A useful property of 2-pane PIMs

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Feb 18, 2008 at 04:01 PM

What are the qualities that help facilitate browsing? Certainly easy navigation through the list of items, and ability to quickly view the content of any particular item would be among these qualities. The latter is why the two-pane approach works.

But, as you said, Alex, some are better at this than others… so what’s the secret? And are two-pane outliners the best at this? That is, does the outline structure add functionality to browsing or hinder it? I could see it being more of a hinderance… if headings are collapsed, you have to take an extra click to expand the sub-headings.

I am recalling HyperInfo (or whatever the name of that now defunct software was), which had an outline view, but also had an Index view… so that you could see your outline flattened with headings arranged alphabetically. I think that would facilitate serendipitous browsing.

In fact, here’s a feature I would like to see: A view listing all items in all open databases, flattened and arranged alphabetically—or by whatever method of sorting you like. That would be a powerful feature, I think.

Steve Z.