Customize Look & Feel

The customizations explained in the following sections apply on per user basis, that is if you change any of the preferences mentioned it will apply to you only and others will see the Feature according to their preferences.

Size & Shape of Notes

Each of the note types can be configured to be of size: Small, Medium or Large and shape: Square or Rectangle.

Additionally Story and Step Notes can be of Extra Large size.

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Start with large and transition to small

When you first capture a User Story it might not be very obvious what are the rules and/or examples that will go into respective notes under this user story. So you might want to capture all the information that you know at the time about the user story in a free form text on an Extra Large User Story Note without worrying what is a Rule or what is a Scenario exactly etc.

Open

Then later when you have more information and are discussing the User Story during your team’s Example Mapping sessions, you can structure the information more into Rules, Scenarios, Questions etc. and make the User Story Note itself smaller.

Note Colours

You can change the preferred colour used for different note types, see example below showing where this can done for a Story Note. The colour shades available for each note type are close to the colours originally suggested by the authors of the Example Mapping and Feature Mapping techniques.

Note Border Outline

You can optionally show/hide a border around individual Notes or Note Groups using the preferences menu options highlighted below.

You can also change border colour.

Note Spacing

Use the preferences menu option highlighted below to change the note spacing.

Wide

Normal

Compact

Tight

Drag Handle

Use the preferences menu option highlighted below to configure options for note drag handle.

Top placement

Bar shape

Diamond shape

None

The note remains draggable by the bottom portion even though there is no drag handle symbol

Different colour and glow effect

Line Numbers

Use the preferences menu option highlighted below to show line numbers in each of the note’s gutter

The line numbers correspond to where the note’s content is located in the overall Feature file. This can be better seen when viewing the two modes side-by-side.

Linked Selection & Scrolling

When the preferences menu option highlighted below is selected and the editor is shown in a side-by-side view then whenever you select a note in the left pane the editor on the right will automatically scroll to and highlight the lines where the note’s content is located. Automatic selection and scrolling works in the other direction also.

This can be useful when you want to find where exactly is a particular note’s content located in what could be a longer Feature file.