Settings and activity
15 results found
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3 votes
Cornan
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1 voteCornan
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65 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
Well, with more "grandparent" experience it should be all the easier to improve Normal View :)
Harlan, though I don't think it supersedes this request, how would one find a brain on webbrain.com to show the new Outline View?
The main points of this grandparent request are to be automatic to facilitate navigation / browsing and to do a better job of filling the plex when the active thought is at or near a bottom (childmost) thought, where the 5.0 Normal view leaves a largely empty screen.
Without jump links, and if the user needs to spend time expanding relationships, then the enhanced Outlive View is still more like Expanded View, which also requires time to tailor and is therefore more a presentation mode than a navigation / browsing one.
Thanks!
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
Out of votes? Go to uservoice.uservoice.com and vote for one of the voting enhancements.
Possibly even mine: http://uservoice.uservoice.com/pages/general/suggestions/143780-support-dynamic-vote-limits-based-on-activity-congestion.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I mean that the grandparent level should be automatic and visually hierarchical to facilitate navigation. If you'll look at the thread in my sixth comment, you'll see a sample of a cluttered and very non-hierarchical Expanded View, in that particular case very different from grandparent view. Our thinking seems to converge on a less cluttered sibling area.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
Thanks, KIaaskildre, for the votes.
I wonder if we should accept a scrolling grandparent section. Would it make the plex seem too complex if we had to remember why our grandparents were "coming and going"?
I also submitted a more general version of this idea ("...abhor a vacuum") to cover the other "extreme" of a nearly empty plex, such as when the active thought has no children.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I've posted some mockups of a grandparent level at: http://forums.thebrain.com/tool/post/thebrain/show_single_post?pid=30225577&postcount=10
covering both "extremes" - a plex where Distant Thoughts mode make a mess out of the plex, and where displaying the lowest level in the plex leaves a barren desert.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
Thanks, bhurd, for sticking with this one.
This is a pretty clear request for those of us who use their brains to NAVIGATE. I had to make the text more complex to show I had considered existing features.
Some of the other new features (like saving a view or Outline view) are great for drilling into a particular area of the brain, but offer no help for navigation per se.
Cornan
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23 votesCornan
supported this idea
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3 votesCornan
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671 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
responding to Ryan's comment of 15 days ago: you can get at least one level of sorting by using "Arrange .. by Type" with thought types (and Super Types). My most important case is to "sort" / group thoughts with further child thoughts, analagous to folders, to the left, leaving "end point" children to the right. This then leads me to create two or more thought types with identical names (so that the thought names of my "folder" thoughts will be able to sort with a group of "folder" types with different icons, etc.)
This in turn led me to discover that the selection UI for thought types doesn't work consistently with thought types that have identical names (but what other choice do I have?)
Personally I favor more sort options metadata on thoughts and thought types, including some type of sorting / grouping key, and more sorting options (sort by date, sort by thought sort key, etc.)
Returning to this specific request, I can see how custom sorting would mean that a thought with more than one parent would need more than one set of sort keys (one set per parent), but one of my greatest frustrations is when vendors remove features. In the case of PersonalBrain, removing jump links to virtual thoughts annoyed me the most so far (!)
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
In that this request involves sort orders that work "by thought" rather than globally, it is related to my request to apply the existing options by thought (http://thebrain.uservoice.com/pages/4597-personalbrain/suggestions/94462-custom-sort-order-for-active-thought-in-normal-view).
In the meantime, my most important use case in normal mode is to group child thoughts that are "nodes" (thoughts with children) from thoughts that are "content thoughts", much as file explorer programs show folders and files separately.
My work-around for this was to create a set of thought types with both a "node" Super Type (for color and default icon) and names that begin with "(ST node)" for sorting.
Of course this means that I select "Arrange By Type", which groups all of the thoughts with an "(ST node)" thought to the left in Normal view, while the thoughts that don't begin with "(" are shown to the right.
As noted by other comments, work-arounds have their own disadvantages and improvements are in order.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I'm still unclear as to what this UserVoice idea is about. Is it about manually ordering thoughts? It might help voting if somebody could post a brief description of what was lost from PB3. I first used version 4.
I am most interested in "by thought" (but still automated) ordering for the active thought, additional criteria sort and inclusion of the Super Types for ordering by Type.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I never used PB3 so I don't know what the author is referring to!
I endorse not only a wider selection of thought sorting, but also "by thought' sorting, so that some thoughts could sort by thought type / name and others by date. I think this need will arise spontaneously once more types of sort key are available
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9 votesCornan
supported this idea
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An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
My first use case involves two brains of mine which share some information but are different in other areas. I use PersonalBrain XML exports from each brain to synchronize with the other brain periodically, but I am losing some information, especially in those cases where I update the same thought in both brains (perhaps notes in one, attachments in the other) and have to make the "blind" choice of whether to replace or skip on import.
