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active filter indicator

Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2014 9:38 am
by gunars
I've mentioned this in passing elsewhere, but I just wanted to emphasize this as a separate issue.

If I pop up a CN window and see a number of notes displayed, I'd like to easily tell whether this is a full, unfiltered set of notes or if it's a filtered set that I still want to look at before moving on. So, how do I tell? I look at the tag bar to see if 'All' is selected, I look at the search box to make sure it's empty, I check the item count next to the All on the left against the note count way over to the right of the search box to see if they match.

I'd prefer something much simpler. For example, display a red 'F' next to the magnifying glass in the search box if there is an active filter. Clicking on it could be used to clear the filter.

Gunars

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2014 11:21 am
by CintaNotes Developer
Gunars, thanks for the suggestion!
Sometime ago I had an idea to introduce a "filter bar" which would appear just above notes if any filter is active, and where you could clear all filters via pressing on an "X".
Would that solve this problem I wonder?

Currently UserEcho seems to be down, but this idea is there named something like "Tag selection bar". Quite easily it can be generalized not only to tags.

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2014 11:25 am
by Thomas Lohrum
CintaNotes Developer wrote:Currently UserEcho seems to be down, but this idea is there named something like "Tag selection bar". Quite easily it can be generalized not only to tags.

I can access the roadmap. No problem. The suggestion sounds interesting for it would be easy to detect, whether a filter is applied or not.

Thomas

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2014 5:59 pm
by gunars
CintaNotes Developer wrote:Sometime ago I had an idea to introduce a "filter bar" which would appear just above notes if any filter is active, and where you could clear all filters via pressing on an "X".
Would that solve this problem I wonder?

Here's the roadmap item: http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/420 ... ction-bar/

This is more than I had in mind and perhaps starts to look a bit cluttered with tags also appearing across the top of each note. I'm just looking for a quick indicator that a filter is active so I don't need to look in multiple places. If I know the results are filtered, I can then look at the tag list and search box. Hitting ESC is just fine to clear an existing filter and I actually prefer it to clicking somewhere, although toggling the indicator would also be a good way to clear the filter.

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:56 am
by CintaNotes Developer
This indicator can be as slim as just one line, but will be impossible to miss.
Also it can have a "save as predefined search" button for example.

The magnifying glass indicator would only work for the text filter.
For the tag filter it can't be used because it violates the locality principle.
But for text filter, you already have an indicator - the "X" that appears in the
search box.

Also if you give a good look, the UI background color now changes a bit when a filter is
active. Probably all we need to do is make the distinction clearer.

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 2:01 pm
by Thomas Lohrum
CintaNotes Developer wrote:Also if you give a good look, the UI background color now changes a bit when a filter is active. Probably all we need to do is make the distinction clearer.

Alex,

i was not aware of this. Probably because the "UI" is limited to the area around the search box, which is very limited in terms of size. Nice, but it does not help, because it is not obvious.

Thomas

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 5:21 pm
by gunars
Yes, the UI color differences are very minimal as it is. To remember whether the surround for the search box is slightly darker for a particular color theme is not very obvious. But, to change the whole thing to a contrasting color like red would be perhaps too much.

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 5:27 pm
by Thomas Lohrum
gunars wrote:Yes, the UI color differences are very minimal as it is. To remember whether the surround for the search box is slightly darker for a particular color theme is not very obvious. But, to change the whole thing to a contrasting color like red would be perhaps too much.

Well spoken. Maybe the background color of the search box could be changed, when a filter is active. But that doesn't fit, when a tag filter is active. Another change could be to move the number of rows to the left of the search box, rather than to the right.

Thomas

Re: active filter indicator

Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2014 3:34 pm
by CintaNotes Developer
I think the best time to tackle this would be already when preparing the new UI.
I don't want to invest too much time into design changes that will be superseded anyway..
But for sure I'll take into account everything what we've discussed here.
Thanks a lot for your input!