This is a reasonable design, and it’s the design that many web outlining apps use. For example in workflowly the default click on handle behavior is to focus that row… but when you mouse over the handle another arrow pops out that you can click to expand/collapse the row.
With that said I don’t really like that design! It just feels to finicky to have to first mouse over handle, and then second move mouse sideways to click arrow. I would rather just have a simple visible button to click on.
It also is reasonable to want to use the row handle for all outline structure interactions… that’s where I started, but I just don’t see a clean way to do it. After a while assigning to many behaviors to a single element starts to make things more complex then just adding two elements.
For what it’s worth I am looking at the focus arrows as a form of auto-linking. Right now Bike hyperlinks work by placing a clickable arrow at the end of the link text. Focus arrows are similar… they place a link arrow at the end of a row.
@jessegrosjean Love the new preview! The option in preferences to “Hide secondary controls when typing” works so well! I didn’t think I would use that option, but tried it out and it works very smoothly. Very nice that the little symbols are gone when I’m typing, there when I’m “fiddling” or “editing”. Thanks!
I like the new preview as well! Buttons hiding while typing is a nice addition, and it being toggle-able feels like the right decision. I do notice everything feels harder to read if the faint triangles differentiating each row disappear and I have lots of nested hierarchies. I think this happens when rows are on top of one another at the same level in the hierarchy, where it starts to become difficult to tell when it’s a totally new row and when it’s just the previous row wrapping.
I know I’ve previously written about this issue somewhere else on this forum and that increasing the row spacing helps with that issue, but at the moment I would say I strongly prefer disabling the new “hide secondary controls when typing” option + having 0.0 row spacing, instead of enabling it + having row spacing greater than 0.0.
Just want to chime in and say I am a fan of the arrows!
I think its better to keep focusing and folding separate, and I’m sure I will get used to associating focusing with clicking at the end of the line and folding with clicking at the beginning. The colors don’t seem too cluttered to me with the default dark/light UI. Its nice to have another solution instead of having to cmd + click the caret if I want to focus in using the mouse.
I’ve changed my mind and added a setting to hide focus arrows. I also added one to hide guide lines. The editor settings panel is getting unwieldy, but it already was, and I hope to fix that up soon.
I think this release is pretty much ready to go, but I’m still holding it back to see if I can get license upgrades working for the release… not working yet, but maybe by next week.
While I wait on some help on that I’m going to work more on path queries… fun feature for the future.
What are guide lines? I must be missing something obvious but I don’t see them. I don’t remember every seeing or using them either. I do see in one screenshot above some guidelines, but weren’t they only briefly in a beta and then removed?
They have been in Bike for a long time, but they are pretty light in color:
You should be able to see the guide drawn down under “One’s” handle? My intention is for them to be light, but visible. I think they are in the default color combinations, but if you have custom colors some combinations make them almost invisible.
About guide lines: I find when you’re several levels deep their usefulness becomes muddy because it’s just a bunch of lines.
The ways I’ve seen code editors solve this is by making them visually different in some way: different colours (which isn’t terribly aesthetic), different line thicknesses (maybe depending on which line you’re on?), etc.
It’s one of those things that feels like it could be extremely helpful for navigating an entire screen-full of words by eye, but still has a little bit to go.
This could be helpful, but I don’t think it is right for a Bike default setting. Remind me when I get to implementing themes and I will see if I can allow setting individual guide colors through a theme.
I have just now jumped onto the preview and I love the defaults in 132, the arrows where a wonderful suprose and I liked them straight away.
At the moment I am using Bike for fast notes and outline ideas and then moving into Ullysses for writing, although I keep thinking I should use Obsidian, but they need to sort out OPML support, to much spacing, and I am really liking the Ullysses writing checker stuff these days, feels like that what i kinda pay for .
My wish is that I would really like Bike to get a schedule function like folding text, as I often use this to run class sessions and timings
I do think this will eventually be possible, but will be a while still. I would like this sort of feature to happen via in-app scripts/plugins. So need to build that system first.
Well this release has been dragging, but I think over the hump now.
The big “feature” holding things back is the license renewal system. Not an exciting feature exactly, but a necessary feature to make Bike sustainable so it can still around for the long term. I thought I was going to get it working one way, tried that for a long time, then changed course. I think it’s working now, but it’s not all that well tested.
If you are willing please try out the renewal system and let me know how it goes. This coupon will give you an extra 50% off: ########. I will disable this code after getting a few orders through, so use it now if you want to use it.
Few things to pay attention too:
Are you asked to renew? You should asked if you got your license prior to today - 1 year.
Go to the Settings > License panel. Does the reported “unlocks releases until” date seem right? Should be the day you got your license + 1 year.
Also is the text in those dialogues clear to you?
If you decide to renew use the coupon above and let me know how it goes. Generally the “unlocks releases until” date should change to today + 1 year.
Renew checks happen on app startup. So if for some reason your order takes a long time to process and Bike can’t refresh status immediately, restart Bike a bit later and see if status has changed by then.
Update I’ve disabled that coupon code. Thanks for everyone who tested. Seems the license renewal system is operational.
Was easy to do. There was a little message to renew in top right part of screen in white/gray. To be honest, I was looking for something like that, but in normal circumstances I might not have noticed it. For something like a reweal probably need something “less subtle”. But the process itself worked just fine.
I think I will leave as is. I want people to be able to use in locked state without too much distraction. The only time you really need to renew is when you want to use a locked feature, and then you’ll see an alert.
The process was straightforward and most of the UI copy makes sense. TBH, when you said, “Are you asked to renew?” I expected to get some sort of popup or something on startup. It took me a while to notice the “Renew License” in the corner. The actual re-licensing worked smoothly, no hiccups.
“Unlocks releases before ” makes sense, but the “before” throws me a bit. “until” conveys that it’s more of an end date, imo.
I started with “Until”, and might go back to it. The reason that I changed is because until seemed like it might be read as “everything is locked, old and new release” after that date.
It just feels to finicky to have to first mouse over handle, and then second move mouse sideways to click arrow. I would rather just have a simple visible button to click on.
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