Breadcrumb / path display / list view for "How'd I get here"

Not within a document, but to the document.

For within a document, what you’re probably looking for, is either an auto-highlighted table of content, or better, a Minimap. which editors like Sublime Text and Atom have. (Might make a great feature request, too.)

There are two feature requests for this now:

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Nice idea ! hope add Breadcrumb. more faster switch page.

If I remeber it correctly, PersonalBrain (I have used it years ago), has something like that. On the bottom of the page you could quickly go to the most recent and relevant pages

+1 – I came to the forum specifically looking for this feature.

To be clear, I am thinking about much more of a “rolling history” of exact nodes recently visited, rather than path of the current file in the file system.

Ideally, it should be another section below in the “backlinks” - and likewise, when clicked, go to that document and highlight the previously taken link

6 Likes

Totally Useful if made

+1
That would be really helpful. Especially when using the references page.

Sometimes I didn’t have created a Link to the broader topic or another file where I came from and this would make it easy to jump back to the main topic, after exploring some other notes/ideas.

I saw that in RoamResearch the referenced links can be expanded directly in the file and that seems to be a great feature to quickly explore other notes.

I think an easy and usable way to quickly get back to the topics where you came from, would yield a similar benefit.

2 Likes

Sometimes, it is nice to have a view of where I am with regards to the navigation history kind of like in Dynalist or VS Code.

This way it is easy to navigate back to where I want to go.

This is different from Linked Mentions in that it is a long list of history.

2 Likes

Sup guys,

Decided to mockup a breadcrumbs idea. I created 2 concepts, one more drastic than the other, but I still like the idea.

I thought this would fit in the plugins section because it’d be something that depends on the user’s personal preference.

I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

Concept 1:

Nav bar replaces doc title with breadcrumbs, and the title is moved down to the actual contents (as seen below). This is something I personally like and can be seen in other software like Roam and Notion.

Concept 2:

Everything remains the same, except there’s a subtle breadcrumb reference on the top left of each document.

14 Likes

Looking at your option one, I’d reverse the direction of the breadcrumbs like so

Document Name < Parent Category < Top Category

This way, when the window is narrower and you have opened many documents from the same category, you can actually distinguish between them.

5 Likes

It seems to me your breadcrumbs aren’t breadcrumbs: it is the path to the location of your Hypertext Markup Language file.

Breadcrumbs are the chronology of files visited/opened.

Or do I misunderstand you?

I understand Breadcrumbs as a location to your currently open file. If we take a look at Notion’s breadcrumbs feature, it does exactly that:
image
In the example above, the breadcrumbs show the user the current file’s location and traces back to the last parent file.

That’ exactly what I said: it is the path to the location of your Hypertext Markup Language file.

Whereas breadcrumbs is a trail of web sites or files visited. So, the question is: do you just want the current file’s location to be shown (as e.g. in the Windows/Linux file explorer or in Mac’s Finder) or do you to want your last 5 (or whatever number) file names to be shown?

Sorry for not capturing the idea in your first comment.
The idea would be to present the file structure in a windows/linux context relative to the current file that you’re on.
I was not referring to breadcrumbs to the last X files you visited regardless of the folder structure of your vault, although I can see some use to it.
The plugin could let you choose whether to show breadcrumbs one way or another, depending on personal preference.

Yeah, I like the syntax you’re proposing.
I really don’t mind what the structure is like as long as I can navigate through my files in an easier, more convenient fashion. If the devs decide to implement it one way or another, I don’t mind adapting to the style.

1 Like

I second this !
Also maybe a third option as a stand alone plugin with a linear flow chart like in after effect :

3 Likes

+1 for clickable breadcrumbs / file path as in concept 2 (VS Code like)
it should be unobstrusive but easy to navigate

Document Name < Parent Category < Top Category

One reason I would not want the direction to go like that: If you select it to copy the path, it would be preferable to have a file path in the correct order so that you can copy/paste. (For example, to do command-line operations on the file path.)

What if we could have navigation just like in a browser or an undo/redo history in a form of breadcrumb.

Rather than having breadcrumb for the location of the file, with history we could navigate back and forth on recently opened files.

Perhaps this could go as a plugin.

5 Likes

I love the idea of a History plugin! Being able to track which files you opened would be super powerful. Right now the file list allows for sorting by name or edit date, but I could imagine something that works a bit more like the history in a web browser… i.e. showing which files you opened each day. The same file would therefore show up multiple times in this context, if you opened it on multiple different days.

1 Like