Shin Kim
complete
This has been shipped. It is now possible to create up to 5 levels of folders.
Ehsan @ Eraser
in progress
Ehsan @ Eraser
Merged in a post:
More than 2 levels of folders
Mat Longinow
I would love to utilize this platform in multi-faceted ways, keeping me around as a committed user longer than for a particular amount of time. The more I invest in the platform, the more reluctant I am to leave. So the more I can build document hubs for work, home, hobbies, etc, the more invested of a user I become.
As it stands right now, I have this directory layout:
-Home
-Work
|
+-- Company One
|
+-- Company Two
This limits my ability to be able to organize my document by projects at my work currently. I really enjoy visually mapping out concepts, steps, workflows, etc. And not being able to go that third layer to do so is challenging for me as an end user.
Ehsan @ Eraser
Mat, very happy to hear you are feeling so invested in Eraser! And really appreciate you sharing this context.
The even better news is that, as we speak, we have a PR up which will take this from 2 levels to 5 levels. You will have to let us know how much that scratches the itch. We stopped at 5 because more than that would have required more design and engineering effort for the UI and hoping to keep it somewhat contained to make it easier for teams of people to find files without going down infinite rabbit holes of folders.
Mat Longinow
Ehsan @ Eraser: That is awesome to hear!
Yea, you guys are building a great product. Lots of flexibility of use without overly burdensome tooling and just a simple user experience. Decided to bite the bullet and go for the paid plan for myself.
Keep it up 🍻
Ehsan @ Eraser
Mat Longinow: Incredible feedback. Great to know those qualities are resonating with you. Glad to hear you pulled the trigger.
Ehsan @ Eraser
planned
Ehsan @ Eraser
Thanks for sharing this feedback. I am curious how you would change this? Would you set a new limit? Make it essentially infinite?
I have thought about this problem quite a bit and haven't quite figured out what is the best balance for single-player control and for developing multi-player shared understanding.
I wrote some thoughts here when we last worked on this. I am curious what you think? How would you solve this challenge?
D
Daniel Kim
Ehsan @ Eraser: This resonated with me:
> The argument here is basically that the software does not need to force a limitation and that users should be trusted to collaborate in meaningful and fruitful ways to create a shared understanding of the system and how it should be organized.
Not so much this:
> This can quickly devolve into never-ending arguments or worse, lost files and redundant structures.
My take is that having just one layer forces sometimes "unintuitive" (relative to what many users are familiar with in a file system) organization ... causing more up front alignment and decision making that has to happened on what types of things should be a root level folder and what types of things need to be at the 2nd level.
For us, it would make most sense to organize content by teams and some additional more general top level folders. With that, each team would only have one level of folder to work with and with the amount of diagrams we can project to be creating, we're most likely going to be forced with awkward file names and long file lists in those folders as we want to have related diagrams listed together.
I've tried - both building and using - alternatives to a traditional directory file system structure .... and personally come to the conclusion it's what many users want and feels most natural to them at this point. Works fine for us with other SaaS products (combined with good search and a tagging system) we use that provide unlimited folders ... and pain point for those that don't.
Ehsan @ Eraser
Daniel Kim: I really appreciate this feedback! Super helpful input into our process and decision making. I will definitely noodle on this and discuss with the team.