If I leave books lying on my coffee table, I’ll naturally notice them at receptive moments. I'll read a book if I feel an actual, concrete interest in it. By contrast, the motivation to read a digital book comes from abstract interest in the habit of reading.
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Peripheral vision offers context.
If I mark up a physical book then later flip through to see my margin notes, I’ll always see them in the context of the surrounding text. By contrast, digital annotation listings usually display only the text I highlighted, removed from context.
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The primary “unit” in such systems is a single highlight or note, but that’s not how I think. Marginalia have fuzzy boundaries, and I often think of a page’s markings as a single unit.
LiquidText is a lovely counterexample: it works hard to display annotations in context.
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In digital note systems, the UI centers on the experience of writing one note. The core operations and representations fixate on “the note you have open,” not on larger structures. I often can’t simultaneously see another note I’ve just finished writing—let alone the last four.
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Most systems barely support multiple windows, but even if I can open multiple windows, it’s awkward to arrange them into the spatial relationships I might naturally use for physical index cards. Rather than peripheral vision, it’s like I’m wearing horse blinders and mittens.
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Backlinks are a weak peripheral vision, and they help, but they’re generally about switching the one note you have open, not an effective means of sense-making across many notes. Contextual backlinks help, but if you navigate, you lose object permanence.
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If I read an old digital note, I get the unnerving sense that it’s part of some “whole” that I can’t see at all—no matter how much hypertext is involved. Working with physical notes, I’d shuffle notes around to make sense of the structure. There isn’t a digital equivalent.
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when i’m designing on paper this is why notebooks rarely work for me. i don’t care how nice it is! i always prefer a stack of printer paper that i can rearrange, put side-by-side, spread out in front of me, hand to someone, etc. notebooks always cover up your last thought.
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also: i always wanted an iPad in college just to use liquidtext. they don’t have it for mac, so for my research papers i would end up screenshooting snippets of PDFs, arranging them in Sketch, and then manually drawing line connections. but no link back to the original PDF 😞
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Our MacOS version is coming soon! Actually, here's a demo of collapse and HighlightView--what do you guys think?
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I'm very excited to try!
I worry about the opacity of the app container model. Conceptually speaking, I want the LiquidText canvas at the level of the OS! Across not just some PDFs, but also web pages, mail messages, etc. The model pushes towards little app silos—it's a bummer.
Agreed, this has been an issue since we started LiquidText. We're considering future browser integrations and content partnerships that should help, though.
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