Here’s a Curio file I’m developing to document some options a contractor is sending us for a house project. I’ve used the following features to make it:
I hope others’ll share some of the stuff they’re working on, too, as I’m inspired by examples. I have a few more in the works I’ll show when they’re more developed.
Question → Is there a way to remove the bundled styles that we don’t want to use? Or, at least, set a specific style? For example, the default PDF has a dark drop shadow and I’d rather have a lighter/plainer look.
“Hey Siri…”
You’re the best! Thank you!
I have years of house-sitter instructions that I’ve compiled and kept in a Curio project. You never know when you need one of these, and it’s easy to make changes as sitters and conditions change.
toritude and smoosh
In playing around more with Curio I seem to run into friction points. And those tiny “frictions” remind me why it’s not my go-to app for several things it could otherwise do quite nicely. Now I may be missing things (most likely the case) but here’s a short list of friction points for me:
All this may be my fault. And from other apps I’m used to hyperlinking being super obvious and easy. Both iThoughts and MindNode make this process easy, quick and intuitive.
It’s also pretty important for me to figure out what Presentation Mode can do and what it can’t. Based on that information it could fairly radically change how I construct a Curio document in some cases.
If anyone can show me how to accomplish any of the above I’d be grateful.
Not a Curio user and have also found some friction points as I’ve played with it in the last few days but for your first point, isn’t it this big plus button in the middle of the toolbar?
Or option-shift-command-n?
Click “Add”
Then choose the thing you want to add
Presentation mode is for presenting idea spaces from the Curio document. Not sure why that would be interpreted to suggest it is for presenting YouTube videos in a browser.
The toolbar, unfortunately, has way too much stuff crammed into it for me. I think I intuitively just ignore it for basic things. But, yes, it’s there! Thanks. Much more important is the keyboard command: I’m very keyboard centric. So command-shift-option-n works quite nicely! Thanks. But where did you find the keyboard shortcut?
Yeah, this is probably not the app for you.
Yes, and if an idea space has links then I would expect the links to work.
Let’s look at this another way: isn’t it reasonable if you have a curio link to another figure on another idea space in the same document for it to go to that idea space?
I realize it may not work that way but there’s lots of apps that are good at interactivity in a presentation mode. Maybe Curio just doesn’t do interactivity (within Curio or outside Curio). But when I see the word “presentation mode” I’m intuitively thinking it will handle interactivity well.
Sure, and that’s what Curio does.
Curio will in the background add a link to the figure selected in step 1. You will see the small blue arrow appear next to the figure you selected in step 2. (The “Click to go…” text appears when hovering the pointer over that arrow.)
But, maybe the learning curve for some is not attractive – though it is really not very steep – and Curio should be given a bye.
@anon41602260 Got it … “jump action” works perfectly in presentation mode. I had been using “idea space link”. I think part of the problem at the beginning of things is there’s a lot of verbiage and a lot of options … so it’s getting used to all of that. It’s the downside, I suppose, of a Swiss-army-knife app as opposed to a more focused app.
The Swiss-army-knife of options of Curio is still intriguing. It’s getting familiar with it that’s a bit frustrating at first. Thanks.
… and I can see hyperlinking is the reverse of how many apps do it. I’m used to doing a specific keyboard shortcut, then inserting the relevant hyperlink. Because of this I often activate the linking option first, then copy+insert link second. It’s this way in, I think, every app I use that does linking.
On the other hand Curio expects me to have copied the link first and that step “activates” options for adding a link. … so it’s just getting used to the way Curio thinks about things.
Fortunately “paste as URL action” works perfectly fine in Presentation Mode. Thank goodness! It takes me right to the YouTube video (or other thing) and super easy to return to Presentation Mode.
I don’t know if this is true but I’m beginning to suspect Curio would gain a LOT more users if some of the wording and processes were more “natural” to how users typically do things in other apps. It is far far far from intuitive (based on user experiences) that the way to link to something outside Curio is to first copy the link (this is pretty minor), then to find the way to link through a “paste as” submenu option. I have to guess I’m not the only one frustrated at first with Curio’s idiosyncratic way of organizing and wording various options. Some need to be unique as some Curio options are unique to it. But others, such as hyperlinking, should be much more obvious to new users. However, once you know then you know!
In addition there’s no native keyboard shortcut for this. I’ll add one for myself … but it would help to have something like this.
I’m not intentionally grousing about Curio. I’m intentionally trying to look at this app through the eyes of a newcomer.
… in another test … Curio does not seem to handle Hook links. Plain text links: yes, but links connected to a figure: no. Too bad.
Hook links to a Curio idea space work well when used in other apps, but you can’t paste a Hook link so it’s associated with a figure. Apparently Curio does not see that as a proper hyperlink.
Organize > New Blank Idea Space, in the menu bar. Agreed that the toolbar almost feels cluttered but I guess that’s what right-click > Customize Toolbar is for.
As another newcomer I would push back a bit on this, actually. I think Curio is an app for handling complex things, so simplifying that handling might actually make it more confusing. Can’t speak to your specific example with hyperlinks though, I just type them markdown-style.
In general I think Curio has too many features for what I need it to do. Ideally I could get something in between Scapple and Curio: Scapple’s mapping, but with multiple spaces and easier file linking/embeds. Might end up being something I need to build myself though.
