Design talk about the Graph View

Eliminating Friction

There are two essential aspects to design:

  • Adding new features
  • Improving existing features (Optimization)

Both are important. From the perspective of User Experience (UX), one of the basic ways of improving existing features is by eliminating friction.

As concerns the graph view, certain features are functional, but the experience of using them could be improved.

For instance, the graph-filtering search could be much better.

  • When you search for a tag by typing tag:, the tag list is a mess, especially if you use nested tags, which makes it hard to find the desired tag (friction-point).
  • Unlike the main search field, the search history for the graph is not saved, so you have to go through the process described above every time (friction-point x2).

Ideally, you should be able to quickly switch between multiple graph filtering configurations. Improving the graph filtering experience requires both adding features (eg the option to save/load filter configurations) and removing friction.

The process of improving the graph experience could start with identifying and systematically eliminating friction points.

Ordering graph

Hi, what a wonderful tool.

On my concern, i spent a lot of time trying to find a tool wich can help me to do this work but with a graphic mode. Most of mindmapping are awfull because they only organized with level and we can’t work freely.

The only things wich miss me is the possibility to organized the nodes in the graphique mode . In this version we can do this, but nodes moves constantly. If we can have an option to freeze nodes that would be great.

What do you think about it ???

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Hi. That’s a wonderful idea which others have expressed as well.

I’d previously suggested having multiple view modes because the current random view can also be useful.

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Persistent Graph Node Preview

When you hold Ctrl and hover over a graph node, you are shown a little preview window of the corresponding page. It would be beautiful if that window could be made persistent.

How this could work:

When you activate the node preview window option (maybe from the graph settings), a floating, resizable, and minimizable window appears on the graph. The window is initially empty (or displays a set page), but whenever you hover over (or select) a node, the node’s corresponding page is displayed in the preview window.

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Went through the thread quickly so might have missed it, but a 3d graph view could be very useful (especially if certain tags can be assigned to certain dimensions)

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Option to open different, independent instances of the graph in multiple panes

I’d love to have the option to open the big graph in multiple panes and to be able to filter them independently of one another. This would allow me to see the graph from multiple perspectives at the same time.

My ideal view would be one big pane and two smaller panes on top of one another.

There could also be an option to swap the position of two panes while maintaining their size and positioning.

I was thinking at a minimum right-clicking a node should toggle ‘pinning’ it, so that it can be dragged into position and remain there. The rest of the graph hangs from the pinned nodes, with those closest to a node nearest to it, and those farther away below. Distance from the pinned nodes determines their distance vertically, and distance from each other determines their horizontal spacing.

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One of the reason the graph view can’t offer a better automatic organization out of the box is the lack of semantic linking or typed notes. If a better structure than “this note is linked to that one” could be inferred from the notes front-matter/meta-data/link information then without even adding manual organization (or learning from it), you could get further control as to how you like thing grouped, what kind of notes are of a lower importance and should not be displayed, or maybe what intermediary links can be skipped to resolve the relationship you want to see from the links u have, on any degree you like.

Just letting me hand pin nodes on the graph and remembering the positions won’t make the graph view more useful in my opinion, at this stage the global view is more of a gimmick that gives a nice visual but i never could do anything with it. Even the local view can become too messy to use with a lot of outgoing links, especially if using links as tags just because tags can’t have additional informations.

I love this idea of pinning nodes.

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Something that would be useful to me is a way to ‘untangle’ the graph. It loads in with so many of the link lines overlapping when they aren’t actually related. Some of that is unavoidable due to interlinks, but a lot of them can be separated and pulled clear of each other. If it’s not possible to do that automatically, it would be nice to have an option to turn off forces/keep link lengths constant so I could grab a node and drag the chain where I want it without the connected lines stretching out and other nodes being slow to follow as they recalculate.

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Option to group nodes by color

There could be an option to display all nodes of the same color next to one another.

There could be different ways of visualizing them. For instance, there could be an option to visualize them in such a way that they form circles – the relative size of the circles would indicate the number of nodes they contain.

Option to hide/show uncolored nodes

When you color nodes, uncolored nodes (nodes with the default color) often clutter the graph. I’d love to have the option to hide/show uncolored nodes with one action.

Option to have two local graphs on top of one another

I’d love to be able to have two local graph views open at the same time, the primary one, and a smaller secondary one over the primary one. Something like this:

ZSpUD

The two would be independent of one another, such that you could see the same local graph from two different perspectives.

There could be an option to choose the corner where the small one appears.
The small one could be resizable (relative to the chosen corner) and minimizable.

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Option for the local graph pane to be automatically minimized when you access the big graph

When you open the big graph while the local graph is open, the local graph pane remains empty and you have to manually minimize it.

This may not seem like much, but it’s an irritant. If you do it often, it becomes annoying.

Option to hide graph settings

There are certain graph settings that I use all the time. I’d like to be able to access those settings with one action, so to keep the graph settings menu open all the time. But there’s a problem: the options I rarely use clutter the view and make the settings menu take up too much space.

Example:

There could be an option to customize what settings are visible when you open the settings menu (minimal view) – with an option to switch between full view and minimal view.

Additionally, there could be an option for setting the opacity of the background of the settings menu.

Weak and strong connections

I’d find it useful to be able to visually distinguish between weak and strong connections.

x is related to y (weak connection)
x is y (strong connection)

Ideas:

(1) There could be a parameter in the [[]] syntax for the type of connection.

eg
[[link|link-name|connection-name]]
[[link|link-name|weak]]
[[link|link-name|strong]]

Then there could be a way of visualizing different types of connections differently.

eg
weak connection - thin line
strong connection - thick line

This is the ideal approach, as far as I’m concerned, as it opens up the possibility of also storing information in the connections, not just the nodes.

(2) As a workaround, there could be a way to visualize one-way and two-way connections differently.

eg
one-way connection - thin line
two-way connection - thick line

This way, if I wanted to create strong connections, I’d turn them into two-way connections.

Multiple search fields

There could be an option to add/remove search fields in the graph settings (the added fields could be grouped together at the top).

You could choose all search fields to be active at the same time (with an AND operation between them).

eg
Field 1: #tag1
Field 2: #tag2
would be equivalent to
Field 1: #tag1 #tag2

You could choose only one field to be active at a time. Next to each search field, there could be an option to close it and an option to disable/select it (which would become visible wen you hover over the field).

There could an option to switch between two selection modes:

  • Checkbox mode - a checkbox appears next to each search field; this would allow you to enable/disable individual fields.
  • Radio-button mode - a radio button appears next to each field; this would allow you to select one field at a time, thus quickly switch between multiple searches.
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The timelapse animation as loading screen when opening the graph view

When I open the graph view, it takes about 15 seconds to load. 8 seconds where nothing happens, and another 7 seconds where the graph appears partially loaded and nothing happens.

I’d prefer the graph view to open immediately with the timelapse animation. This way, the timelapse animation could serve as a kind of (pretty) loading screen. A visual indicator could appear on screen to tell me that the graph is fully loaded (so as not to interrupt the timelapse animation in case I do want to let it run).

Option to view the local graph nodes as a checkbox list

When the local graph has a lot of nodes, it’s hard to navigate and work with.

Possible solution:

There could be an option to display all the visible nodes of the local graph as a (sortable) checkbox list. By unchecking items on the list, you’d make the corresponding nodes disappear from the local graph.

There could even be an option to color individual nodes from the list to make them stand out, or even change their shape (eg I’d be able to choose to see some nodes as triangles instead of circles).

I need this function:

Something that acts like this one on google maps:

image

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