Board View and Story Map

FlowBoard shows the same document in two views. Board View arranges cards in columns, as a list you work through. Story Map lays the same cards out on a canvas, where you can place them freely and see how story scenes connect. Both edit the same Markdown file, so a change in one appears in the other.

Both views are available on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

How they differ

	Board View	Story Map
Layout	One board at a time. Columns side by side, cards stacked in order.	Several boards on one canvas. Boards, columns and groups are frames; cards sit anywhere inside them.
Order	What you see is the document order.	Cards can be arranged in any position. The document order is shown in Linear view.
Connections	Not shown	Story connections, choices and rejoins are drawn as arrows between cards
Side panels	Board list and Outline (boards, columns and headings as a tree)	Outline, Story Inspector (what a card means in the story), Library (characters, images, sound, variables) and Linear view (reading)
Best for	Collecting, sorting, writing, filtering, reading (Read View, Zen Mode), exporting	Seeing the shape of a story, building branches and choices, arranging material spatially, reading one path through a story

Open and leave Story Map

• To open it, select Story Map beside the filter above the columns, or press Cmd+Shift+M. The focused card or selection is shown on the map.
• To return, select Board View, which takes the Story Map button’s place, or press Cmd+Shift+M again.

What changes the document, and what doesn’t

Story Map separates three kinds of changes:

Layout. Where cards and frames sit, how large they are, the zoom level and which boards are visible. The layout never changes the Markdown document. FlowBoard saves it in a separate file next to the document, named after it with .flowboard-map.json appended, for example novel.md.flowboard-map.json. The Story Map footer shows Layout saved when it’s up to date.

Document edits. Editing card text, changing a card’s type or properties, adding or deleting cards, and connecting or disconnecting story cards all change the document immediately, just as in Board View.

Structure proposals. Dragging a card into another column or group, or out onto the free canvas, doesn’t move it in the document right away. FlowBoard collects these moves as a proposal, and the footer shows Unapplied map changes. Select Review in the footer to see the proposed changes together with any story problems, then select Apply changes. Until you apply them, Board View and Play Mode keep using the current structure. To drop the proposal, use Discard structure.

If you switch to Board View while changes are pending, FlowBoard asks what to do: Stay in Story Map, Keep pending and open Board View, or Apply and open Board View.

Two kinds of undo in Story Map

Because layout and content are separate, Story Map has two undo histories:

History	Undoes	Keys
Document	Text, card properties, connections, added and deleted cards, applied structure changes	Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z
Layout	Moving and resizing cards and frames, arranging	Cmd+Option+Z / Cmd+Option+Shift+Z

Both are also in the Story Map toolbar’s History menu. Document undo is shared with Board View.

Keep the layout with the document

When you move, copy or rename a document outside FlowBoard, move or copy its .flowboard-map.json file along with it, or the map starts from a fresh layout. Moving the whole folder keeps them together. The layout file holds no story text: if you delete it, nothing in the document is lost, and Story Map builds a new arrangement.

On iPad and iPhone

On iPad and iPhone, you use Story Map by touch. It saves the layout next to the document, as on Mac, once you allow access to the document’s folder. Until then, layout changes stay on that device. With access, every device that opens the document, for example from iCloud Drive, uses the same layout file. Gestures and folder access are explained in Story Map on iPad and iPhone.

Next

• Story Map explains how to work on the canvas.
• How interactive stories work introduces scenes, choices and Play Mode.