[DONE] Multi-panel context-preserving navigation

I used it a bit and I like it. I don’t like the native scroll bar, maybe using your own scrollbar for this, transparent one and only for the scrollable content, for ex. the colored header remains fixed but the scrollbar is for the full height.

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Now you can enable Panel Navigation in Experimental Features menu:

2021-12-24 14.22.52

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As a big fan of Google’s old “Labs” features, I am glad to see this area (Experimental) added to options. I hope more in-dev things get added there! I am enabling it now. :slight_smile:

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I second @Oshyan. It is great to be able to try experimental features like this! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone :hugs:

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Love the experimental feature option.

Don’t really like those 2 white spaces when the header is sticky, looks weird: Annotation on 2021-12-31 at 00-33-05.png - Droplr
Maybe go with your own scrollbars and limit the top of the scrollbar and left bar with vertical text up to the header area, not over it.

Headers will be re-designed as well.

And here are panels (still in progress)

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btw, i notice that colored headers are removed, so much cleaner now, much better! Is there a way i can enable experimental feature of fields on the main side of the view?

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So far it is just a design prototype, it is not started.

Might coloured headers be a configurable thing? The use of colour is quite strong but also does help to anchor what entity type is being viewed. Appreciate this may add complexity though…

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the colored labels on top are enough for me to differentiate Screenshot on 2022-01-06 at 17:27:42.png - Droplr
The colored headers was too much for me liking

I agree with that. I both like the way it looks now, and find it visually useful without being distracting.


A problem I had with coloured text sometimes was the readability of it. The current design allows for easy reading of the labels and scanning using the coloured boxes.

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I have been using the multi-panel layout and really find it amazing :star_struck: So thanks for prioritizing this and making it available as an experimental feature.

I am not sure if this is the best place to offer improvement suggestions (please let me know if I should create separate feature requests), but here are current thoughts to make this feature even better:

  • Ability to adjust the panel widths. Currently both views are sized to be equal and on some smaller screens this could cause some problems when you only need one of the views as a quick reference. Being able to drag and adjust the vertical divider would be very helpful
  • Ability to reorganize the open views. There is a logic to how entity views are organized but sometimes it is useful to be able to reorganize the order of the open entities
  • A button to open an entity view in a brand new browser tab. While the multi-panel is very helpful in keeping tabs to a minimum, there is sometimes a need to undock and open an entity in its own tab. This is not a big deal because you can copy the entity URL from the header but it would be a great addition.

I will try and add more ideas as I use this more.

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A post was split to a new topic: Navigation: Keep main View opened in a left panel when opening an entity

Released today

I had assumed Middle-Click or at least Ctrl-Click would allow this, but nope! Ctrl-click is close, but it opens in “context-preserving” mode, i.e. the entity view opens alongside, not in a dedicated, full view. I would rather consider that a bug, though I’m not sure how easy it is to solve.

Thanks for pointing out the ctrl+click option. I use that quite often for clicking on inline entities.

What I was thinking is that sometimes you have an entity view open and you realize it would be better to open it separately. I thought adding another button to the top row might be the easiest way of ‘undocking’ the entity view from the current tab:

image

I actually didn’t know about the middle-click. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work work me. Where can you use the middle click to interact with entities?

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Interesting, but to clarify, did you intend this button to literally open the currently open Entity in a new browser tab? If so, what happens to the open entity in the original tab? Does it auto-close?

In most websites middle-click will open a link in a new tab. So that’s all I was referring to. Fibery takes over the mouse functions for its own approach, so it doesn’t work (Ctrl is a more forceful way to do it which still only partially works). But it could work if Fibery allowed it to. Of course not everyone has (or knows) middle-click. Alt-click is a common option in Fibery, but also seems to do nothing different than a regular click. Alt+Click to open in a new tab could be interesting, though just properly handling the more familiar Ctrl+Click (force open tab) and not having it open with the split view would be better. And in any case it doesn’t really address your request, as I understand it, for “I have this open in one way but want to open it in another way instead, and do so quickly/easily”.

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Yes, that is what I was thinking. I’m not sure if it is useful to others but I sometimes need to have two entities in full screen (most often on two different displays). To be honest, this isn’t be a big deal, but having a button saves at least 3-4 clicks and a paste operation.

I think it could be amazing if you could bring the entity you moved into a new browser into the previous context somehow (i.e. go the other way and close the new tab and bring the entity view back into the original window). Not sure if that is even possible!

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Getting that advanced starts to become more the realm of an Electron-based desktop app IMO. Where you could have Fibery running as a dedicated, installable app (not a PWA), and it could have multiple windows that you could perhaps flexibly rearrange, split views, etc. Sounds like a lot of work though, heh. I doubt the team will go that route. But it’s useful to know what people want/need, of course.

For sure and I don’t see that as a great need. I assume that a desktop app will be in the horizon at some point in the distant future (but I could be wrong).

For now, I will be happy with a button to just open the current view in a brand new tab like this:

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