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
Initial share should show the way the sharer has set things up. This can really help present the information the way needed.
From the moment the sharee accepts, the states should be uncoupled.
Why not from the moment the sharer shares? That way the sharer has more control over the collapsed states.
Yeah, good point. In any case we need to default, expanded or collapse, lol.
Or we could have an option to âupdate collapsed statesâ, but my fear is that it would confuse some users.
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.
@Erica, maybe something along those lines?
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!
I really want to share to people with âInitial Collapsedâ state, cause I want to share a very large one, just like this: https://dynalist.io/d/GcSvL_R4bB97MLi4SAwhYrgY
I suggest you make the cognitive burden on Sharer, one solution might be URL string like: collapsed=Y
https://dynalist.io/d/GcSvL_R4bB97MLi4SAwhYrgY?collapsed=Y
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
Definitely, weâll consider it.
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
I have started a new discussion, thanks for your suggestion.
simple
as a presenter,
- they should by default see it as i see it (then i know how it looks to them)
as a user,
- there should be basic options to change how itâs viewed, cos presenter can make bad decisions
Hi @Erica
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
Thank you so much
Edit:
here you can find a workaround
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.
Update: you can now choose between fully expanded vs fully collapsed by changing the sharing options: 2020 May update (Public sharing improvements)
Admittedly you still canât fully customize the collapsed state (e.g. to make them see what you see), but I hope this update is useful!
Hi @Erica, as I mentioned in the update thread, this just isnât working as itâs supposed to. My publicly shared lists still appear as fully expanded every time, even after I check the âShare as collapsedâ option and even though the #collapse instruction is included in the public link. Color theme switching via the public link does work, but collapse/expand all does not work.
Thank you for any help.
Hello @Erica
Thank you for this improvement and for working on this!
A few notes:
- The âCopy linkâ button doesnât work on my side (Firefox)
- The URL parameters disappear on page load (I believe thatâs intentional and they simply act as a shortcut). This can be an issue if the users save that URL for future visits, in which case they will land on the all-expanded document. It will do the trick in embedded views though!
- Looking forward to the same feature in the desktop app