Navigating Map views

This page covers some useful snippets about navigating Map Views and moving object up and down your Tinderbox file's note hierarchy without using other sorts of views. Feel free to embellish these notes or alter them if they don't quite make sense. If you've come here to learn about maps for the first time it is definitely useful to have a Tinderbox file open with 5-10 notes at least some of which should contain some 'child' notes — i.e. have at least 2 levels of notes as viewed in an outline view. You can create your test notes in a view type of your choice, e.g. Outline View, but switch to Map View at the highest level before reading on...

I'm aware this looks like a lot of text but the joy is it is very simple — once you know. It just needs a bit of explaining if you don't find it intuitive from just fiddling around. The functions here are seen, in part, in the Tinderbox Tutorial tutorial but not explained. The manual has a passing reference on page 37. This should help and soon you'll have discovered another of Tinderbox's lovely features.

How do I tell if a note has children?

Although the actual color of each note in a Map View may vary by the attributes you set, it will always appear in one of two basic styles. Those notes with no children are displayed as solid blocks. Notes with children differ by having have a solid color section at the top (with the note title) and a grey area below. These notes with children may also be described as 'containers'. In Outline View, the 'children' would be the first level of indented notes listed below the 'parent' note.

What are the blocks of color in the grey area of the container notes?

These represent child notes inside the container. You probably won't realise it at first but this is an interactive view - the grey area is like a viewport showing you part of of the map of the next level down nested 'inside' the container. We'll come back to this in a bit.

Why is the grey area at the top of some containers and not the bottom?

These indicate the container is in fact an agent. To clarify, on a Map view a normal note container has its title at the top of the note whilst an agent container has its title at the bottom of the note.

How do I navigate down / open a container / drill down a level?

The three preceding questions are effectively all the same. However, while there's a 'go up' button at bottom left of the map view there is no 'down' button. Odd for the new user, but stop to think — how would Tinderbox know which container to drop down into if there was more than one container on the map? OK, it could take the currently selected note; in fact this is what happens — but you just do it directly and without clicking an arrow icon. To drill down into any container, you double-click the lower (grey) part of the note and you navigate down / open / drill down — whichever euphemism you prefer. Should you mistakenly click the top (title) part of the note icon you'll open the note for editing. Just close the note and make sure you double-click the lower portion of the note. This works for both normal and agent containers.

Now I see a shadow with the parent container's name but can't I select it?

No you can't. Instead, think of it as a fixed visual reminder of the name of the containing note one level up. This quasi-adornment appears in the middle of the Map View except at the top most level (because there's no parent!). Although you can't select or resize it, the parent container adornment is in a light grey color and shouldn't be too intrusive.

So what does this shadow do?

Well, you may recall that at the level above you could see some colored blocks in the grey area of the container. These are actually representative of the the notes lying inside the container adornment on the level below. If you expand the parent container you'll see more 'child' blocks in the grey area and if you drill down a level you'll see the container adornment (shadow) is bigger. Move the children around and in they move in the container on the level above. I said it was interactive, but this isn't just eye candy — it lets us move notes up and down the hierarchy.

How do I use this for demoting notes whilst in Map View?

To demote a note (i.e. put it into a container), select a note and drag it onto the grey area of an existing container. What if the note you want to drop onto isn't already container? Well it may not be a container now but as soon as you drop the note onto it, it automatically becomes one! Now, you could switch to an outline view to do this task, but you can see you don't need to as it's so easy in Map View. Demoting doesn't work with agent containers (work on the agent's query instead).

How do I use this for promoting notes whilst in Map View?

We know the container note's grey area shows (some of) its 'child' notes. Select one of these children and drag it out of the parent container note onto the map — it's promoted, as easy as that! But what if the note you need to promote isn't accessible from the parent note's drag area? You've two choices — either expand the parent container note (select it and drag to make the note bigger) or drop down a level and move the note you wish to promote over the container adornment (shadow). If a note's inside the adornment boundary it will show as a 'block' in the parent container's grey drag area on the level above. Now go up a level and drag the note out. Remember, you do the promotion from the level above that on which the target note starts out. Promoting doesn't work with agent containers (work on the agent's query instead).

Can I turn off the parent container 'shadow'?

No, it this regard it is not like other adornments, but you can hide it. Why might you want to hide it? Well you might, for instance, want a clear map background for the purposes of taking a screen grab. Although you could just move the relevant notes to another part of the map, this might be too difficult with a large complex map! In general however, just leave it alone so it's there when you need it for promoting/demoting notes. If you really must, you can hide the 'shadow' by putting a title-less adornment with a white fill over it — it will still show through, very faintly unless you use a second adornment of the same type on top of the first (two seems to do the trick). Of course, if you make the parent note larger on the next level up, the shadow will re-size and you'll need to adjust your 'blanking' adornments — another good reason to just leave the shadow as it is.

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