# Obsidian - Candy Canvas and Canvas Style Menu ![[images/Obsidian-Candy-Canvas-and-Canvas-Style-Menu.webp]] [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iws5DGei3w) · 25:39 · Josh Plunkett · 2024-02-03 ## Outline ### 00:00 Introduction to Canvas - Canvas ships with Obsidian: right-click a folder and choose **New canvas**. - You can add **cards** (free text), drag existing **notes** onto the board, connect them with lines and label the lines (for example "this is description"). ### 01:04 Limitations and Excalidraw - Out of the box you only get square boxes, a color choice, delete and edit, and very limited line styles. - Josh compares it with **Excalidraw**, where he uses circles, diamonds, emojis and images freely. He points to his separate Excalidraw-versus-Canvas video and says his own recommendation is *not* Canvas, partly because it gets slow. - His view is that Canvas isn't feature-complete, and the community is stepping in to fill the gaps. ### 03:31 Canvas Candy overview - **Canvas Candy** by **TfTHacker** is a paid vault plus CSS snippet (shown at about $19.99 USD; Josh rounds it to $20). TfTHacker also makes **HelpMate** (help files inside your vault) and **BRAT** (Beta Reviewers Auto-update Tool). - Buying it gets you a downloadable example vault showing new shapes, gradients, borderless cards, grouped layouts and a timeline. ![[images/Obsidian-Candy-Canvas-and-Canvas-Style-Menu-t0510.webp]] ### 05:54 Creating visual layouts - Everything in the examples is built by hand; it doesn't generate diagrams from your notes. It's visual parts pieced together with CSS (for example cards with the border removed). - Josh highlights flowchart styles with called-out headings and an **organizational chart** example he thinks suits the TTRPG crowd. - He pitches a plugin idea for developers: read properties like parent, child or sibling from NPC notes and draw a clickable family or organization chart automatically. As far as he knows, nothing does that yet. - More examples: dotted lines, left and right borders and other layouts, all done with CSS. ### 08:55 Using stencils efficiently - Canvas Candy's intended workflow is **stencils**: copy a pre-styled card from the Canvas Candy vault and paste it into your own canvas, instead of typing the `cssclasses` value into each card yourself. - Both vaults need the Canvas Candy snippet enabled. Josh finds copy-and-paste stencils inefficient for regular use. ### 10:05 Canvas Style Menu plugin - **Obsidian Canvas Style Menu** (by michaellw on GitHub) adds a right-click menu to Canvas that applies CSS classes for you, and it lists Canvas Candy support. - In February 2024 it wasn't in the community plugin store yet, so Josh installs it with **BRAT**: install and enable BRAT, choose **Add beta plugin**, paste the GitHub repository URL, tick **Enable after installing**, then **Add plugin**. - With the default menu turned on, right-clicking a card shows border options (none, dashed), transparency and opacity, rotation, shapes (circle, parallelogram) and a custom menu. ![[images/Obsidian-Candy-Canvas-and-Canvas-Style-Menu-t1240.webp]] ### 12:28 Advanced styling and links - Links get styles too: straight or elbow paths, dashed or dotted lines, thicker lines, and two-way or no-arrow connections. - Josh's verdict: the free plugin alone makes Canvas a usable flowcharting tool, so you don't need the $20 Canvas Candy for that. - Image trick: add a PNG token as a card, then set transparency and no border so images can sit on top of other images, which core Canvas handles badly. ### 15:35 Integrating candy and menus - The plugin's README says you can add common Canvas Candy CSS classes to the menu config. A GitHub issue titled "menu config for canvas candy" has a ready-made `canvas-candy.json` posted by michaellw. - Steps: download the JSON, open **Settings > Canvas Style Menu**, click **Open packages folder**, drop the JSON into that packages folder, then click the reload packages button and pick the package from the drop-down. - The Canvas Candy CSS snippet must still be installed and enabled under **Appearance > CSS snippets**. ![[images/Obsidian-Candy-Canvas-and-Canvas-Style-Menu-t1840.webp]] ### 18:29 Configuring custom styles - With both in place, right-click gives circles, parallelograms, shading, centered text, fills, colored gradients and many border choices, all still linkable to other cards and notes. - Josh shows his own testing canvas but says he stopped using it because it felt slow and clunky. - He'd like the Obsidian team to build this in, since a visual tool that can do flowcharts should ship with flowchart tools. - In Canvas Style Menu you can make your own menu entries: click plus, type a CSS class, give it a name and an icon. ![[images/Obsidian-Candy-Canvas-and-Canvas-Style-Menu-t2010.webp]] ### 21:25 Canvas vs Excalidraw - Together the two tools give Canvas "the functionality it deserves", but Excalidraw is much faster for him. Canvas stutters and screen-tears when he drags large boards around. - He grants that Canvas's connection dots are nicer to use than Excalidraw's edge-snapping. Still, he's going back to Excalidraw, and the next video will likely be about Excalidraw character sheets. ### 23:26 Conclusion and resources - Thanks to TfTHacker for a review copy of Canvas Candy; links to Canvas Candy and Canvas Style Menu are in the description. - Thanks to Patreon supporters, who get the **Foundation Vault** starter vault, and an invitation to the community and support links on obsidianttrpgtutorials.com. ## Things mentioned ### Obsidian core features, plugins and snippets - **Obsidian Canvas**, the core visual board (free, built in) - **Canvas Candy** by TfTHacker, a paid CSS snippet plus example vault with stencils, about $19.99 USD ([tfthacker.com/canvas-candy](https://tfthacker.com/canvas-candy)) - **Obsidian Canvas Style Menu** by michaellw, a free plugin installed via BRAT at the time ([GitHub](https://github.com/michaellw/Obsidian-Canvas-Style-Menu)), plus the community `canvas-candy.json` menu package from its GitHub issues - **BRAT (Beta Reviewers Auto-update Tool)** by TfTHacker, free, for installing beta plugins - **HelpMate** by TfTHacker, free, for help files inside a vault - **Excalidraw** plugin, free, Josh's preferred whiteboard and diagram tool - CSS snippets (Appearance settings) and the `cssclasses` card property ### Ideas and use cases - Flowcharts, timelines and organizational charts for TTRPG factions and NPCs - A wished-for plugin that builds NPC family or organization charts from note properties - Layering token images on canvas cards ### Websites and support - [Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials](https://obsidianttrpgtutorials.com/), with community and support links - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) - [Josh Plunkett on Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/JPlunkett), paid, includes the Foundation Vault - Josh's earlier Excalidraw-versus-Canvas comparison video ## Bios - **Josh Plunkett** is an Australian creator who runs Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials, a YouTube channel and website teaching tabletop game masters to run campaigns in Obsidian. He supports it through Patreon, where members get his Foundation Vault. - **TfTHacker** is a prolific Obsidian community developer behind BRAT, HelpMate and other tools, and the author of the paid Canvas Candy styling kit. - **michaellw (Michael LW)** develops the Obsidian Canvas Style Menu plugin and posted the Canvas Candy menu package that links the two.