This post raised a controversy over how should a visitor see your publicly shared documents: collapsed or expanded?
You can see the argument for both sides in that post. Alternative solutions were also suggested. Namely, use the collapsed state at the moment of sharing, or give owner the option to share it as collapsed or expanded (what should be the default is also a debate).
What do you think?
They should see everything as collapsed
They should see everything as expanded
They should see everything like how I see it when I shared it (regarding collapsed state)
I should be able to choose between collapsed and expanded (default is collapsed)
I should be able to choose between collapsed and expanded (default is expanded)
For my purposes, any option other than âeverything as expandedâ is okay. At the very least, I just want the option of sharing documents collapsed. I also know others want the option of sharing documents expanded. So I would say avoid the options âeverything as expandedâ and âeverything as collapsed.â
Hi @Erica, thanks for taking this into consideration!
Iâm with @David_Rhoades: âeverything as expandedâ and âeverything as collapsedâ should be avoided since both use cases exist as seen in previous post (although workarounds exist for both too).
So if youâre planning a change, I would suggest either giving a choice to âcollapse allâ / âexpand allâ when sharing or give a âcurrent snapshot of collapsed stateâ, which offers the best granularity for everyone (meaning you can still collapse all, expand all, or do something in between if you feel like so).
However, the latter make me wonder how future added items will be displayed after the initial sharing? eg in the case of a first-rank item with sub-items: will they be collapsed? Expanded?
Thanks again
I think we mean the same thing. See how WorkFlowy does it: you prepare how you want the outline to appear when you share it â once shared, you and the person you share with both can do their own thing without it influencing what one or the other sees.
Minor wording differences, I see. Technically thereâs a time gap between when the owner shares the document and when the collaborator accepts the invite, so things could change during that time. For now we can assume itâs when the owner shares it.
Regarding the option to âupdate collapsed statesâ, does that mean we would âpushâ updates to the shared view? If so, what would happen in the mean time with the items we will add:
Do they still appear (either collapsed or expanded)?
Do they not appear until we push the update?
In which case we could add a third option in the above image: âExpandedâ or âCollapsedâ or âWhen I push updatesâ (and have somewhere a button or menu option to push these)
Also, what would happen to what is already shared: would it update too with its possibly new current collapsed state? lol
Dynalist is still a beautifully minimal-looking software and this might add too much complexity for the benefice (meaning that in the (rare?) case that you make changes to your (yet tailored-shared) document that are too important to be automatically all collapsed or expanded, you could still reshare the whole document).
I believe the ability to âshare the document as it looks at the moment of sharingâ covers most use cases: the ones who want it all collapsed (yay), the ones who want it all expanded, and those in-between. This would already be quite an improvement on the current functionnality!
Only push updates regarding collapsed states. Content will always be synced to the viewer, just not in the same collapsed state until you re-sync. I hope that makes it clearer.
Yeah, very much agreed. So adding the text in cyan would be confusing to people who donât concern themselves with this issue.
Weâll think about this and see how we can only make this option available without confusing people. Thanks for taking the time to make the mock-up and write the reply!
If this âcollapsed state specificationâ can fix the problem, I donât mind typing the URL string by myself, but I guess you wonât let me type it, either
Do you mind opening a separate feature post for it? Since this poll post is about changing the default behavior, which is kinda different from what you want.
Iâm curious to see how many people are interested
thank you so much for getting clarification on this topic.
Do you have an update for us what the current state is?
Just wanted to share first time a big manual and, like pimgeek showed in his example, itâs overwhelming to have every point expanded for the viewer who might just be interested in a small part or want to get a broad overview.
For the time being, is there a workaround I can make the state collapsed as default?
Everything else except expanded would be fine for me
I would welcome if we could set this on a per-share basis. Right now, everything is being shared as fully expanded, which can be confusing for long lists.
The current system of fully expanded is VERY confusing for people unfamiliar with Dynalist and who have no idea there is a âCollapse Allâ option to make things more manageableâŚ
Sharing as fully expanded seems like the worst possible optionâŚ
It used to be fully collapsed when Dynalist started out, and many people told us itâs the worst possible option because people unfamiliar with Dynalist will not know how to expand the bullets, thus thinking only the top level items exist.
It looks like we canât satisfy everyone, so giving the owner of the document the option is what weâre going to do next.
Yes, Erica, that would be fine, but it should be configurable on a per-document basis. I think you mentioned earlier there are basically three options:
everything expanded (current state â not good for long documents)
everything collapsed (good for some documents, but not all)
whatever state (possibly mixed state!) the document owner determined
I think that under 3, there can be further options A, B, C, so it needs to be more finely tuned than that. For example, in some documents I share, I wish to show some items expanded, but other items collapsed. There can be deeper levels in the document, too â I may wish to expand some levels of some items, and keep others collapsed. So, please make option no. 3 more nuanced, so that it isnât âone or the otherâ for all Dynalist documents or, indeed, for all items within a single document. Thank you.
and this might add too much complexity for the benefice (meaning that in the (rare?) case that you make changes to your (yet tailored-shared) document that are too important to be automatically all collapsed or expanded, you could still reshare the whole document).
