story-apps
[Feature Request] Redesign Breakdown's left and right "Elements" panels
Current Design
Right now, in the Breakdown view of the Screenplay, we have 2 "Elements" panels: one on the left, one on the right.
The one one the left shows all elements in the script, by category. The one on the left shows only the elements in the current scene.
On top of that, when we add a new element to a text selection, the panel on the right temporarily changes to an "add element" dialog.
Proposed Design
"Elements" Panel (Left)
I propose we combine the left and right "Elements" panels into a single "Elements" panel on the left. This new panel would be basically the same as it is now, but would have an extra drop-down menu at the top, "Filter by:", with options such as "Current Scene", "Category", "All Scenes", that allow us to select whether we want to only see the elements for the current scene (like the right "Elements" panel does now), all scenes, or by categories (like the left "Elements" panel does now).
"Element Parameters" Panel (Right)
For the panel on the right, rename it "Element Parameters" (consistent with the Scene Parameters in the Screenplay Text view), and, when the cursor is on text with elements already added, the right panel shows the "Edit Element" widget (much like Scene Parameters shows widgets to change scene title, header and description), with a widget for each element the text contains. So, if a piece of text has 2 elements added to it, we see and can edit both in one panel.
And, by default, when the cursor is on text without any elements added yet, the panel can either be empty and display "No element selected." or have buttons to add elements, such as "+ Prop", "+ Set Dressing" etc. (like the right floating "add element" bar does now, but showing more buttons, for more elements).
With this new right panel, it allows us to add an element without confirmation, without having to click on "Create". Which saves us a step, and makes it much faster to go through the scene adding elements, and also going back and adjusting (renaming/adding description, etc.) the elements one by one. This also prevents us from clicking on "Add element" and moving on to the next piece of text, forgetting we also have to click on "Create" to confirm. This is not hard to happen because the "Add element confirmation" dialog is on the side, it doesn't block the view, so it's easy to miss. This happened to me a few times, and annoyed me because I was doing a rough pass, trying to add a bunch of elements quickly to then come back and edit them later, but after clicking on "Add element" I still had to press Ctrl + Enter, or click on "Create", for the element to be added.
Examples with both, left and right, new panels:
"Filter by" set to "Current Scene"
"Filter by" set to "All Elements"
In this case, on the list of elements on the new "Elements" panel on the left would still have context menu options such as "Edit Element", which, if selected, could even go to and re-select the piece of text associated with the element, which would display the "Edit Element" widget in the new "Element Parameters" on the right.
Conclusion
I think this creates really swift, intuitive workflow, that reduces duplication and reduces ambiguity.
Additional Idea
When we select a range of text that contains both a section that has an element associated with it, and one section that does not, the right panel should show the "Edit Element" widget and should have two two buttons:
- "Clear"
- "Reassign" (or just "Update")
Where "Clear" removes the element's association with all the selected text, and "Reassign"/"Update" updates the association to include the section that had no association with the element.
There is one downside to this design: We lose the ability to see both the Scene panel and Elements at the same time while being able to edit elements.
But let's not forget the benefits. So I think finding a way to have the best of both worlds would be ideal. One solution could be to add the ability to tile panels freely. This way we can have the Scenes panel visible on the left side, and these new Elements and Element Parameters panels visible on the right, sharing the right panel.
Updated section about the proposed Element Parameters panel to clarify that multiple elements should be displayed and editable when a piece of text has multiple elements added to it.