Focus on direct links?

[Truncated]

First and foremost, thank you for this program. I have been looking for this type of program for at least 15 years; something that was lightweight enough to keep up with my frenetic visual note style on a computer that made it preferable to a whiteboard / paper alternative. While OneNote came close, this really hits the nail on the head like no other. So thank you!

Of course, now that I found so many of the great things that I had been missing (and some I didn’t even know I was missing!), I’m starting to think of what else would help. Two things I wanted to bring up that are currently top of my list:

1. Styles with keyboard shortcuts - that’s addressed pretty well on a number of threads, and I’ll add my thoughts on the latest thread, I did want to say that this is the only improvement I’ve found on this message board which I would call “missing” according to the original design spec. Even then, it’s only because the interface design is so smooth and complete once you understand the shortcut keys that I feel that way.

2. Focus view: I’d really like to be able to switch to a Focus Mode, select the number of links away to target, and fade all other links. Perhaps this exists and I don’t know about it?

In my mind’s eye, you enter Focus mode and click an item. Default is one link away; so that item and anything connected directly to it stays, while all other items and links set themselves to fade. I click off the box and everything comes back to “normal” (whatever it looked like prior to the mode being enabled). CTRL+Click lets me set focus on more than one.

I change the settings to two links, and click the same box… now everything connected to that AND the items connected to the first wave are now in focus.

Turn off the mode and all items go back to “normal”.

Thanks for the look, and good luck to all the Nano peeps here.

[AmberV]

I’ve found on this message board which I would call “missing” according to the original design spec. Even then, it’s only because the interface design is so smooth and complete once you understand the shortcut keys that I feel that way.

We agree, this was one of those unfortunately areas where original development on the Mac could be quite oblivious to this sort of stuff. On a Mac, you can customise every application’s menu commands using the equivalent of the Control Panel in Windows, so effectively all software is keyboard customisable and no programmers need to design their own systems—hence no design for this.

Focus view: I’d really like to be able to switch to a Focus Mode, select the number of links away to target, and fade all other links. Perhaps this exists and I don’t know about it?

Yes, you can get what you’re going for, but we come at it from another angle. We use a selection system instead of a purely visual system. Selecting all notes connected to the currently selected note(s) can be done with Edit/Select/Connected Notes. Since this modifies the selection you can use the same command once again to expand your focus to the next “friend-of-friend” tier, and so on. The Connected Clusters selection option in that same sub-menu will select all notes that are connected, directly or indirectly, to the select note(s).

If you really wanted to fade the other notes, you could invert the selection and hit Format/Fade, but that’s a static setting—not meant to be agile like what you’re describing. I think just manipulation the selection will work best.

Thanks for the feedback!