Colophon Cards Project
Baldur Bjarnason
Concepts
Search and create are the same UI
From Notational Velocity’s website:
The same area is used both for creating notes and searching. I.e., in the process of entering the title for a new note, related notes appear below, letting users file information there if they choose. Likewise, if a search reveals nothing, one need simply press return to create a note with the appropriate title.
If a note’s title starts with the search term(s), that title will be “auto-completed”. This selects the note and consequently displays it. Correspondingly, selecting a note places its title in the search area (De-selecting the note restores the search terms).
To create a new note, just type its title and press return. Edit the note as needed in the bottom pane.
To view or edit an existing note, type one or more words contained in its body or title. Reveal a note’s content by using the up/down arrow keys to select it.
Modality
More on modality: getting rid of modes does more to make a UI feel fast than most of the performance work engineers love to throw at problems like these. The “find item -> click edit on item -> edit -> save item” cycle is always going to feel slow, no matter how many optimisations through throw at it. If you figure out a way to make it “find item -> edit item” (no ‘edit mode’) then the UI will feel fast no matter how unoptimised the implementation is.
Card thoughts
https://www.colophon.cards/notes/whither-cards/#
Autosave vital
He believes autosave is vital (and based on our processfactory work I think so too.)