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Navigate sibling page

The concept¶

Andy’s note It’s hard to navigate to unlinked “neighbors” in associative note systems would be address with buttons to go to sibling notes.

The most basic implantation is

  • put notes in a folder
  • use < Previous and Next > to navigate between the notes.

MkDocs material supports this, see navigation
MkDocs auto falls back on folder structure.

The nav configuration setting in your mkdocs.yml file defines which pages are included in the global site navigation menu as well as the structure of that menu. If not provided, the navigation will be automatically created by discovering all the Markdown files in the documentation directory.

The mkdocs material theme describes some other great navigation concepts

Disadvantage¶

  • Less minimalistic UI
  • Might link unrelated notes in a flat hierarchy setup, popular in the Zettelkasten community.
  • maintaining a nav file wastes time if not automated

Obsidian plugin ✅¶

Obsidian navigate plugin
  • Next & Previous visual button.
  • customizable next & previous, visualized at the bottom (or top?) of the note.
    e.g. define nav-next & nav-previous in the frontmatter
    use folder hierarchy as default.
    navigate sibling page-1674170180221.jpeg
    Created a forum thread to discuss this plugin idea

the 2hoplink plugin can be used as reference, since it adds page-links at bottom of file.

Solution¶

the author from quick explorer got back to me and provided a solution.

  1. install the plugins
    - quick explorer - for previous & next command
    - commander - for adding command buttons

  2. On hovering the top bar, a button appears to add custom command buttons.
    - Add the previous file & next file commands.
    - For icon use double left << & double right arrow >>

Reference
  • in-depth discussion on a previous and next button in the daily notes plugin, and workarounds with templates.

  • short thread, repeating the same
    It mentions the same concept exists for breadcrumbs too.

  • there are default Obsidian commands for Open next daily note and Open previous daily note, but no buttons. there used to be, not sure where this is

  • thread requesting hotkeys for this feature
  • popular thread requesting this
  • quick explorer plugin adds hotkeys for this feature. But no visual preview.

PKM UX browser navigation

Obsidian plugin