Using Card View

Card views show items as familiar 3 x 5 index cards on a large desk-like 2-D surface

1. The UI

• Card view is an infinitely sized surface
• The view shows items as resizable cards
• The view is divided into 4 quadrants
• Commands can be performed for a specific quadrant or for all 4
• Right-click to select commands
• Each grid can have a Card view
• By default, the view opens as a workspace tab. The tab can however be detached and turned into a floating pane
  (as shown in the above screenshot)

2. Items as Cards

• To add existing items on a Card view, simply copy / paste them from any grid or other view. Copy / paste does not create new items, it only adds existing items to the view
• Items can also be added using drag-drop from any other UI to this view
• To create new items (i.e. cards), click on the large + button, double-click on a blank area or press Insert
• Items shown on the Card view are loosely linked to items shown in the corresponding grid:
  • Items created in Card view are automatically added to the grid
  • Items added to Card view using copy / paste are not added to the grid
  • Items created in the grid are not added to the Card view. This means that opening a new Card view will always be empty

3. The Cards

• Cards have two sides:
  • Front side shows the Doc pane content
  • Back side shows the item text, tags and selected values (Notes, URL)
  • Press the space bar to switch sides
• The Front side has Preview and View modes:
  • Preview mode shows the text content of the Doc pane
  • View mode shows the actual Doc pane content (WYSIWYG)
  • All document types are supported (HTML, MHT, PDF, XLS, etc)
  • Press F2 to toggle view mode
• To edit Cards, use the Item Editor (double-click or Ctrl+E), the Doc pane (F6), or the Properties pane (F4)
• To resize cards, drag a border or use Ctrl+Arrows
• To move cards, click the header and drag or use Alt+Arrows
• Item back color is shown on the card caption

4. Using Card View

• Cards can be piled (i.e. stacked) or spread on the surface
• Piled cards are shown so the card title (i.e. the Item name) remains visible
• Click on a card to bring it to the top of the pile
• To move the view point, click and drag an empty space or use Left/Right/Up/Down arrows
• Spread cards will auto-arrange cards in the selected quadrant
• When moving cards, the view can move other cards depending on the Auto-arrange mode:
  • If Auto-arrange if Off, moving a card will not move other cards. Cards can overlap
  • if Auto-arrange is On, moving a card will move other cards
  • Right-click > Auto-arrange or press Ctrl+Shift to toggle mode
• To select multiple cards, use one of:
  • Hold Shift and click-drag
  • Ctrl+click on cards
  • Right-click > Select All / All in this quadrant
  • Press Ctrl+A: Will first select all cards in the current quadrant. If these are all selected, it will select all cards. If a filter is applied, only non-filtered cards will be selected
• Copying cards from one Card view to another is as simple: 1- Select cards  --> 2- Copy --> 3- Switch to another Card view --> 4- Paste. Similarly, items from any view (grid, calendar, etc) can be copy / pasted to the Card view
• Zoom in / out using commands and touchpad gestures
• Home key moves the Card view to show all quadrants and sets the zoom to 100%. Press Home again to center the view on the selected item
• End key zooms to show all items
• Shift+Home/End sets the zoom to 100% (but does not move the view point)
• Delete key removes cards from the view. Items are not deleted
• Space bar flips the selected card(s) (front side vs back side)
• F2 toggles between Preview and View: View is a WYSIWYG display of the Doc pane content
• When removing cards, if some items are locked, a dialog will show. Lock items to quickly clean up your Card view while leaving a set of items as "permanent" cards
• Ctrl+D deletes items (and hence cards) permanently

5. Context Menus

1. Toggle Preview / View
2. Flip Card: Flips the selected card(s) (front side vs back side)
3. Edit Card: Open an Item Editor for each of the selected cards
4. Pile Cards: Pile selected cards
5. Copy
6. Remove Item: Selected items are removed from the Card view. Items are not deleted from the IQBase. Use Edit > Undo to undo this command
7. Add Related Items: Adds items linked to the currently selected item. See Related Items Links
8. Delete Link: Deletes related items links
9. Set Default Size: Current card will be the default size for new cards (new item or pasted items)

1. Pile cards
2. Spread cards
3. Select all
4. Switch all cards back to Preview mode

1. Move Selected Cards to this Quadrant: Use this command to group cards spread over the surface into a neat pile
2. Paste (enabled if there are items in the clipboard, do Edit > Copy to put items in the clipboard)
   Pasted items will appear as cards in the current quadrant
   If a pasted item is already in the view, in another quadrant, a dialog is shown to move it or not to the current quadrant
3. Remove items. If some cards are filtered out, the dialog lets you choose what cards to remove
4. Add Related Items: Adds items linked to any of the items in the Card view. See Related Items Links
5. Show Item Links: Show lines linking related items
6. Expand card when viewing: Increases the card size when switching from Preview to View
7. Auto-arrange / move cards: Moving a card will move other cards to ensure no overlap
8. Sort Cards by: When piling / spreading cards, determines the order of cards
   Enter a field name or leave blank to manually arrange cards in each quadrant
9. Background color

6. Filtering Cards

• Click in the filter text box (top-right corner) or press Ctrl+G
• Enter keywords in the filter text box to only show matching cards
• Match includes both sides of the card
• Match count is shown
• Show / Hide the filter text box (Ctrl+G) also toggles the filtering
• When filtering, press Esc or Enter to move focus back to the cards
• Filtering can also be by tag: Enter #TagName

7. Related Items Links

Card views can show Related Items Links. This can be a great way to combine related items in a single view. See screenshot at the end of this page.

• To link items, select two or more items and do Item > Link Items (or press Ctrl+R). Another option is to shift-click and drag from one card to another
• To delete a link between any two items, select them and do Right-click > Delete Link. Another option is to click on the link and press the Delete key
• To delete all links with a given item, select the item and do Right-click > Delete Link. Only links shown in Card View will be deleted
• Links for the selected item(s) are shown in red. Other links are shown in black
• Links display can be turned On / Off (right-click > Show Item Links)

Read all about Item Links here: Related Items Links 

8. Managing Card Views

• Use the View > Card Views command
• Menu will show a list, divided in 3 sections:
  1. Card views currently shown in tabs and panes (bold = loaded)
  2. Other Card views that contain cards (i.e. items)
  3. All other Card views (e.g. those that are currently empty)
• To create a new Card view, first create a grid with that name and then do View > Sub-views > Card View

9. Tips and Tricks

• Ever wanted to view many folders at once? Simply create a few items, set the Doc pane to point to a folder and put these items on a Card View. Select the cards and press F2 to enable view mode and voilà !
• When switching from Preview to View modes, card size can be increased by 50% (right-click > Expand card command)

1. Having too many cards will show down scrolling, in particular if many are shown in View mode (WYSIWYG)
2. If using Enhanced Scaling (to improve font quality, options > 1.6.18), Zoom needs to be 100% (or close to) to properly display card content