Mar 7, 2024 / 🍋 Timeline improvements: better drag and drop, weekends and day names

[mdubakov]

Timeline improvements: better drag and drop, weekends and day names

Timeline View shows day names and weekends much nicer than before. Zoom was also improved and it is more smooth and pleasant.

Many problems with drag and drop were fixed. Now it depends on a zoom level, shows a dragger, a date, and keeps your sanity intact.

Better support for plural Database names

Our UI used to assume that all Database names are in English and singular form: Feature, Client, Task. The assumption has turned out to be wrong for roughly ⅓ of all newly created Databases leading to confusing interactions like Delete Tasks when deleting a single one.

Now you can freely name a Database in plural and we’ll singularize the name where appropriate. The fix applies to English names only, we’ll continue to butcher other languages for now, sorry — although now we try not to change a DB name if we’re not sure or if it’s not required.

Mirrored context Views explained

Smart Folders have the unique ability to replicate the same View across all Entities. Instead of maintaining, for example, 10 roadmap Views for each of your 10 Products, you configure a View once and apply the same “template” for all Products. The filter is specific to each Product but everything else is shared: lanes, sorting, colors, etc. This saves time for Creators and simplifies the onboarding.

The time-saving mechanism is awesome but too few Creators figured it out on their own, so we’ve revamped the design. Now it’s clear at a glance which Views are mirrored. Also, we’ve replaced the Show in… control that used to hide in the View configuration with a standalone button.

Improvements

• Reactions support is added to mobile devices.

Fixed Bugs

Timeline View:

• Timeline sticks to cursor once you drag & drop an entity between lanes or change period.
• Sometimes new entity placeholder appears on timeline when you drag & drop entities between lanes.
• Date range get changed if move cards between lanes.
• Date on drag works incorrect, like -1 day.
• Wrong end date in tooltip if change card dates via drag & drop on timeline.
• Can’t move right or left date on a small card.
• Timeline view gets closed when Milestone opened in right panel
• It should not be possible to change milestone date on a Timeline View, so drag and drop was removed for safety.

Other fixes:

• Wrong Views are embedded into the duplicated doc
• It’s not possible to change only the first letter of database name
• Actions and context menus don’t get closed with Esc
• Semantic query visible as placeholder in search panel
• Embedded Reports are duplicated incorrectly
• Broken navigation for Favorite Views in Spaces with accent in Space name
• Field name is wrong in formula generated by AI

[ccollins]

These timeline improvements look great, and these full color cards look amazing!! Great job Fibery team!

With all the timeline improvements, are there plans for showing lane dates? As a summary bar above the cards in that lane

[Chr1sG]

@ccollins

With all the timeline improvements, are there plans for showing lane dates? As a summary bar above the cards in that lane

Do you mean that a lane (which might contain multiple cards) would show the total date range covered by those cards?
If so, then you can already achieve this by adding a formula to the db for the lanes, and enabling this field on the timeline view.

[ccollins]

I’m not sure I follow. If I add a field to the lane, it doesn’t add a bar/card to the timeline view, it just shows that daterange field in the left column. And not necessarily the total range, but whatever daterange for that lane I select.

As an example, let’s say I want a timeline showing my tasks in lanes of my projects. I want to show cards on the timeline that represented both the task dates and the dateranges for each lane (projects). Currently I don’t think I can add the project database as both cards and lanes. I guess I could create a new “shadow” database autolinked 1-to-1 with each project with a lookup of the project daterange and use that as the secondary card. But I don’t want to start down that path if this is ever going to become a feature.

Below is a screenshot from one of the reference images on the Fibery roadmap board. Each of the lanes in this image has a bar for it’s own daterange.

[mdubakov]

Got it. We don’t have this in near plans, but since we will add Actual vs. Planned dates, we will think what we can do for Lanes as well. BTW, if we add it, it will be just a background for lane without edit possibility.

[Chr1sG]

@ccollins

I’m not sure I follow.

My mistake, I misunderstood your request.
Yes, the only way to do this currently is with a clumsy workaround like you described.

[Minh_Tri_Do_Hang]

what if task need several hours to do, I mean time to finish for 1 task < 1 day. Can we drag drop backlog for day option in timeline view like this https://cdn.sanity.io/files/rfb95wph/production/bb5e7418d75ddfbd5fd64ab7982a2c8740baad00.mp4

[mdubakov]

@Minh_Tri_Do_Hang

what if task need several hours to do, I mean time to finish for 1 task < 1 day.

