseq heavy user for many years. From a front end user perspective, reflect and Logseq work exactly the same. You have an endless stream of daily notes sorted by date and you can create new pages as a kind of container for information. Within each you have the bullet points outlinerthingy going on. The difference in Logseq you can klick a bullet and „zoom in“. On top a little breadcrumb menu will pop up to go back to the initial page or daily note. It’s basically just a UI feature. You don’t have to invent the wheel new, they solved it perfectly.
B
Ben Standefer
+1, I want to "zoom in" on a note so that when I'm taking notes for a meeting I don't see all the notes from the rest of my day. What if I have a confidential meeting followed by a non-confidential meeting and I am screen sharing? I don't want my coworkers to see all my notes for the day just so I can show them notes from a particular meeting.
I don't see why it couldn't work like it does in Roam. It seems the bullet points and backlinking system in Reflect already supports some optional hierarchical model. So if I click a bullet point why can't a hierarchy be relied on?
Broader feedback: I'm also finding inconsistencies when I decide to use headers instead of strict bullet point structure... it seems that "normal" text sitting below a header should probably create hierarchy when "normal" text is displayed in the Incoming Backlinks section of other notes, but right now it doesn't. Similar with checkboxes. When checkboxes + text are displayed in the Incoming Backlinks section of other notes, the checkbox is missing, along with the (potential, not strict!) hierarchy.
Basically, I don't see why just because Reflect doesn't FORCE a strict hierarchy doesn't mean it can't support it for sections of notes that do choose to use it. I don't like how Roam forces everything to be bullet-pointed, mainly because it looks too busy, but there are benefits to the context that is provided by hierarchy. Maybe Reflect can loosen the visual display and strict requirements around hierarchy but still support some of the benefits (i.e. let an H1, H2, H3 be hierarchy, allow arbitrary sections of text below bullet points, show potential hierarchy in Incoming Backlinks, etc.)
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