App navigation is confusing

[skjnldsv]

Some issues:

1. I can't get nested categories here, it doesn't work on my note setup, how do you create them?
2. users does not know what ../ means, app navigation should not evolve regarding on what you click. This is not supposed to be a hierarchy browsing area.
3. There is a lot of spacing to me. Maybe that is inevitable though. Let's discuss this :)

@korelstar @jancborchardt

[skjnldsv]

• I can't get nested categories here, it doesn't work on my note setup, how do you create them?

Ok, so you cannot from the app.
But you can since if you move your folders around (in files) it will create categories for you.
This is confusing. I cannot get up a folder on the navigation, you need to go back to root and click the further documents.

And like said in 2: This is not supposed to be a hierarchy browsing area.

Now, let's find solutions.
In mail we have multiple nesting, we solved this by showing the first nesting of the folder, but appending all the folders path into one

So you have:

• xxxx/
• yyyy/
  • ccc/
  • ccc/xxx/
  • ccc/xxx/sss/

But to be fair it looks good on Mail but mail rarely have more than 2 depth nested folders. You on the other hand, allows unlimited ones. So I would say the whole ui is not clear. You're stating that folders are "categories", but it means you're only allowing one category? Are the parent folders supposed to be categories as well? How do you see your categories being different from tags for example?

I would like to understand how you see this? What is your vision :)
I must say I don't use the app so much on desktop. 🙈. So this is my raw input, but I might be missing your point or goal 🤗

[jancborchardt]

To be honest, I always preferred it to be a simple note list sorted by most recently edited and nothing more. ;)

But I have to say it’s not as confusing as you say:

• Looking at the screenshot it makes sense. Categories with notes below them.
• The whitespace is proper for spacing.
• the ../ could be seen like a left ellipsis, even tho it’s technical.
• Only confusion is why is there a line below "Kategorie 1"?

[marcoambrosini]

I'd suggest we adopt a similar layout to contacts and mail to solve this. Apple notes uses it and It's one of the best notes app I've ever used. Plus we already have the UI :)
Also we could make the sidebar hideable on desktop, even if there's space for it. That way, people that don't want to mess with categories or address books (i.e: they use just one) are not forced to see them all the time.

[marcelklehr]

I think the two-tier structure is a good idea! An issue is see with this, though, is nesting folders/categories in the sidebar. I went with a similar approach in the bookmarks app last year and it turned out to be a bad idea. (@skjnldsv already knew it back then; I've since seen the error of my ways 😄)

[skjnldsv]

For the appnavigation nesting, we could also try to improve there for the vue components and start increasing the width of it (allowing for more than one nested level)
I really like the separation of notes and folder with the navigation. It makes more sense to me 👍

[marcoambrosini]

An issue is see with this, though, is nesting folders/categories in the sidebar.

Do we need infinite category nesting in the notes app? Currently the navigation allows 2 levels (root level and children). Wouldn't that be enough?

[marcelklehr]

Do we need infinite category nesting in the notes app? Currently the navigation allows 2 levels (root level and children). Wouldn't that be enough?

For me personally, it would be enough. but the UI is based on the files folder structure, so we'd need to think about what happens when the file system folders are nested more deeply.

[jancborchardt]

So this 3-column view of course would work, but to be honest the initial intention of Notes was to be able to focus on Notes, and suddenly then it’s mostly organization.

That said, I mostly use the Android app these days and don’t use categorization anyway, so I’m fine with someone else taking over the design – like you @ma12-co :) As long as you use something like Apple Notes as design benchmark it should be good. 👍

[stefan-niedermann]

I also think that a three column based layout is a heavy overkill. the design gial of this app was always to be simple. For more organizational stuff a solution like nextnotes, onlyoffice or some other suite in combination with the normal files app might fit better.

just my 2 ct

[marcoambrosini]

I understand the concerns, however I'd like to stress that the layout would default as 2 column, one with just notes (no categories) and another with the note editor. The categories and settings column would be for more advanced users only and accessing it would require expanding the sidebar.
Note that the mobile apps are already organized like that, in the sense that categories are already in a separate column (the hamburger menu) from the notes (the home screen). You already have this sort of 3 columns flow.
The whole point here is to further simplify in my opinion, but it requires a petty significant design change, which is the hideable sidebar on wide desktops. Without that I wouldn't be in favor of a 3 column layout

[stefan-niedermann]

I am aware that the android app is already doing this. There is a flow from master to detail because there is only one screen displayed at a time. this is done to show as less information as possible at a time to give a user a quick overview.

on the desktop the scenario is different: if we use 3 columns here, very much information is displayed at the same time - all this has to be scanned by the user before he can start to actual edit.