I genuinely do not understand the argument from the Obsidian team’s side.
Obsidian is not a browser. Sure, it is built on top of Electron and runs inside of Chromium, but the use-case for Obsidian and a browser are very different. One you use to browse information online. The other you use for short-term and long-term knowledge management. Not only does mimicking a browser-based workflow for an application that does not fit such a workflow lead to terrible UX, but it’s also just a terrible argument all around.
Ironically, Visual Studio Code is a great counter-argument to the arguments that the Obsidian team are making. Visual Studio Code is not truly an IDE, it’s an extensible text-editor with enough third and first-party extensions to let it mimic the required functionality. Dendron is a great example of this.
In essence:
- Obsidian’s applicable field of use is not as a web browser, and it should not try to mimic a workflow designed for an entirely different use-case, one which does not fit and was not designed for knowledge management.
- Obsidian does not need to mimic an IDE, just handle files like sane text-editing software does
And honestly, “(…) the way browsers and IDEs handle this is very different and it’s either one or the other, because hybrid approach look odd.” is a terrible argument. The default that Obsidian currently ships with is not only a remarkably odd, non-standard approach for the type of field the application means to combat, but is just terrible from a UX and accessibility standpoint.
Likewise, from a descriptive standpoint, it’s not particularly hard to define a rudimentary example of how it could function based on how a majority of file handling software does.
- If you click a file in the file viewer sidebar it will:
- Open the file like default and if it’s already open, focus it instead
- (ctrl-click): Open the file in a new tab, regardless of if it is already open or not
- If you single click a link, it will:
- (edit-mode): Not open the link, but focus the text such that it can be edited
- (reader-mode): Open the link like default and if it’s already open, focus it instead
- If you ctrl-click a link, it will:
- (edit-mode): Open the link in a new tab and if it’s already open, focus it instead
- (reader-mode): Open the link in a new tab and if it’s already open, focus it instead
I don’t use panes, but you can handle this with middle-clicks if you’d like. Something like this:
- If you middle-click a link, it will:
- (edit-mode): Open in a new pane and if it’s already open, focus it instead
- (reader-mode): Open in a new pane and if it’s already open, focus it instead
Overall, I feel the most egregious issue is how the application doesn’t handle duplicate tabs. The rest is a decent implementation, though I’m sure it can be improved. But seriously, what kind of sane software thinks opening a file, making a file and opening the previous file should result in a new tab ad nauseam?