Here are a list of feature requests I think would improve the interface/experience of canvas:
- Only show the note’s file name once: Currently the file name of the notes are shown once on the exterior of the note’s box and once on the inside (followed by headers/titles which are potentially the same name as the file name). Since canvas displays the note’s file name twice and the headers once, I am seeing the names of all notes three times rather than once or maybe twice. I would be fine with the file name being kept on top of the exterior of the note box, or have it start inside at the top and move outside of it via some of your programmatic magic, but three times with the top header is superfluous.
- Add a button or option to visualize folders: This should be self explanatory, but—for the sake of a case study—I think it makes sense for there to be some default visualization of the entire vault. If that default visual was built into the canvas editor with a button in one of the menus to easily get there, that would be amazing. I’m surprised this doesn’t already exist as canvas already seems so similar to the graph view that I thought this would be a good way to distinguish it from the graph view; canvas can separate itself from the graph view by allowing users more ways to experience their vault from the directory structure and folder nests rather than the tags or links—and with it there should be a default canvas sheet showing your full vault, folders and all, to set a non-zero starting point like the graph view does once you have some notes and links.
- Make the arrows able to interact with the text of ‘cards’ more directly: I think the cards are being underutilized and this was one way I thought of to better highlight their potential utility as the contextual glue between notes—in lieu of some folder visualization that more accurately groups like notes in ways colors can’t capture, of course.
- Please provide better documentation on the potential user interactivity of canvas when exploring a published vault: I can’t seem to find any documentation or examples of canvas being used in the example sites on the obsidian publish website, and I would like clarification on if documentation does exist or there is increased support planned for canvas on published vaults because that would be an absolute game changer to have these massive flow charts that visitors could zoom around: this is the deciding factor for me as to whether to use obsidian publish for my personal site versus making my own.
Obsidian is the second best software tool I’ve ever used after Minecraft, so thank you for your contribution to such incredible technology and community.