I think the easiest path right now in making it more usable is by making the detachable panel work across Bear windows, so when you switch between multiple open notes it always reflects the one that’s active.
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But what if you open and detach a second info panel from another window? Should both panels show the same? If not then the first panel would have to change its behavior before opening the second one. If yes then that behavior would be absolutely senseless with the consequence that standalone windows better should not have info panels anymore.
Obviously, there can only be one “info panel”. So you can’t open more than one, just like you can’t open more than main Bear window. It would follow the same logic.
You have to think from the perspective of the user who has not begun with the logic and ended up with a concept which is then for obvious reasons easy to understand. The consequence would be that you end up with changes that could be confusing. For example: Why in one case i can open a info panel in a standalone window and why not in another case? And why it’s not possible anymore to show two standalone windows with its own info panel. That would be indeed the consequence: On one side you have an improvement but on the other side for the price of worsening other points. In my eyes that’s an ugly solution although i really understand the need for a solution.
I hardly see that the changes I’m proposing are less confusing than what’s already the case. Besides you have to think from the perspective of innovation through iteration too. With your train of thought you’d never be able to make any changes, as users would already have familiarised themselves with how things are presently. I understand you don’t like the idea, but that doesn’t make it a bad one.
…because it acts like any “core” (pop-up) window - where only one instance exists. Similar to if you open settings for any app in macOS. You can’t open multiple settings windows for an app. Just like you also can’t have multiple primary Bear windows - only one.
…You can still have as many windows open as you like, but only one popped out info panel. You might see it as a “worsening”, I see it as a much needed improvement. With a popped out Info Panel, I only need to pop out one and it reflects whatever note (window) I have active. It’s cleaner, it’s faster, more convenient, and thus makes more of the backlinks and ToC functionality come to light.
Already there exist plenty of concepts in Bear that are not clear. For instance,
- There’s no clear UX/UI to telegraph what popped out Info Panel is connected to which Bear window.
- Once you put main Bear window in “Show Editor Only” view and have multiple other Bear windows open, it is no longer clear which is the primary Bear Window. You can in vain attempt to invoke commands that no longer work, because they only work in the primary Bear window.
…so I don’t see these issues as a reason for us not to improve.
How I see it, we’re looking for a good solution to get the most out of the functionality (specifically backlinks/ToC) that’s already there, without having to wait years for a “perfect” solution to be concocted by the Bear team.
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Yes, for you. But not for others. There is no good logic that could explain me in case of two standalone windows why I can open in both a pop up and detach it and at the same time both panels display the content of the same one focused window. Don’t get me wrong, I know what you are after and that the current solution with several detached info panels is far from ideal. But what you propose is neither ideal for the mentioned reasons. Actually I have to admit that compared to each other your proposal is better than the current implementation. I indeed see just one perfect way and that’s placement of the info panel inside the editor as a fourth column as optional alternative to undetached info panel pop up.
How could an implementation inside the UI could look like? Once a info panel is detached then the popup and its detaching is disabled in the main window and the standalone ones?
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A key feature that I was looking forward to in Bear 2.0 was backlinks. Having them hidden behind the info button has made it so I don’t even use them, which is unfortunate. I think I need backlinks to be “push” information rather than “pull information.”
I completely understand the predicament… both a 4th panel and at the bottom of a note are suboptimal.
Would it be sacrilege to have an option to split the tags column in half and put the info column under the tags?
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The 4th column looks amazing, any news about this?
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The collapsible setup for backlinks and unlinked mentions looks handy. I’ve actually been using something like this on my WordPress site to link related content automatically, and it’s helped a lot with organizing stuff and making sure everything shows up on search engines.
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Hello, would be super keen to have the fourth info column. I completely agree to keep only on devices where the device width allows as those are also the places where most of deep note management and PKM work happens.
I find the current pop over info window to be too cumbersome and suffering with out of sight, out of mind syndrome where I know it’s there but because I don’t see it I assume Bear doesn’t have this feature even though the devs probably spent considerable effort to make it work.
Any updates on when we can expect this to be implemented?
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