Design talk about the Graph View

[danitrusca]

Functional Local Graph for the Big Graph

When you access the big graph, the local graph area is empty. It would be beautiful to be able to select nodes on the big graph (so without opening them) and for them to be displayed in the local graph.

[danitrusca]

Global Local Graph

What if there was an option for the local graph to display not just the selected note but all currently open notes?

So if I opened two notes, I’d see both on the local graph.
If I opened three notes, I’d see all three on the local graph.
etc.

[danitrusca]

Local and Global Filters for the Local Graph

There could be a global and a local filter for the local graph.

Let’s say you want a particular page to have a different filter than the default. There could be an option to add an override search field – which would appear on top of the default search field. Whenever you want to return to the default, you could close or disable the override.

Filtered Links

By filtered links I mean links that temporarily apply a search filter to the local graph on the linked page when visiting the link.

• Normal Link: [[link|name]] - Takes you to the page.

• Filtered Link: [[link|name|local graph search query]] - Takes you to the page, and the local graph is temporarily filtered with the search query.

Functionally, a temporary search field could appear on top of the existing search fields. That filter would visible only on that specific instance of the page. When that instance of the page is closed, the filter would disappear with it (so the temporary filter would be active only when you open the page from the filtered link).

This means you could have two instances of the same page with different filters applied.

[danitrusca]

Integration of the Local and Global Graph

The idea is to be able to easily access the settings for the local graph from the global graph and vice versa.

While thinking about how to achieve this, an idea struck me. In the video game Diablo 3, when you hover over an item, you are shown how it compares to the item you have equipped, as a side-by-side window.

Something similar in flavor could work for Obsidian as well. There could be an option that opens the local graph menu from the global graph and vice versa. The two menus would be displayed side by side, something like this:

There could be an option to “synchronize” them, thus mirroring the actions from one to the other. So if you, say, open the Groups in one, you also open the Groups in the other. If you modify a setting in one, you also modify it in the other.

There could also be an option to copy all the settings of one to the other.

[danitrusca]

Graph Legend

I’m very interested in User Experience (UX). A tool I like to use is what I call NOA (Number Of Actions) – the number of actions it takes to perform an operation. The more actions it takes, the more friction is created.

For instance, I’d like to be able to quickly change graph filters with complex queries to view the graph from multiple perspectives. Right now, it takes so many actions, so the friction is so high, that I rarely change views.

One possible solution:

Think of the legend of a map. One notable characteristic of the legend is that it’s always visible. Imagine if the legend of a map was functional, that is, if it allowed you to show or hide certain features on the map. These would be 1-action operations.

Something similar could work for the graph view. There could be a customizable legend-like section where you could add the operations you perform most often (maybe with drag-and-drop from the Graph Settings), which would allow you to perform them in 1 action.

[danitrusca]

Semi-Transparent Grap-Settings Window

There could be an option to change the opacity of the graph-settings window, to be able to see the graph behind.

[danitrusca]

Options to change the speed of and pause the timelapse animation

I’d suggested a while an interactive timeline for the timelapse animation:

Interactive timeline for the timelapse animation

It would be beautiful to have a historical timeline for the graph animation, and to be able to interact with it. Here’s how I envision it. When you launch the graph animation mode, you see the timeline at the bottom of the screen, with gradations for days, months and years, with a slider indicating where you currently are. Above the timeline you have some playback options: Play, Stop, Pause, Rewind Forward/Backward. You can interact with the slider. You can drag it around, and jump to any po…

That would be ideal but quite difficult to implement, I imagine. What shouldn’t be that difficult to implement is the possibility to change the speed of and pause the timeline animation.

Let’s say you want to show the timeline animation in a presentation. You might choose to double or triple the speed (from a few predetermined options) to make it fit in the available time.

[danitrusca]

Option to set the timelapse animation as a screensaver

I don’t know how feasible this is, but it would be beautiful.

[syncretizm]

Will add that it might be quite cool to have Saved Display Presets that you can switch around from on a dropdown menu.

[danitrusca]

Functional Groups

It would be beautiful if the groups were functional. That is, if they had additional functionality, like filtering the graph.

Imagine if you could hide or fade the nodes of a certain color, or all nodes except those of a certain color.

The way this could work is by having a Filtering button for each group. The button could open a menu that allows you to perform various operations.

[danitrusca]

Option to bring highlighted nodes within the visible area

Let’s say I hover over a node, thus highlighting all nodes directly connected to it. But what if some of the highlighted nodes are off-screen? If I zoom out to see all the highlighted nodes, the node labels might become too small.

Possible solution: There could be an option that reconfigures the graph and brings all off-screen highlighted nodes within the visible area.

[danitrusca]

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.

[Toc]

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 ???

[danitrusca]

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.

[danitrusca]

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.

[Iv3llios]

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)

[danitrusca]

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.

[JennyB]

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.

[tobei]

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.

[danitrusca]

I love this idea of pinning nodes.