I use a backpack page to track yearly expenses… the new Dividers are really cool… now I can have a divider for every month but it’s a pain to add a new item to a divider area by first creating it at the top then dragging it down into the middle of a very long page…

I’d love to scroll down to September, then click “Add…. File” (possibly displayed on top of the grey divider line) and then get a dialog to add a file specifically to that section of my page.

Something like this… http://pastie.caboo.se/82056

An on hover would be great.

Josh,

What’s Pastie and is it right that I can get full access and posting rights coz I can!!

Pastie is a free public tool to paste code and share it…

I second this request. The new divider feature is awesome but, as Josh described, leads to a ton of scrolling on longer pages as you try to add content. His example of an alternative menu on the divider line is spot on.

+1 – or alternatively the Add menu (and the sidebar for that matter) could just not scroll, i.e. the scroll bar would be on the white content section of the page, rather than in the browser for the page as a whole.

We’re experimenting with some ideas along these lines. Stay tuned.

That’s good to hear—the fact that every new widget appears at the top of the page is the thing I like least about the new Backpack.

It would be much better if each divider has these buttons.
Add a List, Note, File, Picture gallery, Writeboard

I shared many pages with my collaborators.
When they add some notes on my pages, these pages’ layouts looking like broken for me.
(I always put the most important thing on the top of each page… I don’t want to change there)

Even if I tell them about this request, they cannot do it everytime especially in busy times.

I’d also find it useful if the dividers had id attributes so that you could make a jump-to link for them.

I’d like to second Josh and Ham’s suggestions … and encourage Jason to keep experimenting! I have been using Backpack for an Internet-based international tutoring service (TOEFL/GRE) with a page per student which included resources, links, etc. Worked very well. The new changes – which I like for the most part – are forcing me to redo everything. The ability to add from the divider lines, rather than add at the top and drag into place, would help me regain some of the easy functionality I lost.

(BTW, I miss the dedicated body text at the top; for my purposes, replacing it with a note isn’t quite the same.)

+1 on the ‘too much scrolling to add an item from the top of page” chorus.

Also, can a divider be made to collapse a section (until it hits another divider?) – this way one can hide/show sections of a page? (or do I go to far?)

+1 For add option for dividers so new items appear below that divider as opposed to top of the page.

+1 ID attributes for dividers

+1 Dividers to be have option to collapse a section

+1 For “Sticky items”, so new content appears above the first non-sticky item

I believe this is not a frill request, but a neccessary claim.
Because we had no choice between oler and newer interfaces at the day 37s changed backpack program.. (Of course I feel newer interface is great.)

Agreed – there needs to be a better way to add items so that there is less scrolling involved. The ID attribute is a great idea too, for creating a contents or something at the top of each page should one wish to do so.

I would also like to see an option in the settings page, which lets you specify a default for where new items should be added – either a) add new items to the top of each page, or b) add new items to the bottom of each page. This should be something that each user can specify per account, because everyone has their own way of organising pages. A setting like this would compliment the “Add a…” per divider suggestion noted above (because not every page may have a divider, but may still be quite long).

+1 for adding new items on other places than on top.

But I don’t think the divider idea is the perfect solution, as it would force you to use dividers and isn’t helpful if dividers are inappropriate.
Take, for example a long A-Z list of books to consider, or as a bibliography, on one single page. I’d like to be able to add a new item before or after every existing item. I don’t want to add 26 useless dividers into the page in advance (even if they had ids so I could jump to them). Way too much hassle.

If you use a Mac, you can add an item, start dragging, then (while dragging) use the keyboard to navigate—on a 9 page BP page where it would take 20 seconds or so to scroll from top to bottom while dragging an item, you can move it instantly to the end by dragging, hitting the end key, then placing the item.

This makes the scrolling issue much much much less of an annoyance.

Awesome tip, Derick. I had no idea.

+1

I love the idea of a hover event on dividers and other page elements to allow me to add another page element. It would help prevent scrolling, and make it easier to capture information regardless of my current context.

I’d also find it useful if the dividers had id attributes so that you could make a jump-to link for them.

Use the following to achieve this.

Put this in a divider called Notes

<a name="Notes"></a> Notes

and then at the top of the page in a ‘Note’ put a link like so;

"Notes":#Notes

Apologies for the late response.

Derick, great find!
On my old, old Powerbook, I don’t have an “end” key but have to use “fn” + “cursor right”, which is a bit unwieldy. But it works. And I discovered that you can use “pg up” and “pg dn” (both, again, with the “fn” key) as well.
Thank you so much.

But I still want the “add item here” feature.

Active1 that’s great. I was rummaging around in the page source looking for named anchors but I didn’t think to just inject the HTML.

All great suggestions and ways to vastly enhance usability. I’d also like more visual queues to help me quickly differentiate between divider-separated sections. Maybe (pastel) background colors per section? Expand and collapse seems powerful too. TKS!

The “page up”/”page down” trick seems to work with Windows browsers as well. At least it works with my version of K-Meleon at the office. K-Meleon is based on Firefox/Mozilla, so it should work with Firefox as well.
Don’t have Firefox here to try, though.

Page dividers already have IDs, for example