Cannot add linked anchors to notes

When adding an anchor to an existing note, the type of anchor is currently limited to what appears in its drop-down box.

If that type of anchor isn't supported, the add operation is silently ignored.

(I believe we specifically have to choose an item from the drop-down to actually complete the operation. This isn't intuitive in the present UI.)

I really hope that Faithlife will address this to support every type of anchor, including links and headwords.

By the way, adding an anchor to a new note is less restrictive than what we can presently use as secondary anchors. One workaround is to reverse the process by adding a note for the more restrictive item, then add additional anchors to other supported items (such as bible references).

Michael Sheaver said:

Honestly, I am not sure what you mean by drop-down. There is no drop-down menu for me when I try to add an anchor to a note; just two radio buttons: Selected text and Reference.

The Reference box is a drop-down list, but it only shows if what you type matches possible anchors you can choose from:

That's what I meant by the UI not being intuitive. When you type (or paste) in a URL, there are no matching items to choose from, no drop-down list is shown, and clicking on Add does nothing.

I think this is a case of both missing functionality, and the UI behaving in an unexpected way. The Add button should probably be inactive, if what we enter isn't a currently supported type of anchor.

MJ. Smith said:

I'm a bit confused here. When would you use a link as an anchor rather than as a link in the content?

I think it just comes down to personal convention as to how a person might use the notes tool. My L7 approach used a lot more attachments, with limited content. (E.g., lots of highlighting, little note taking.)

I haven’t switched to an L8 approach of treating each anchor as a new note (and applying tagging to organize groups of attachments).

I suspect there are more undiscovered advantages and disadvantages to either approach, but I’d like to see how the note tool is improved and eventually take more advantage of facets (which are based on primary but apparently not secondary anchors). I suppose I prefer faceted filtering for anchors rather than textual searching for content.

Having said all that, I personally only tried links as references when it wasn’t initially obvious what was accepted by the reference box, and why anchors weren’t being added for certain types such as headwords.