Foldable text and fixed note length

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#1

Hi,
Thank you all for this app. I tried and purchased Agenda for a while before switching to Notion, but then realize Notion is too slow for quick journal entry in my workflow so switched back to Agenda for daily journals and quick text editing.
There are, however, a few features that I think would make Agenda even better:

  1. A toggle list (presumably an option of style setting when editting notes) that can collapse and expand. IMO this would make Agenda a very competitive alternative to Workflowy in many use cases (e.g. when some date-based structure is needed)
  2. The option to set a fixed length and scroll through a lengthy note. Pretty often I scrolled pass the note Iā€™m looking for because the length of expanded notes are too long and are not easy to spot collapsed notes from those expanded visually.
    Also, when using mobile app on iOS, if a title is too long, it is hard to click on the line that expands the notes.
    Hope these would be on your development roadmap.
    Thanks!

p.s. Speaking of which, is it possible that the community have access to a public Trello to see & vote for development roadmap, as in many other communities of productivity apps?

5 Likes
#2

Thanks for the feedback!

Not fully sure I understand the concept of a ā€œtoggle listā€. Canā€™t you just put a checklist in a note, and collapse the note?

Adding scrolling of a note, inside scrolling of the notes list, is very clunky and difficult to do right. We do have some plans for a more focussed edit mode, which may suit you more.

We donā€™t have a voting system for features. We already know very well what people want, simply because people post, or +1. That is not a mystery to us really. Itā€™s just a question of getting around to each important feature, one at a time.

The other problem with voting is that it is very difficult as a customer to fully understand what you are voting for. Eg. Perhaps you think ā€œI want tablesā€. Fine, but if I told you implementing tables would take the same time as 5 other features on the list, would you still vote that way?

My point is, really we are the only ones that can fully evaluate what it is best to do next. This is guided by what we hear in the forums, and what we know technically. A voting system would distort this, and perhaps also give people false hope. Some features are just very difficult and time consuming, and no amount of votes will speed them up, Iā€™m afraid.

4 Likes
#3

Thanks, Drew! Appreciate your response!
ā€œToggle listā€ is probably the name of the style specific to Notion. It has not much to do with listing, but instead essentially a section of text that user can hide/collapse and show/expand all the indented texts under that ā€œtoggleā€ section. So instead of collapsing the entire note (as you suggested), it collapses parts of the content within a given note. Pretty much like how ā€œ:arrow_forward:ļøŽā€ in Workflowy behaves.

As for the votes, I have no doubt that you guys have the full knowledge for the next steps of the app. I guess for me itā€™s more about knowing what to expect as a user, and knowing that certain requests have been raised by fellow users, than steering the direction of development.

The style of the date of posts shown in this forum only tells the day and month, but not the year. so often Iā€™m not sure how long ago was the thread active and whether the request has been considered. In that sense, a simple post pinned on top for a few previews or a list of ā€œStuffs weā€™re working onā€ would do, too.

Cheers

1 Like
#4

I think it would be great to offer folding within text notes: basically a standard outlining function.

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#5

Indeed foldable text sections is something weā€™re considering, not at the top of the list yet but something we hope to get to at some point./

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#6

(We donā€™t have a voting system for features. We already know very well what people want, simply because people post, or +1ā€¦)

ā€œā€¦Indeed foldable text sections is something weā€™re consideringā€

OKā€¦+1ā€¦

#7

I would strongly support folding. I use Notion for this when presenting. Probably not too easy to implement, otherwise others would have gone further with this. However, Agenda is nothing if not go-ahead, so I wait in hope!

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#8

+1 for this :wink:

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#9

Toggles are used in Studying, you are able to quiz yourself by Hiding the answers. A quick, simple Anki on tap in your notes.
WorkFlowy works as a good example of the technology, it would be a sub component of the Agenda App(feature)

2 Likes
#10

Hi,

I would like to know if this feature is being added soon as well. It was first requested in 2018 I think. I am a lapsed subscriber. I lapsed because the rate of new features slowed to a crawl and I found that Agenda wasnā€™t keeping up with the competition. No backlinks, no foldable lists and so on.

