Inconsistent bookmark drag/drop and mod-key behavior

Bug reports
,
1

Steps to reproduce

  1. In the sandbox, enable web viewer and bookmarks
  2. Open the web viewer and navigate to a page (e.g. obsidian.md)
  3. Bookmark the page
  4. Bookmark a note
  5. Try dragging each bookmark to various locations
  6. Try ctrl-click, ctrl-alt-shift click, etc.

Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? [Y/N]

Y

Expected result

Both bookmarks should be able to be dropped:

  • On a tab or view header to open in that pane
  • As a new tab or pane
  • Into a note to place a text link
  • Into another app as a link

Both bookmarks should be able to be opened by clicking:

  • In the same tab, a new tab, a new pane, or a new window

Actual result

Web bookmarks open in a new tab, always, regardless of mod keys, even when the active leaf is a web viewer. They cannot be opened in the same tab, a new pane, or a new window using Obsidian-standard modifier keys.

When dragging a web link, it cannot be dropped anywhere except the location field of an open web view – where it results in the name of the bookmark being added to the end of the existing URL, rather than inserting the new URL and/or navigating to it.

Web links also render while dropping as if they can be dropped into notes, but nothing actually appears in the text when dropped (vs. inserting external link text, as would be expected).

When dropped in other apps, all bookmarks paste the name of the bookmark, instead of a URL or link.

(I would expect an obsidian: URI in case of a note bookmark, and for both to use standard Windows drag-drop data types for a bookmark used by other browsers - i.e. a url list type, a plain text type with either a markdown link or plain URL, and an html variant with <a href. But these issues are more about consistency with platform-specific drag-drop conventions than internal Obsidian consistency between bookmark types.)

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.10.6
Installer version: v1.10.6
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 10.0.19045
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: supporter
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: light
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: on

RECOMMENDATIONS:
none

Additional information

These limitations make it difficult to use bookmarks with the web viewer in popout windows (or at all), since you can’t drag them anywhere, pick where to open them, etc. You have to click the bookmark and then either move the tab or copy/paste the URL. (But you can’t even copy the URL from the bookmark!)

There is also no way to open a bookmark (or any external link) in the web viewer if you’ve turned off the “open external links” setting in the web viewer settings. The context menu for external links (which incidentally does not appear when right-clicking web bookmarks), does not provide an option to open in the web viewer.

So you can either have everything open in the web viewer by default, with the possibility of opening a few links specifically in your browser, or you can turn off the option and have the web viewer become largly useless, because you have to always manually enter or copy and paste URLs to use it. (And you can’t do that from bookmarks, or drag and drop the bookmarks!)

It would help a lot if:

  • Bookmarks behaved consistently to other Obsidian link behavior (as described above)
  • Turning off “open external links” didn’t remove the context menu item for opening links in the web viewer
  • Web bookmarks’ context menu included external link menu options, including the ability to open the link in either the web viewer or the external browser, regardless of the “open external links” setting.

Thanks!

1 Like
2

ok, thank you.

This is borderline a FR (meaning some things are not implemented) but I do agree about the inconsistencies are not nice.

Some things may be intentional.

For example, if you have [google](http://google.com) in a note and you click on it, for consistency with other types of links, it should open in the same window but right now it’s opening a new tab.

3

Yeah, each of these inconsistencies is kind of its own issue (and opening a new tab in that context does make sense), but I figured you’d rather I didn’t open separate issues for each and every one of them. :slight_smile:

In any case, the parts of this that I most consider “bug” are the parts where the drag/drop renders as though you can drop (but it doesn’t work), and where you do drop the title text is randomly inserted. If it’s not intended for web bookmarks to be droppable outside the bookmark pane, then presumably they should not show as being droppable, and should not do anything when dropped.

So technically the bug part isn’t that the feature is unimplemented, it’s that the UI incorrectly suggests it is implemented. The rest of the inconsistencies and “additional information” are included for completeness’ sake, because I would expect y’all would want to evaluate these as a group for planning and execution, since AFAIK it’s all in the same relatively tiny parts of the webviewer and bookmark plugins.

Anyway, if you’d rather I didn’t create tickets for minor UI friction points like these, let me know. I’ve always enjoyed the degree of polish that Obsidian’s UI has, so I try to report nits when I find them.