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.
Looks great Frank! Really classy and easy on the eyes!
Thanks David, I know you’ll be making good use of this for your reading in WorkFlowy 🙂
I am blown away by how easy this makes reading when in workflowy! I will “flowy” this way more often
I use this all the time. Glad you like it Richard!