It’s also not clear if when I choose “replace” if I’m replacing the “thought object” and all aspects of the thought (type, tags, attachments and Notes), or only some.
Beyond this request, another major step for PersonalBrain should be to support various types of synchronization / data import, for example data base and/or code schemas and dependency trees, and I'm sure, other types of structured data from outside PersonalBrain itself. Many of these types of imports would naturally benefit from intelligent, “merge” style synchronization versus “(delete and) replace”.
Cornan
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15 votesCornan
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An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
The only subject of this request is to allow users to make an already visible thought the Active Thought in Expanded View without also changing the view (i.e. by expanding the thought).
Users may want to make a thought active to see the Notes or Properties for that thought without also changing the view by expanding its links, and they cannot do so today either with the mouse or keyboard.
This request will have no effect for thoughts whose links have already been expanded, and the "+" will still be available to expand links for thoughts that are already visible but where links have not been expanded.
Frans, this request is NOT to eliminate expansion of thoughts and it is NOT about other circumstances (such as bringing a thought onto the plex for the first time).
I can also imagine the PB developers creating a new way of making a thought active just for use in Expanded View. My input is that we already have two methods for making a thought active (mouse click or arrow keys) and already have a method for expanding links (the "+" above thoughts), so my preference would simply be that clicking on a thought in Expanded View only perform one and not both of those functions.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I should also note that there is a "timer" on the Active Thought in Expanded View (about 10 seconds?), so if you do prune the unwanted thoughts on the Active Thought, they will come back automatically (!!!)
Best work-around is to only set the Active Thought in Expanded View on a thought where you DO want to see all the closely linked thoughts.
Cornan
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21 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I believe by zooming some people mean auto-collapsing / auto-expanding nodes, which I would endorse.
This could also be associated with super-types (drill-down the type hierarchy) or the should-have-been-implemented tag hierarchy.
Out of votes? Go to uservoice.uservoice.com and vote for one of the voting enhancements.
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1 voteCornan
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35 votesCornan
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
How about a new feature to "make thought private after [date]" ?
This would automatically eliminate such thoughts from a publishing cycle without actually deleting them.
I would guess that the same would happen if thoughts were "forgotten" after a certain amount of time (I don't use forgotten thoughts much, but I'm sure other people are).
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34 votes
TheBrain 9 now allows setting of both text and background color. Using tags, it is possible to include multiple icons on a thought.
Future plans include the ability to have multi-line thoughts and differing text sizes. This is fairly complex to do unfortunately since much of TheBrain’s dynamic capability is built around automated layout of thoughts, which is difficult when they can be of variable height.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
Yes! And don't forget about the thought's background and text colors and the thought border.
(The value of color is very limited in PB due to the way PB makes some elements darker or brighter as thoughts are manipulated)
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5 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
Some things can be done today:
1) When a thought is created, clear out its "label"
2) When a type is created, clear out its "label"
(I have created icons for most of my thought types, which is more compact than flyovers jumping up all over the place)
3) For 5.0, go into each tag individually (I HOPE THEY MAKE THIS EASIER TO DO) and uncheck its display. -
0 votes
thebrain
responded
This is already available in the Outline view of version 5. If you mean something different, please explain. Thanks.
An error occurred while saving the comment Cornan
commented
I really prefer an automated feature and have suggested my "grandparent in plex" idea in the "regular" forums and here as well..
(I like the thought-by-thought ideas as separate features, but I don't personally want to have to fiddle with the plex view all the time).
Just a quick note to confirm that this need still exists as of the version 5.5 beta (5.5.1.0). In other words, we need your votes!
My best mockups of an improved Normal View and the gap this request fills appear at http://forums.thebrain.com/tool/post/thebrain/show_single_post?pid=30225577&postcount=10 (FYI, I can't confirm the link this morning as the forum website is unavailable).
This request is a more complete form of my simpler request to have PersonalBrain avoid an "empty plex" when the childmost thought is the active thought in Normal View (http://thebrain.uservoice.com/pages/4597-personalbrain/suggestions/80083-make-plex-abhor-a-vacuum-in-normal-view). So far, all the supporters have chosen this request over the simpler one.
The alternatives suggested in the comments generally fall into iconic "papa bear" and "momma bear" categories:
1) "time consuming" suggestions that involve tailoring the plex through one or more clicks. This request is about facilitating navigation rather than presentation, so "tailoring the plex" defeats the purpose.
2) "too much information" suggestions, most notably bu pressing "+" in Normal View, which potentially floods the plex with additional thoughts,
Instead, this request intends to provide a "baby bear" solution that will enhance Normal View navigation while retaining its focus on the active thought's ancestors, siblings and descendants.