Here you can use Calendar View

[NMan]

Any plans to improve the calendar in the next months?

[mdubakov]

No plans for Calendar View. Not so many requests to be honest, so it is relatively low priority.

[NMan]

Ok
Btw, looking at the video from tana posted above: I have a feeling fibery can do all the things showed in the video (apart the calendar things ), but without looking like ass. But it’s sad that it doesn’t have as much reverence as tana.

[mdubakov]

Tana is focusing on personal use cases where Calendar is relatively important. Fibery focus is in product teams and companies, where roadmaps and timelines are more important. We can’t do everything unfortunately and have to pick the niche

[NMan]

Absolutely, it wasn’t a critique. I’d argue that personal calendar is important for every work management tool, but that’s personal opinion
Anyway, what I meant to say is that tana seems to be held in high regard, despite the fact that it looks absolutely terrible. I am sadden by the fact that fibery can do much of the same, while looking much better (also in terms of information readability), but it doesn’t receive as much praise.

[mdubakov]

I tend to not agree. Tana is a very good outliner, while this is not Fibery strength at all. As for calendar, I tend to agree, but again we are trying to focus on things that many people ask, calendar is not the case (so far).

[JoelH]

Excited to see the direction of improving the Timeline view.

Related to zooming, I’d really like if an long-standing UX issue I have with zoom could get some love.

Smooth zoom won’t fit in my workflow as I use ctrl-mouse wheel
The “smooth zoom” seems great for the user experience for me, since I typically have mixed items of varying length on the timeline.

However, I’m unable to utilize it within Fibery because I don’t zoom using interface buttons. Instead, I rely on the widely adopted ctrl + mouse wheel shortcut for zooming, which works seamlessly across a multitude of desktop applications, including all the browsers I frequent. On MacOS I guess this is cmd + scroll wheel.

Unfortunately, when I use ctrl + mouse wheel on the Timeline view in Fibery, the zooming experience is far from smooth. Instead, it exhibits several issues:

• Jerkiness: The zooming motion feels disjointed and unstable.
• Large Steps: Zooming occurs in large increments rather than smooth, gradual adjustments.
• Inconsistency: The zoom level increments differ between zooming in and out.

Same zoom issues in the Whiteboard view using ctrl+mouse wheel
This same problematic behavior occurs within the Whiteboard view, causing me frustration when panning and zooming – frequent actions when working on whiteboards.

Zooming using keyboard + mouse is a habit for me
As ctrl + mouse wheel zooming is deeply ingrained in my workflow (similar to right-click for context menus or shift + mouse wheel for horizontal scrolling), it’s unlikely I’ll change this habit. When using this combo, I don’t have to focus on how to navigate zoom levels, it just “works”.

Zoom using ctrl+mouse wheel in Whiteboard has been an issue for years in Windows
I’ve had this zoom issue for years with the Whiteboard in Fibery, so it’s nothing new.

I’ve previously found Timeline a bit too awkward to work with to be very useful, but with the Timeline updates you are doing now across the board, I can see that changing.

But for me to like the Timeline and Whiteboard views, I’d really love if my issue with zooming using the classic keyboard-mouse zoom combo could be addressed.

Here’s a thought: Could there be a discrepancy between Windows and MacOS behavior?

Perhaps the development team primarily uses MacOS and hasn’t encountered this issue themselves? (This speculation stems from the assumption that many web developers tend to use MacOS.)

[mdubakov]

@JoelH

Perhaps the development team primarily uses MacOS and hasn’t encountered this issue themselves? (This speculation stems from the assumption that many web developers tend to use MacOS.)

Indeed it is maybe the case, since I can’t reproduce this on Mac, it works OK on Mac now.

[JoelH]

Makes sense. Do you need anything more from me to make it easier for you to address this?

[mdubakov]

@JoelH

Do you need anything more from me to make it easier for you to address this?

No, we will check it on our side now. We are good.

[YvetteLans]

Would it be possible to add ‘database’ as a filter to lanes?

Currently we need to add a field (single select, relation etc.) to show the different database per lane but would be awesome if that can be a native functionality like ‘Created by’ is.