Jay The current “calendar filter” has always been fully intuitive and clear to me, which is likely why I keep wishing I had a “document filter” that literally looks exactly like the calendar one. For me at least, this is the most natural approach. I get how Panes are zoomed to documents but having that be the same “zoom” as a “regular” outline zoom while simultaneously being done from the Overview drawer rather than the outline…has never been a very smooth feeling to me. I’m not complaining – it works great – I’m just saying I would prefer to move away from, not toward, that UX.
However I do take your point about these both being “data source” type controls, and thus they really don’t belong with the star, complete, etc. filters either. For me, these settings are part of the initial Pane creation but don’t get toggled or adjusted as part of my regular workflow or even as a side-task. I consider them as “Pane Configuration” options rather than “Toolbar filters”.
As usual, now I’m going to take what should be a simple reply and spin it out to craziness…but I’m always thinking of the long game and future accessibility of Legend to new users.
I’d like to see both document and calendar display handed as “filters” – but these controls should be part of how the Pane is fundamentally set up, not the Pane Toolbar where frequently-changed filters and settings go. I might call them “pre-filters”. To that end, the current “Change View” dialog could be developed into a “Pane Configuration” dialog by moving-into it settings like these that are more fundamental to the Pane and don’t need frequent adjustment. This might include others like the “match all projects everywhere” button (and a future “children inherit parent’s properties” button😉). I think this would improve Legend in general for the following reasons:
- The “filters” paradigm is already a jump for some users, as these don’t appear in most productivity software. Filters are not naturally intuitive to all, and some need to get familiar. After doing that hard work, it’s ideal to leverage it wherever possible.
- Similarly, the “data source” concept is an additional layer that users need to grapple with when coming to Legend. It’s currently relatively intuitive as a “zoom” but if you roll calendars in along with it, that wrecks the zoom analogy. Handling doc/calendar sourcing via the established “filter” paradigm would make the whole app easier to learn and more internally consistent.
- Doing away with the “data source” functionality lets the Overview Drawer really be an Overview Drawer of that Pane – not the user’s whole account. Its contents can just reflect the sources that specific Pane is filtered to show, which frankly makes a LOT of sense to me. It’s ridiculous to have my full document list available in the sidebar of every single Pane on my Board, when the whole point of that Board is to focus my attention on a narrow subject.
- As a follow up to that, access to the user’s full compliment of documents can be handled via a “document manager” accessed from Settings (an idea I like, and would give a nice place to control sharing, plus ‘connect’ docs with sync-to calendars). Either that, or have a “Document Manager” button that opens a pop-up Pane (I seem to think they are the solution to nearly everything) which is filtered to all docs and calendars. The overview drawer on that popup would then be just as they all are today.
