Improvements for Andy mode (aka Sliding Windows)

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aims:

  • Navigate panes (scroll horizontally, go to first/last) effectively by keyboard
  • Reorder by dragging also among panes nested on the left side (which show only the filename vertically)
    • 2020-12-29 precise reordering among nested pages is not possible yet.
  • Do not break it with each release of Obsidian
    • Since introduction of plugin, it seems to work well.
  • Toggle Andy mode by keyboard.
    • implemented as ‟Sliding Panes (Andy’s Mode): Toggle Sliding Panes”
  • Keep it independent option of light/dark theme. (satisfied by plugin)
  • Unfold any folded/nested pane (scroll to it) by clicking on it’s vertical bar
  • ~~Allow to nest panes also on the right side as in original [unavailable note]

Motivated by posts in Andy Matuschak mode - V2.7 (updated for 0.7+ new panes)

Edit 2020-12-29:

Related feature requests:

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You are asking is to make AM part of the Obs core, and refine it a bit.

I agree with this request. I use AM all the time. Yesterday I thought there was a problem with it so took it out of the theme I was using, and that was an unpleasant UX, with static panes, that if you open additional ones the become narrower - having more than 3 open is ridiculous.

I find AM to be a significant enhancement of Obsidian.

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Making it core might be a little too far IMO. However, when the plugin API is available I do already plan to turn Andy’s Mode into a plugin.

Access to JavaScript should give me some more freedoms to introduce most - if not all - of the suggested features, also. As well as theoretically make it more efficient.

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Great initiative. Whenever I try a new theme, the 1st thing I do before even launching Obs with it is to add AM to the css sheet. Without it I could not use Obs to an acceptable level of satisfaction.

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According to the 0.9.4 release notes, “sliding windows” functionality is available for publishing:

There’s a new mode you can turn on called “sliding windows”. This overhauls your site’s navigation to open links beside the current page. Inspired from Andy Matuschak’s website https://notes.andymatuschak.org/

It would be really helpful if this mode could be made available directly in Obsidian, for all the same reasons it is helpful for vaults that are published to the web. Namely: being able to easily retrace the chain of links traversed in research and/or editing notes.

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The Cybertron theme by @nickmilo has that. You can find it in the Community Themes plugin. There’s also this bit of CSS that does something functionally similar.

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Thanks. The Cybertron theme has exactly the functionality I am looking for, but I would like to use a light mode, minimalist theme. I am hopeful that either @_ph will add the “sliding windows” functionality to the excellent Obsdn-Dark-Rmx theme or that this functionality will be introduced via plugin sometime soon.

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I’m not sure if the “sliding windows” feature is the same as Andy mode, so I may be talking about something else here but…

There’s this custom-css hack(?) that I’m sure is what Cybertron uses if you haven’t seen it already: Andy Matuschak mode - V2.7 (updated for 0.7+ new panes)

So if you want to have this functionality in a light mode theme or with Obsdn-Dark-Rmx, you can.

As for making it a plugin, the guy that made the CSS said this:

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I just kind of grafted that CSS into the Obsdn-Dark-Rmx theme and the result was less than satisfactory. I’m sure there was something else I should have done to make it work, but my CSS knowledge doesn’t go far beyond Cmd+C/Cmd+V.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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It’s probably helpful to distinguish between “sliding windows” as the simple CSS that enables horizontal scrolling from the “stacking” effect in Andy Mode and the Cybertron theme. It is the latter that I am especially interested in, particularly because it preserves the visibility (context) of the chain of links instead of scrolling them out of view.

@macedotavares I tried the same thing (Cmd+C/Cmd+V of the CSS into Obsdn-Dark-Rmx) and concur with your assessment. It was close in some ways but needs the attention of a developer to make it really work as expected.

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Please see

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Thanks for linking @argentum. Furthermore, I’d like to point out that this plugin solves many (not all) of the problems indicated in the OP of the thread:

Do not break it with each release of Obsidian

Well, that remains to be seen, but I’ll try my best :wink:

Toggle Andy mode by keyboard.

I added a command to the plugin so you can toggle it with the command pallete, or assign your own hotkey to it.

Keep it independent option of light/dark theme.

As a plugin it’s now independent of all themes! Yay! (Though it may not work the best with some themes currently)

Navigate panes (scroll horizontally, go to first/last) effectively by keyboard

Some hotkey assignments do currently exist (next/previous pane for example) and the plugin scrolls to the focussed pane. So pending more navigation shortcuts in Obsidian itself (or other plugins) this is taken care of.

Reorder by dragging also among panes nested on the left side (which show only the filename vertically)

This is the big one I want to tackle now that I have javascript capabilities in a plugin. It will come in time, but currently works the same as the CSS version (i.e. not very well)

Unfold any folded/nested pane (scroll to it) by clicking on it’s vertical bar

As stated above, active panes get scrolled to, so now clicking on a pane’s vertical bar will scroll to it :partying_face:

Allow to nest panes also on the right side as in original https://notes.andymatuschak.org/

I’ve done this in the plugin, too. Though my implementation differs slightly in that the right side titles stack, whereas Andy’s do not. There are both pros and cons to this approach, and I may include options to tweak it later down the line.

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Could you also create a repository for the CSS format of your design?
You have made a great service to many of us.

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@Royi: Andy’s sliding panes repository.

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This is the plug in. I was asking for the CSS version.

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@Royi: sorry, I misunderstood. I think death_au is not paying much attention to that CSS version anymore because his focus is on the plug-in, which makes more sense. Why would you use a deprecated version when there is an easier to use plug-in that has even more features and to which he will add additional features?

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One reason would be security.
The CSS solution can’t do anything to the content of the files by mistake.

But the real motivation was to keep it available.
Maybe others will give it some tweaks over the time.

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@Royi: so, why not download the plug-in from the repository and extract the CSS file from it?

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I didn’t know it is an option.

All I’m saying, for archiving purposes, it will be nice to keep the option of CSS.

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When Toggling Sliding Panes On/OFF, the resizing of panes are messed up in Windows platform. Is there any hotkey to completely turn off/On Andy mode plugin ?