Visually Linking Cards#55

Scrintal’s visuality is tempting to draw links between cards instead of creating bidirectional links within the text content of the card. There could be several ways of achieving this, such as:

• The drawn link is just visual and local (temporary) to the board
• Drawing a link actually creates a bidirectional link within the card’s text content (maybe at the bottom?)
• Drawing a link creates a persistent link between two cards, however, this link is treated differently than the actual bidirectional links

What are your thoughts on this topic?

I actually think one thing is even more ‘close-by’ / obvious: pull cards onto each other to create link (if not already included, I would enter this as seperate FR, as I understand some people are really into the purely graphic ‘arrow-lines’ )

The gesture that is used to visually link cards may be drawing arrows, drag-n-drop cards on top of each other, or some other way. However, it’s important to discuss what is the end result and the meaning of the link created at the end. Is it a local/temporaray link? Is it a regular link added at the end of the card? Or is it a new type of persistent link?

yes, agreed. That is why I make the drag´n´drop a seperate request, as I am interested in a – more easy at hand – gesture that creates persistent links (as the ones one can currently create between cards via ‘+’)

Related to #62

I agree that creating visual links is good idea especially when ‘sketching’ an initial board/card structure.

Out of the 3 options provided my preferred would be option 3 .. treat differently so that it is clear they are ‘visual links’ and probably need to be re-assessed later.

I would suggest also that visual representation of these links is different to normal links (perhaps dotted/ different colour)

What I particularly like would be to:

1. Select a group of cards
2. Drag and drop the selection on top of “card A”
3. Get links to all cards in the selection appearing in the content of card A as a list

EDIT: Just saw #62 is about that

@Furkan Bayraktar I agree the second solution: Drawing a link actually creates a bidirectional link within the card’s text content (maybe at the bottom?)

I also thought the tag and link need a special to display additional items, which they are not included in card contents.

I have an additional thought on this … my assumption has also been that additional links (and tags) would appear at the bottom of a card. This is fine when card is short (which should normally be the case) but .. if the card is longer then scrolling down and back again will be needed when deciding where /when a link applies (like in many other apps) .. which can be a pain.
How about some form of card side bar to show links (does not nec actually need to be on card just screen visible.. it could be in the board sidebar in a dynamic area) so that I can scroll through card content editing/updating and considering all ‘visual’ links as I go deciding where and how to incorporate them, with some quick-mechanism to move the link off the sidebar and into the text
Overriding principle should still be to keep screen clear/clean as possible

This action is demonstrated on the scrintal.com homepage within 4 seconds of loading via the GIF at the top; new users will likely expect this as possible (I did!) and be dissapointed when they cannot. Agreed with what’s been said already re: the most intuitive default for what’s done on the linking data side.

I am looking forward to the execution of this - as this feels like the most intuitive way - dragging cards around my desk and then having to touch the keyboard to search for the already existing card next to it to link them is probably the most workflow breaking “feature” for me at this moment.

Visually linking cards would improve the workflow of structuring and connecting content significantly. Here are some thoughts on the link type:

• Scrintal has currently references between text blocks on a global level, which are bidirectional
• Creating a link between cards by a “visual gesture” would add a new link type: A card link. It would link the whole content of one card (all blocks, contained in a card) with all content of a second card.
• A card link might be bi-directional or mono-directional depending on the visual gesture (eg. selecting a specific arrow type for creating the visual link)
• A card link might also be created by adding curly brackets with a card name at the beginning of a card.
• A card link might continue connecting cards as long as the link has not been actively removed
• Hence a card link would connect even cards if one card has been removed from the board. In this case a small indicator in the upper right corner may indicate an outgoing, incoming or bidirectional card link.
• Linked cards might appear within the card in a bottom section.
• Most important feature would be a visual arrow connecting the cards within a board, indicating a direction as well.
• Power feature: Select a card and have scrintal create a board with all cards that are connected to this card.
• The current feature of “connecting” cards in a table may then just be a specific sub-type of a card link.

As I cannot exclude exporting my data to import them into another tool in the future, even these new links must be applied to the markdown export at the lastest before exporting - as I would really not like the need to relink everything.

@Janodvorak Good that you brought up the Markdown export. Visual links are now appended at the end of the card content.