General feedback on revised layout

[grester]

I haven't spend much time yet but TL;DR my first impression is that while the objective was to declutter, my end perception is that I ended up with less screen space for note editing. I like the vision and direction, but the execution was a shot in the foot.

• Right now I feel there's too many navigation options occupying screen space. I have tabs on top (which although cool in reality I never use,) maybe I could disable those without breaking the whole UI. The new breadcrumbs at the bottom, with all those extra options/attributes bundle into it is disorientating as we're used to reach for the top to access them. It is true that those options generally are meant to be rarely used or done once and forget, but mixing the navigation breadcrumbs which is a cool feature, with note options seems to be mixing two different contexts. I personally prefer and feel is more traditional with other softwares for breadcrumbs to be on top, irregardless of the declutering of attributes, that alone should have been reason enough for it to stick to the top. In my specific taste, I'd wish it could be possible for the breadcrumbs to be where the tabs are for example, which like I mentioned, would become rather confusing seeing note related controls, outside of the note frame.
• Someone else already mentioned the title spacing is too high, and I totally agree, nothing annoys me more than blank wasted space. I understand it is meant to create spacing between title and the rest, but not like this. Specially the top margin is absolutely unnecessary. The title is not even aligned with split button and the 3 dots anymore. Aesthetically confusing.
• Badges are either new or simply had a revamp, I'm not sure but I like them, and I wish, or perhaps that already is something one can do and I'm not aware, add custom tags to notes so that I could easily find certain notes in search that contain that tag.
• Highlights used to be hidden by default if there were no highlights, I don't mind they always be there, but if there are none, then by default it should be collapsed, not ocuppying space for table of contents. Same in oposite scenario (which I don't have but other people might), TOC be collapsed if empty, to give more space for highlights in case user gives more use to highlights instead. Bottomline is, if there's none, it should be collapsed by default. Or like before with a new note, the side panel simply wouldn't exist if there were no highlights or headings, which right now is always present, another screen space wasting change.
• I like the new quick change suggestion when creating a new text note, that's handy.
• Personally in mobile the new title change also made it near impossible to click and open the notes panel (attached screenshot), it keeps entering title renaming mode.
• On mobile the backlink button is still also visible on the top corner as before, not sure if forgotten, unexpected or To Do. (attached screenshot).

Overall I admit that I'm a screen space freak, and get very annoyed by too many buttons that I don't use, and that's why I was enthusiastic about the declutter philosphy, however the introduction of new controls while trying to decluttert, seem to have created a conflicting result that helps neither cause.
I'll be reverting to the old layout for now, until the new one get fleshed out. Keep up the greak work, Trillium is still my favorite notes app!

[eliandoran]

I ended up with less screen space for note editing

Can you clarify this aspect? In the old layout the title + ribbon bar (collapsed) takes up 86px (50+36). With the new layout, the ribbon is gone and this leaves the total with the status bar to 73px. This excludes: open ribbon, promoted attributes that can now be collapsed, the read-only bar.

all those extra options/attributes bundle into it is disorientating as we're used to reach for the top to access them

Indeed, it can be a bit strange to have to do something at the bottom when we were used to it being at the top. However, I expect this to be only a temporary inconvenience as we get adapted to it. A lot of the "important" ribbon tabs already remained at the top (in the note actions, as dedicated buttons near the note actions) or as badges. Apart from the breadcrumb and attributes (which can be turned into promoted attributes if needed), the status bar should not see frequent use.

Of note is that the breadcrumb is "secondary" navigation, the tree remains the main navigation method. If we move the breadcrumb at the top we would lose 30px of height, unless we also move the status bar (which would move lower priority actions to the top).

We're not the only ones to have a breadcrumb at the bottom, see https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/new-ui.html#navigation_bar. And yes, I saw that its position can be changed in IntelliJ. There is a cost to maintain all these different options, the old/new layout and horizontal/vertical layout is already quite challenging.

Someone else already mentioned the title spacing is too high, and I totally agree, nothing annoys me more than blank wasted space. I understand it is meant to create spacing between title and the rest, but not like this. Specially the top margin is absolutely unnecessary. The title is not even aligned with split button and the 3 dots anymore. Aesthetically confusing.

The top margin is technically necessary because
we need to be able to hide the title without shifting the layout. There are 12px that you can remove if you wish, using custom CSS.

The big title creates a smooth transition between itself, auxiliary stuff (collection properties, promoted attributes, edited notes) and the content . Without it the elements would appear out of order.

Since the title collapses as soon as you scroll ~75px that space isn't necessary "wasted".

Here's how the spacing looks like in Notion, for Trilium we were slightly more conservative.

Highlights used to be hidden by default if there were no highlights, I don't mind they always be there, but if there are none, then by default it should be collapsed, not ocuppying space for table of contents

Yes, that's a sound suggestion.

Or like before with a new note, the side panel simply wouldn't exist if there were no highlights or headings, which right now is always present, another screen space wasting change.

That's not going to happen. The previous design causing terrible layout shift. If you used splits and jumped between the two active nodes, the notes would shrink and then expand based on whether the sidebar was visible. Now the side bar requires manual activation (same as Obsidian, for example). With time we'll add more functions to the sidebar to make it more useful, until then it's easy to dismiss it when not needed (via the button at the top or via the keyboard shortcut).

Regarding mobile, thanks for the suggestions. The new layout intended only to touch the desktop layout for now, so anything different in mobile is actually a bug. We'll look into them.

[XavierFigari]

all those extra options/attributes bundle into it is disorientating as we're used to reach for the top to access them

Indeed, it can be a bit strange to have to do something at the bottom when we were used to it being at the top. However, I expect this to be only a temporary inconvenience as we get adapted to it. A lot of the "important" ribbon tabs already remained at the top (in the note actions, as dedicated buttons near the note actions) or as badges. Apart from the breadcrumb and attributes (which can be turned into promoted attributes if needed), the status bar should not see frequent use.

I agree with @grester on this one : I mentioned this in my previous post already :

This is not only "strange" to have the breadcrumb at the bottom, this is also annoying / useless when you are using (like me) intelli-hide feature of your task bar, when the latter is at the bottom of your screen. My Gnome dash-to-panel task bar hides the breadcrumb/status bar of Trilium if I go too close to the bottom of my screen with the mouse, so the use of the breadcrumb is cumbersome (you need to move your mouse very slowly, not to hide the status bar).
I understand that for users having a big screen, or a fixed OS taskbar that doesn't hide the Trilium breadcrumb, it can be a matter of "getting adapted to it" and a temporary inconvenience. Not for me. I'll keep using the left pane tree for navigation, or I'll try to adjust my taskbar auto-hiding settings.

One other main reason to have the breadcrumb/status bar at the top would be to have all controls at the top :

I understand that if you move the whole (breadcrumb + status bar) to the top it also moves lower priority actions to the top, but I would not mind. I'd prefer all actions to be at the top. Less mouse movement, no interference with your OS taskbar, more intuitive for breadcrumb navigation, closer to all other controls (tab selection, menus, split, etc.).

This is just my humble opinion 🙂

[ronsonntag54]

Love the new layout! Thank You.

Minor issue: Odd behavior (?), when adding bullets, numbers, or check boxes, if you do not add a space after the list item, the next line goes back to default paragraph. Seems if you specifically selected a type of list, you should be able to hit CR and it should continue creating that list type. Not a big deal at all, just throws me off.