Navigate sibling page - <<previous next>>

Plugins ideas
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problem

Andy raises the issue that It’s hard to navigate to unlinked “neighbors” in associative note systems

proposal

This would IMO often be addressable with buttons to go to sibling notes.
<<previous and next>> button at the bottom of a page.

  • easy swap between sibling notes
  • show related notes, similar to backlinks

ideally it auto generates the next & prev buttons, based on folder and alphabetical.

  • let user choose the sorting algorithm. alphabetical up, down, most recent, …
  • option to define a link in the frontmatter.
    if there is a nav-next or nav-previous defined, we use that instead of the automatic page. Giving the user easy options to modify the linking behaviour manually.

This is inspirated by the existing footer navigation in mkdocs, see navigation docs.

sketch of how it could look (see previous and next at bottom)

image
image1492×1786 238 KB

The need

several threads on this forum show the need for this feature:

  • popular thread requesting this
  • in-depth discussion on a previous and next button in the daily notes plugin, and workarounds with templates.
  • short thread, repeating the same
  • thread requesting hotkeys for this feature

Alternatives

The quick explorer plugin already adds hotkeys for this feature. But no visual preview. It forgets about people with a mouse.

You could make templates, but would have to keep them up to date. / It’s clunky

6 Likes
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Did you ask author of the “Quick Explorer” plugin (@pjeby) to implement this as option?
IMHO, it would be easiest way to do this as he has most of the relevant code already written and used by the hotkeys.

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great suggestion, i’ve posted a feature request

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the author from quick explorer got back to me and provided a solution.

install these 2 plugins

  • quick explorer - for previous & next command
  • commander - for adding command buttons
    then when hovering on the top bar, you can add a custom button for next & previous.
    image
2 Likes
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Thanks for the guide. It works on PC. But do you have any idea, how to realize this on Mobile? ( quick-explorer doesn’t support Mobile)

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Bumping this question

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The Breadcrumb Trail plugin deals with sibling/parent/other relationships, but its description doesn’t show a simple prior/next nav (it has some more complicated nav setups). Maybe it includes simpler setups in its full documentation — I didn’t check.

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I’m slightly confused how navigation should work in this context… The best navigation imo, is when files are custom-linked, that can’t be automated

if next means in this context to switch to the next markdown file of the same folder, then I personally can’t find much advantages in this approach. At least, this is my impression.

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you are correct if you use that approach.
similar arguments are often made online, where people discuss if it’s better to have no folders and just all notes in 1 location, or to use folders to categorize notes.

in this case, i keep my daily notes in a folder separate from other notes.
pressing next and previous is very helpfull to me personally to browse through daily notes.

i never was able to setup a system where it auto linked to previous and next day notes, because the next day might not exist. e.g. i skip notes for a few days.
and manually linking was time consuming, i did that for a while.

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