Backlinks are crucial to understanding the context of any given note. However, when quick-navigating between notes in the noteboard view, the main selected card only displays it’s child cards, not it’s backlinks. While it’s child cards will show their backlinks. This forces users to click into the preview modal of the selected note just to see it’s backlinks.
This creates unnecessary friction and elevates the preview modal beyond its intended role. It becomes the primary tool for exploring backlinks, which arguable breaks the flow of using the noteboard view as the main navigation surface.
Proposed Solution
There are a few potential solutions that come to mind, to bring backlinks into the noteboard view without diminishing the visibility or importance of child cards:
Option A:
Add the backlink icon to the selected main card in the noteboard view.
Option B:
Introduce a context switch or toggle in the noteboard UI for cards underneath the main card, that allows switching between child cards and backlink cards for the currently selected card.
Option C:
Display both child cards and backlink cards in the noteboard view, with visual indicators to distinguish them. Include filters to allow showing/hiding either type, giving the user full control over what relational context they see.
Impact / Benefit
Streamlines navigation between notes in the noteboard view by reducing the need to open preview modals just to see backlinks.
Restores the preview modal to its intended lightweight purpose.
Hi @ElliottNotes, welcome to the Supernotes Community!
Totally get this, thanks for your suggestion and as you’ve found there’s not a one-size fits all solution. We have a few different prototypes to improve this, but are still working on it. Covers should generally be simpler so you can focus on the content below, with all the buttons of likes, comments, backlinks, tags etc. it gets a little too busy.
Our focus post the 3.2 release is to improve card ergonomics throughout the interface, and covers are part of that. Looking forward to sharing that with you soon. If you or anyone else has any ideas on how to improve covers, do let us know below and we’ll take that on board
I agree that Supernotes doesn’t currently do enough to help us make use of the value that backlinks (and friend links) could provide in understanding and navigating our knowledge.
Essentially everything in the UX and UI is currently designed to only promote understanding of the parent-child relationships in our knowledge networks. However, the child-parent (back) and friend (content) links feel woefully under exposed, especially for exploration.
My suggestion
Add a View Children submenu to the Noteboard menu
Place it above the One Layer Deep submenu (in the “control what’s visible in the Noteboard” section of the menu)
Include the options: View Children, View Parents, View Friends, and View All
Add a keyboard shortcut for toggling through the options
Suggestion: CMD + R (for “Relationships”)
Visually distinguish the three different types of relationships in the various Noteboard views
e.g. in List view, child cards look like now, parent cards have a thicker border, friend cards have a dashed/dotted border
e.g. in Graph view, children look like now, parents have an empty fill and a border, friends have an empty fill and a dashed/dotted border
e.g. in Table view, children look like now, parents have a border, friends have a dashed/dotted border
Creating a new card on the Noteboard view would still create a child card
What does this enable?
Utilising all the views to explore our entire knowledge network
Answering the question “What are all the notes I have that are related to this idea?”
Helps users to understand the value of the hierarchy that Supernotes offers (it’s core differentiator)
What are the challenges?
Added complexity (now “relationship type” is a first-class citizen in Supernotes, which adds cognitive load)
Rendering the relationship types differently might look cluttered (I’m mostly worried about the Table view)
Cards don’t always have children, parents, or friends—would cycling through empty states be confusing?
I’ve thought about my idea a little more, and think I made a mistake with labelling back links as “child-parent”. That’s not correct. I think a better way to see them (relationally) is as friends (just going in the other direction).
I still think there’s value in View Parents, but it would just show the parent cards of the current card.
Sounds like you’re well aware of this already, and yeah, completely agree with not wanting the covers to become bloated. Supernotes has a really lean focused feel that’s definitely worth preserving.
If it did come down to spacing, I’d actually prefer having the backlink icon on the selected main card instead of the like icon. Backlinks give me more meaningful context while navigating, especially when building out interconnected ideas.
Either way, it’s clear from the rest of the app that the team puts a ton of thought into UX, so I’m looking forward to whatever you explore with card ergonomics in the future.