I will resubscribe right now though if you say foldable lists are imminent as I now have a distinct use case for the app in my new job. But without this - I will stick to my existing tools, which all allow for this.

Iā€™d be grateful for any updates.

Thank you!

J

2 Likes
#11

Iā€™m afraid we are not working on foldable lists at this point. We have been thinking about ways to do backlinks. I would expect that at some point.

We have added a lot of features since 2018. Of course, if it isnā€™t your pet feature, it is not much consolation.

Update: BTW, a lot of the need for foldable sections disappears in Agenda, because we have collapsible notes. If you put a list in a note, it is effectively foldable, because you can collapse the note. Would still be nice to have folding sections at some point, but the collapsible timeline compensates a bit.

1 Like
#12

Hey there,

Thanks so much for your reply. That is such a shame about the foldable text. But I understand it must be hard to balance everyoneā€™s needs. Just to clarify, and I donā€™t mean this to come across as a criticism but only an observation and to clarify why I said that development appeared to have slowed. Since my subscription lapsed over a year ago only 3 new features have been added:

  1. Templates
  2. Change look and feel of note
  3. Change table column alignment

All of the other updates have been refinements of existing features. All this is great! But, as I say, I donā€™t think it is necessarily keeping up with the competition, especially as there has been a massive renaissance of note-taking of late. I will always keep Agenda on my phone ā€“ itā€™s a beautiful app even though I wonā€™t use it as my note-taker of choice. Thank you for making it ā€“ it really is a lovely app.

J

#13

I donā€™t think thatā€™s a fair remark, those are three premium features. We added for example tables altogether, not just aligning of columns, the possibility to add tables simply didnā€™t exist to begin with. Thatā€™s a massive feature in itself. Have a look at the release notes and I think youā€™ll see there really has been no slow down at all, on the contrary Iā€™d say: Release Notes

#14

Hi there,
I certainly didnā€™t mean to be unfair. And looking at the release notes itā€™s clear that LOADS has been going on. But when you look at the app, and the screen that says - you have purchased these features and these are new - thatā€™s where I was looking. As opposed to looking at the release notes. So, it was only my perception based on that! I meant no offence.
Very best wishes,
J

1 Like
#15

Yes, I think the confusion is just that not everything we do becomes a premium feature. Usually we will tackle a big feature, like Tables, and we will choose one aspect of that as the premium feature. So everyone gets tables free, but the premium customers get something extra, like column alignment.

I agree that if you just look at the features list, it may not seem as impressive as the complete release notes.

Thanks for the feedback! We will see what we can do with it.

#16

+1 Iā€˜ve been using Notion too. Itā€™s perfect in use but has some major issues so Iā€™m switching to Agenda.

Itā€™s only my first day of using Agenda and switching over from Notion, it feels a bit unintuitive. Agenda lacks features like ā€žtoggle listsā€œ or text highlighting which would improve workflow and also overview. Collapsing the notes is also a bit annoying. Anyways, I have to use it more and learn the shortcuts first to make a fair judgement.

#17

Welcome aboard, logically the first reactions when switching to a different app is often ā€œwhy isnā€™t this like the app I came fromā€. Iā€™d give it some time as often the workflows you settle on are different by nature. In terms of the things you mention, these are among the The features we are working on right nowā€¦

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#18

+1 for ā€˜foldingā€™ Toggle List from me too.

Itā€™s one of the main things I really like in Notion.

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#19

Iā€™d like to add my +1 for foldable outlines. Iā€™m finding Iā€™m writing quite a bit of structured outlines in Agenda, and being able to hide parts of these outlines would help me gain clarity :blush:

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#20

+1 for folding as well. I have quite a lot of notes with a lot of content and folding parts of it would be great.

1 Like