Explain the problem as you see it
It is difficult to indent a node, under another collapsed node, without expanding the collapsed node..
(especially when the destination node has, may-nodes nested under it, and expanding it takes up full screen, just inconvenient)
Why is this a problem for you?
been, restructuring my workflowy imports, which needs, multiple nodes to be moved, under multiple different nodes.. I use panels, which makes it a-lot easier, but the drag and drop feature being limited, makes it inconvenient,, for now, I've been setting move-to targets, which is time consuming
attached screen-record shows- problem facing and the solution..
Suggest a solution
workflowy type - drag-drop nodes
12 Comments
This is something I miss from Roam Research. I could drag a node beneath another one, and if I held it there for an extra half-second, the node would expand and I could drop it as a child node. I'm hoping this will eventually come to Tana.
Thanks, nice idea, one for future. Tab to indent currently works when parent is collapsed, but we can be more mouse friendly here.
I realize that Tana is trying to move us away from hierarchy. But many of us are moving over from hierarchical tools like Workflowy etc. This seems like a relatively straightfoward (maybe) tweak to the UI, but it would really REALLY help speed up a minor annoyance but a persistent one. E.g. it doesn't seem like much friction. But now imagine you are moving and indenting etc 1000's of node - the small grit in the shoe quickly becomes painful.
I'd also really like to see this feature as well! Right now the UI has a lot of unnecessary friction when structuring thinking, brainstorms and such. I work in game development, and our industry relies a lot on hierarchical structures for designs and work backlogs.
Pinned nodes should support this as well. Sometimes I want to just quickly drop a node underneath a pinned node, like my work backlog or my scratchpad of raw uncategorized notes.
I realize that Tana is "more powerful" because you can tag anywhere, and smart nodes collate the results. But what that leads to is stuff all over the place and working with search nodes all the time. I still haven't got comfortable with that - I want to see a list and add to a list. Manipulating the mirror list isn't quite the same and sometimes goes wrong "you can't move this item under a search node" for example. I see lots of places where people ask "I want a fresh sheet and to start over" - I've never seen this request in any other tool. I'm convinced the reason is that people don't come at this with hierarchy in mind, and then just create a total dogs breakfast of a mess where they now have to remember tags and all that jazz. Yes I want supertags and to have interrelations. But the move to almost dismiss hierarchy is not human friendly or how writers / creators work. We want a list and to be able to sort it. I have a button that moves tags to their homes - and its been pretty well mocked over on the slack channel, but honestly I think it should be a core feature - ie "when I tag this, I'd like to move it to this part of my outline so I can manipulate it more easily". I'm glad I came from WorkFlowy which reveres the hierarchy. The linking is more powerful. But linking with no sense of hierarchy or organizing principle leads to chaos - and I fear thats where folks who don't have an outliner background are slowly heading - hence the "reset" questions.
So much this. And hearing that your concerns and solutions are mocked is disheartening. People have different needs and preferences. Tana markets itself as flexible and wanting to fit your workflow but if there is such a strongly opinionated design hidden underneath and ambassadors mocking or discouraging people's personal workflows and preferences is a bit alarming. My brain works exactly the same way as you describe and hearing this makes me feel a bit uncomfortable about going all in on Tana.
I may have overstated. The community is very very supportive. So much so that this person showed me how to construct the code I wanted, all while saying "you're missing the point of Tana". He may be somewhat right. But the Tananaughts who are super dedicated are taking something that could be quite beautifully simple and making it wildly (in my eyes) complicated. I've moved all my WF over to Tana. It hasn't been easy. And some things still drive me bonkers (like the mobile app speed, and when you click on an internet link it often takes you to a tana link and not the www. version). My hesitation is that I (who don't typically shy away from complexity) got so twisted up trying to make this work, I wonder how "normal" people with average skills and patience are going to make it work? And the customization is so great, but so tricky - the support I've got has been amazing and essential, but how is that going to scale? So if they can't scale then what is the viability - and the export of the data OUT of Tana is not really supported. WF went another way. Skeleton crew, minor changes, reliance on a host of outside resources (PowerPack, web input etc), so reliable but just frustrating to deal with. I'd be interested in the over/under of who lasts longer. WF might be around until the sun goes dark - but with the functionality it has. Tana is going to go bananas, but it also might have difficulty extending its reach beyond its core, and so may not be able to keep its large team going. Its kinda nailbiting. I'm hoping Tana starts thinking of itself as almost an OS and then people build wrappers over that. Its starting to happen with templates. I drive WF like my car. With care, but not too much. Not much bad can happen. I drive Tana like my bike. With extreme caution and looking both ways at all times - it can do weird things from time to time that are hard to understand or rectify without skill. Once you have the skill its a delight. And having a responsive professional team with a vision that makes sense is lovely compared to the WF backwaters. But its not without its challenges. Good luck friend!
Thank you for the clarification! I can very much relate to the way you described Workflowy, haha!
Work with the patterns the mind has learned
When I drag my files onto a folder in Finder on my Mac, they drop in. Same in Apple Notes, or any other software ever.
Why Should Tana be different?
