UI idea/request - Context Aware Corkboard

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

First: I absolutely love Scrivener. My Mac friends have been raving about it for a while and its great to use it on the PC.

Here’s a bit of picky nit/UX issue - Consider making the cork board context aware. By that I mean that, unless I’m missing something, there is no reason to enable the cork board or outline view on a text with no children (no nested pages).

Provided I’m right, I think it would make the UX more clear if those two options were grayed out while the current page is childless. Once a child is added, the cork board and outline mode would click back on. The reason I suggest this is I keep switching to them accidentally and then questioning why they are blank. So, if nothing else, it would cut down on my confusion. :smiley:

Thanks for the consideration.

2

What about people who want to use the corkboard (or outline) to create multiple children?

(Which happens to be my most common use for those views.)

Katherine

3

I may well be misunderstanding you but you can also manually select multiple (childless) text files (with Ctrl+click) and view them in the cork board view.

By the way, I just noticed that if I select one text file and hit the corkboard view, the card doesn’t show but select a second and the cards appear – bug?

4

Katherine,

Ok, you sunk my battleship. :slight_smile: Didn’t even think of that application.That makes sense (using the corkboard to add new child note to the text file).

But in that case, the current UX don’t quite work this way on the Windows versions. Right now, if I’m on the blank-postboard of a childless note, and I choose to add a text file by either right-clicking, the “file” menu, or using the “+” button, the new text file comes in as a sibling, in the “text/writing” interface vs giving me the chance to add more txt files.

  • Matt
5

Yes, I noticed that with the current version as well. I think this is a bug that has been noted. When a corkboard (or outliner) has the focus, new creation commands should target the context of that view. But that aside, definitely, that’s why you can open up a corkboard on a text file at all: so you can flesh out that section of the outline, and if you later decide that part of the outline would be better described as a folder, you can right-click on it and convert it.

6

Hi Amber,

With the focus shift, that makes total sense. I’ve never used it on the Mac, so I didn’t realize that was the goal.

Consider this thread closed.

  • Matt