Navigation

Navigation, in contrast with the Review or Discovery functions, provides "maps" showing paths to concepts and information you may wish to visit. Review and Discovery, on the other hand, help you analyze and gain insight from information you've found through your navigation.

An analogy based on a real map may help explain journal navigation. Browse a map of the United States and focus on Florida. Florida reminds you of the fun you had at your favorite beach in Key West. You remember the afternoon it clouded over early and stated to rain. You retreated to the canopy of the beach restaurant where you watched the rain on the ocean and talked with other beach people. Your journal entry reminds you that, rather than being ruined by the rain, that day turned out to be just different―mellow and soothing. That memory leads you to navigate your journal to all entries related to "rain" on vacation or weekend days (i.e. Discovery).

Navigating your journal is useful when you only have a general idea about what you want to review. You refine, direct, and redirect your review along the way. Navigation can be user-directed or machine-suggested. Free association, links, detours, and link suggestions are great ways to navigate your memoirs. Its easy to jump from concept-to-concept, or date-to-date, and date-to-tag, and to categorize, or collect information as you navigate through your recorded thoughts.

Structured Navigation  
With both Guided Navigation and structured Queries you can change one or many of the parameters in order to broaden, focus, or redirect your navigation path. Because dropdown menus list the search parameters you previously used, you can keep mixing search attributes until you arrive at the exact information you seek.

With the Guided Navigation Template you can provide values for any of the parameters you wish to use to describe your interests:

Calendar Navigation 
Now & Then's Intelligent  Calendar intuitively understands how you use dates, ranges, days, timelines, and time arcs to record and review your journal information. The Calendar Browser provides an involving way to navigate your life memories. Because all of your journal entries are date stamped, you only need to enter a date or time period, or point & click in the Calendar Browser. You can zoom in from decade-to-year-to-day and focus on a specific time period and / or subject matter.

Use any date range, or any calendar measurement including "This day (or date) each year in my history" "This date in my future". You can populate your calendar or timeline view with search-specific information such as "golf outings" or "furnace filter change schedule" or "type of exercise". Of course, you can always switch to the Discovery mode and create "Virtual" Calendars and timelines to measure, compare and contrast various aspects of your past.

see: Map & Tree based Navigation

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