šŸšš Feedback needed: Drag and Drop blocks in rich text fields and documents

We have many requests to drag and drop paragraphs, list items and so on in rich edit area. Now we implemented a prototype, like an experimental feature, to make it happen.

You can use Esc button (or Cmd + click) on any block to select it and then you can drag and drop it. You can push Esc several times to select top level blocks.

See how it works and try for yourself. It is interesting to hear your feedback!

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Very interesting. I knew about the single ESC to trigger drag-n-drop but didnā€™t know that pressing ESC multiple times would traverse up.

As you mention in the video itā€™s hard to surface this feature (Notion hints at this with handles on everything)

I think the multi-ESC is a great starting point. A keyboard workflow similar to outliners (Roam, Logseq) is one of the things I miss from those tools. Being able to indent/outdent and shuffle bullets/blocks up and down with CMD + Shift + UP /Down really speeds things up

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Personally, Iā€™m a cut+paste kind of person. And the rare times I would drag stuff, Iā€™d be looking for a mouse handle on the left, like the 6 dots.

I would caveat against overloading ESC. I personally already find it annoying when hitting ESC opens other panels in Fibery (e.g. when in a table).

Thanks, thatā€™s all. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Cmd + Click is another pattern that works. With handlers we feel UI is kinda bloatedā€¦ But nothing is certain so far!

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I completely agree.
I would add the zoom/focus in/out (Hoisting) functionality, like in Workflowy or Checkvist, for example.
In this sense, do you foresee the possibility of having an outliner available (maybe as a new ā€œtypeā€) in the future?

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For me, mouse free working is critical, so keyboard shortcuts to move things around, up and down, indent, outdent etc. is important.

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I would love to see the functionality of Workflowy inside of rich text fields. Could be enhancements to bullets and checkboxes, serving as items of an outline. Would be great to reorder items with drag and drop, and nesting of children items under parent items with easy fold up / unfold to keep things visually tidy.

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Keyboard shortcuts are nice for advanced users but I think there needs to be a mouse option for novices, otherwise I fully expect most members of my team wonā€™t know the feature even exists unless i show them ; ). Notion does it very well with their blocks and handles system in my opinion.

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I love the user experience (not referring to functionality) of Workflowy over Roam, Tana etc.

Personally, I would prefer having a drag-and-drop icon, similar to the one used for fields, to move it with the mouse. Additionally, I would like the option to use the Alt + Arrow keys, like in Visual Studio (MoveSelectedLinesDown/Up), to move it around.

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I admit that I would have preferred the ability to change the indentation of the blocks and the colour of the text.

But itā€™s a nice feature, itā€™s just a shame that you canā€™t actually learn about it except by accidentally pressing ESC, is it?

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I agree. Iā€™m afraid that most of the users that we will onboard will not remember keyboard shortcuts.

Plus a lot of them are used to Notion; couldnā€™t harm to offer a similar experience since itā€™s a great feature (IMO) and itā€™s a big competitor.

Overall: I do love all these kind of improvements!

Although it may not feel that way; it really moves the needle when you use Fibery on a daily basis.

Slightly offtopic ā†’ I also use Fibery on my mobile to create items, especially notes for my ā€˜second brainā€™.

The overall mobile experience is not that bad at all if you simply want to create a new item (weā€™ve made a special shortcut page for that purpose).

But there are a few small bugs that makes it really hard for new users.

  • You canā€™t select something in a dropdown menu (relation/select list) if itā€™s somewhere at the bottom of your screen.
  • And you canā€™t add new checklist items or paragraphs in a rich text field.

Made a video :slight_smile:

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Thatā€™s great news. Very useful features. And the implementation is extremely convenient. Iā€™ve already checked it out. :ok_hand:

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Feedback on drag drop blocks:

Nice feature, although I never had the need for such feature. Anyway when its implemented I would be in favor of visual drag drop handles for mouse/finger use, I prevent using keyboard shortcuts (and new users wonā€™t use keyboard shortcuts).

Daily text activities that happen more often than rearrangement of text blocks:

Collaborative development of content requires users to split and merge content all the time, but such that it is not a ā€˜final mergeā€™ - that the blocks stay flexible, thus have entity like behavior.
I use feed views to mimick content blocks in the same entity viewā€¦but its very limited workaround.

It would be good if these blocks can be turned into entities, and that external entities can be included as ā€˜transcludedā€™ blocks.

Suggestion for a ā€˜Smart Entity Viewā€™

I think that the architecture for text collaboration needs to not depend on the rich text field, but allow Entity View to display transcluded entities in a field-like arrangement.
Essentially, this would be similar to an Entity View to function like a Smart Folder, but with displaying more fields (also text fields) than only the name fields.

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Do this please, we need non-mouse using when processing document/ rich text and itā€™s critical things in Obsidian, just those hotkey, I can move any selected block moving all area

I agree with a lot of the posters saying they prefer to do this with the keyboard. Was not at the top of my list of needed features. Agree with @Lukas_Hroch here:

I just noticed that this is fixed now :heart_eyes::heart_eyes::heart_eyes: thanks, it works really well :partying_face::partying_face::partying_face:

Fixed in latest release

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Awesome! :heart_eyes::heart_eyes: Thank you so much!