Reading ‘The Art of War’ in WorkFlowy. In style.

Some time back I came out with a post on The Power of Reading Books in WorkFlowy. Once in a while I do get books into WorkFlowy. Books that I want to suck the marrow out of. That’s a full-blown post you should check out… but how about the aesthetics of reading? Aesthetics that make it that much more of a pleasure to read anything you’ve stashed away in WorkFlowy? And how about a simple dynamic that requires no installation of anything? That’s exactly what I’ve got for you. Oh… and I’ve also got a shared list with a public domain book for you: The Art of War by a guy called Sun Tzu.

Here’s the Table of Contents (in WorkFlowy):

This is what the inside of a chapter looks like:

And this is what the same chapter looks like with just one click of a bookmarklet I put together:

What this bookmarklet does is hide everything that’s not the content you’re reading: Bullets, breadcrumb navigation, toolbar, etc. It also gives you a great web font, a white smoke background and spaces “paragraphs” out. If you’ve got something that’s worth reading over and over again, it’s not a half bad idea to get it into WorkFlowy. The Art of War is merely an example.

In the GIF below you’ll see how I jump from one chapter to another using the Alt+Shift+9/0 (Windows) OR Ctrl+Shift+9/0 (Mac) keyboard shortcuts. You’ll also see how if you click on the note area for any list that has a note (ellipsis/ 3 dots), the note expands to reveal a commentary on the thing you’re busy reading.

If you’d prefer a plain white background, I’ve created a bookmarklet for that too:

And where can you find these bookmarklets?..

Grab a drag-and-drop bookmarklet

Go along to this bare-bones page and drag whichever bookmarklet you want onto your bookmarks toolbar. Then click to activate the style… and click once again to deactivate once you’re done. If you’d like a different style, you could ask nicely in the comments section 🙂

• These bookmarklets are optimized for WorkFlowy’s “Default“, “Minimal” and “Wood” themes.

The Art of War – Sun Tzu

Here’s the shared book list for The Art of War. It took me a couple of hours to format with the commentaries in the relevant notes. (Embed it in your account by hitting the “Add it to my account” button bottom right). Enjoy!

• You can embed it in (add to) your WorkFlowy account even if you’re not a Pro user yet.
• You can duplicate it in one fell swoop if you are a Pro user (it takes up 947 bullets)… that way you can add your own notes, tag certain paragraphs, etc.