Grant Rosson has an announcement on reddit about his new package org-side-tree. The idea is that you can have a sidebar that lists all the headings in an Org file. That doesn’t sound too exciting but you can use the sidebar to navigate to headings within the Org file. Similarly, changes to headings in the Org file are reflected in the sidebar listing.
This may or may not seem useful to you but I’ve seen lots of writers who wanted exactly this capability for their writing projects. I think (but I’m not sure) that it’s something that Schrivener offers and is one of the most wished-for capabilities by those using Org mode for writing. It makes it easy to navigate between chapters and scenes in a novel or other long form piece.
Rosson has a video that demonstates the use of org-side-tree and its capabilities. It’s worth watching. There are a lot nuances involved with its operation that make navigating a large Org file easy and pleasant.
I don’t (currently) have any Org files that I need to traverse. Usually it’s just a matter of adding some text at the end but if I were working on a novel or long paper, I would definitely use this package. Take a look at the video and see what you think. The video is 6 minutes, 21 seconds so it such be easy to fit in.
Org-side-tree is not yet in Melpa but presumably it will appear there once it gets some traction.