SUGGESTION: add to shorcuts
Shortcut Mac. PC
Drop inside collapsed node Cmd + [drag & drop] Ctrl + [drag & drop]
Yes, a million times this. Let me take something dumb. I can write in almost any app, dot com to the end of the word, in a sentence, and its recognized as a link. Even in something as dumb as Slack or telegram. But not Tana. Can I fix it - sure, I can paste in a link and not type it. I can do a CTRL+K and then pick "turn URLS into URLS" and it will recognize something, but only if has https:// in front of it. So does it work? Technically - but its baffling as to why something as straightforward as this that works in almost every other app needs all this extra friction in Tana. Followed by the team saying "why are newbies struggling to onboard". Lol. Is it a huge hassle? not really. Am I always typing in URLS? Not often. But its happened enough and been baffling enough that I've had to go on a whole search to do a simple thing. And its just a bunch of little things like this that keep adding up, and I approach Tana like a matador might approach a bull, rather than like I might approach a big hot cup of coffee ie with anticipatory delight. Then the mobile challenges add yet more frustration. I realize the "tag anywhere and use search nodes to find" is cool, but it is not hierarchy, and often hierarchy is helpful (that's why we're all (or most) outliner nerds), so to your point - having it work differently to how literally everything else does is just another little pebble in the shoe.
"Followed by the team saying "why are newbies struggling to onboard""
Yes I would not mind learning the ins and outs of the complexity and there are many great YouTubers like Ev who make brilliant content. But what's slowly pushing me away from tana is not setting up the structure but the "death by a thousand paper cuts" the user interface has.
There are so so many little frustrating things that make it just a chore to use normally.
I want to organize a brainstorming session into a nice hierarchy. No problem in workflowy or todoist. I can just use the mouse to nest nodes under each other. Tana, for some reason, wants you to open the node, drag it underneath, and then close it back up.
Why can I use "move with finder" but not a normal drag and drop?
I have pinned notes which are great! I can have my most accessed projects at my finger tips. Sweet and if I pin it they work as a capture target on mobile.
But why can't I be in my day node and drag/drop captured ideas over to the pinned node and have it work as a drop target. No I can only pin it by dragging over.
I was so confused by this that I had filed it as a bug twice by accident.
Moving your content around and organizing it is such a chore that I'm ready to drop tana for something else... And it SUCKS because the idea behind it is brilliant and exactly what I had always wanted. The weird UX design decisions is ultimately what stops tana from adopting, not the super tags.
Another small thing that gets me is Ctrl shift up and down moves a node up and down in the hierarchy. Other outliners let you use left and right to indent and indent, feels intuitive like navigating around. But in Tana you have to use tab and shift tab.
I've no idea if the Tana team are this deep in the comments - my guess is not. Could you post this to some general discussion thread in Slack and get some visibility on it? You are spot on! Their path to a billion dollar valuation lies not in yet more complexity, but in "simple" usability improvements.
Here's my concern. I spent over a decade in Workflowy. I finally gave up as I had all these ridiculous workarounds to get data into the system. Fortunately they had this keen talented user base who knitted these kludgy solutions. But none of it was really maintained. That and the batshit insane pronouncements from their chief "I'm bored of working on the core product, so I'm going to go off and invent new shit - good luck everyone". I mean it was outrageous - and fortunately the core developer team rebelled and went full skunk works to keep rolling out core products. But without some kind of vision at the top, it was ad-hoc. They had a "new product ideas" on their slack that really should have been named "screaming into the void" - it was a model of dysfunction that can only work because they are beholden to no one. Their freedom lead to a lack of discipline (like why do I have to fire up a full external solution Wfx to simply sort nodes alphabetically?).
So anyway, I moved my whole outline to Tana with the idea that the team is actually actively developing, is transparent, seems to give a shit about its users, also has a keen set of users. I could move it because WF is text, so ultimately while some of the hot link mirrors etc would break, it would all be there.
So now I'm on Tana. And my concern is they DO have funding, so now they DO have to bring on users and make a business of it. I'm not a programmer, but I'm not a complete slob - I'm an EE, I've an MBA from a fancy school, I founded and ran a small but profitable company. And this thing is often baffling. Death by a thousand papercuts is a perfect encapsulation. I've bought a bunch of coaching from Ev who was wonderful. But everything is a slog. Because they are actually developing stuff I'm hopeful it will get fixed. But will it? I see users pulling them into more and more complexity, whereas things like "drag and drop so you can make hierarchy a joy" just not even close to happening.
So if they can't simplify, they can't get users and keep engagement up. Then they will have to exit or close down. And I've got a decade of stuff in there. But worse - because the Tana datacube is so complicated, I'm not sure I could get that data out (yeah, they built an export file - but is that really going to work - like how would I get that back into WFlowy - I don't think I could). So now I'm stuck on this ship - which I really really REALLY need to work - but I'm not sure they are going the right way, and I don't know how to help. It makes me really anxious.
I wish the team would spend two weeks on TickTick to see what simple outlining and timing integration can do.
I wish the team would spend a month on WFlowy so they can see the power of creating links and mirrors on the fly.
I wish the team would prioritize mobile so that the mobile experience at least even mirrors the desktop e.g. when I use "add a new item to an option list" - that items shows on desktop but not on mobile?!?
One definition of stress is "to not have any influence on an outcome that is important to you". I'm super stressed when I think of Tana I'm not sure what to do about that.