Sometimes serendipity runs its course – like the almost happenstance privilege I get to blog in this space… or stumbling upon JavaScript that powers a whole new subset of WorkFlowy use cases: the ability to embed web content from a variety of sources right into your outlines. I don’t understand the first thing about JavaScript (only how to copy-paste), so you’re in good company. Now let me show you a couple of gems I’ve been polishing.
Below you’ll see a handful of apps and services I was able to get to show up in WorkFlowy – each of which have highly practical potential. I’m positive that more than one will pique your interest…
MindMeister Mind Maps
If you fancy yourself a spatial thinker and need some creative free-form elbow room, you might want to try embedding a MindMeister mind map at the top of your outline and eyeball it periodically:
- You get the magic of 100% of your MindMeister features right there in WorkFlowy, including a switch to full-screen.
- I’ve created a Stylish Style that hides MindMeister’s blue toolbars (like in the above GIF)… or alternatively, within the CSS you can also tinker with some toolbar customization options I’ve tucked away.
- You can embed the exact same mind map in multiple places in WorkFlowy.
- You can import/ export your outlines from WorkFlowy and vice versa through plain text, while preserving outline hierarchies.
YouTube Videos
Why not just pop in a plain YouTube URL? You could (and I do)… but maybe you’ll want to watch a YouTube tutorial and take notes at the same time just thereunder:
- Here’s one real-life use case of mine: watch the first 30s of the video in this post.
Google Docs
This is a mammoth one for those Google Drive people.
- WorkFlowy doesn’t do spreadsheets… but now you can embed fully functional Google Sheets spreadsheets into your outlines, as well as .rtf, .docx, .txt, and .pdf content from your Google Drive folders.
- Slot collaborative documents right into WorkFlowy project outlines.
- Use Google Docs to get email notifications on updated WorkFlowy outlines. I’ll be posting on collaboration in WorkFlowy next week!
- Use WorkFlowy to outline and then paste into a Google Doc.
- Use Google Doc’s blazingly fast Voice Typing tool. No voice-to-text extension out there is going to give you the speed and accuracy that Google does. The following GIF was recorded at real speed on an average Windows laptop. You’ll see that you can include all sorts of dictation commands, including paragraph breaks and punctuation. I could have spoken way faster and I would have gotten the exact same results:
Shared Evernote Notes
Shared Evernote notes are view-only. You knew that. Maybe you just want access to audiovisual material/ documents/ charts that you’ve stashed in Evernote… in WorkFlowy, right there in the thick of your project outlines. A couple of examples in the GIF below:
- Some data you might want to log in simple charts: Word count logs or daily schedules.
- You can hit the “View in Evernote” button to open up any note, ready to edit in your Evernote desktop client.
- You’ve also got instant online access to files stored in Evernote by clicking on them: in the below example, a PDF.
Gingko (Markdown Preview)
I write my blog posts 100% in WorkFlowy in what they call Markdown language. I then copy to a Markdown editor called Gingko so that I can convert it to HTML… and then paste that into WordPress. The process takes about 10-20 seconds tops. Below you can see that I’ve embedded a Gingko Tree into WorkFlowy. Actually you can’t see the tree. What you do see is one Gingko card within that tree that I’d previously zoomed into by hitting “F”. I pop my Markdown into that, copy the HTML… and I’m good to go:
Blog posts far and wide
Below you’ll see that I’ve embedded…
- A chapter of a web book entitled, “The Complete Guide to Understanding Consumer Psychology”.
- This blog post you’re currently reading.
Now you can scroll through a post and copy the useful bits of information to a WorkFlowy outline (or not) without having to switch tabs!
…
This is how we do it
Here’s a shared WorkFlowy list with instructions on how to enable iframe in WorkFlowy, including details on how to get and embed links for each of the examples given above. Click on “Add it to my account” (bottom right).
Tips
- To hide your embedded links, put them in the 2nd line of a note
- Play around with the zoom % in your browser to give you the ideal iframe dimensions.
We want more
Once you’ve set up iframe in WorkFlowy (with a little help from TamperMonkey), you will ALSO be able to do the following things!:
- (1) Swap out background images for different WorkFlowy themes.
- (2) Set any font for any outline.
- (3) Inline images. Yes! Inline images right there in WorkFlowy 🙂
A shout-out
Please give @wizmann some love in this tweet. Not only is he the guy behind the iframe code used in this post, but also the inline images code and the background images code in previous posts.
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