The Status of Bold, Italic and Color in WorkFlowy

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November 27, 2013

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Steve is listening to you!

So, Steve, our resident Semi Official Blogger, has been getting your emails at blog@workflowy.com. He has suggested that our fans are clamoring to hear progress on long awaited features. So, this is the first post updating you on one of them: formatting.

Formatting is coming

If you’ve been pulling out your hair asking, “Why can’t I bold, italicize, or color things in WorkFlowy???” then you’re a little bit crazy, cause you need that hair. Try a stress ball. But also, you’re in luck. Because we’re working on it. We’re about to release a version of WorkFlowy with a major technical redesign of how editing works (next week). The purpose of this release? To enable features like bold, italic, underline, color. The release won’t appear any different to you, but it lays the foundation for formatting, as well as a bunch of other cool features.

When?!?

We’ve already started working on formatting. After this release, it will probably be a month or two before it comes out. HOWEVER, we make no promises. We retain the right to decide not to do formatting, and instead do a feature that makes ponies run across the WorkFlowy page. Or unicorns. Or a T-Rex. Or maybe the much requested feature of automatically embedding cat pictures inside your WorkFlowy.

You get the point. We reserve the right not to finish it for a few months if stuff comes up, as it often does. So, get excited. But not too excited. Cause, you know, we don’t make any promises. And T-Rex.

Update for Concerned Minimalists: Don’t worry. We won’t let people make their WorkFlowy docs look like myspace pages. Things will be kept sober. Color may be relegated to tags only, for example. We won’t have ugly, ever present formatting buttons while you’re typing. And so forth. 

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Aldo de Moor
8 years ago

Hiya, I’m a WorkFlowy power user, you really get sucked into using this tool for organizing messy professional life. I was wondering, as this post was made almost two years ago and said “The Status of Bold, Italic ***and Color*** in WorkFlowy”: what happened to that tantalizing color promise? I could very much use this when creating checklists and manuals in Workflowy. I’m sure it must be at the top of your list, even before making those unicorns run across the page! 🙂 Thanks.

JZ
JZ
8 years ago

Hello, I see that bold and italics are out – will colors be coming as well? Thanks, great product.

sashalahrs
7 years ago
Reply to  JZ

We are planning to allow colors as part of formatting features, but it’s not available yet.

However, there are two unofficial Google Chrome extentions to allow color formatting….

Workflowy Painter
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workflowy-painter/boeplfofdabogkgimajcpadbnfcmkmek

Workflowy Colorful Tags
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/workflowy-colorful-tags/cmbmkopbnnbhdeknahmdkfkjogdlbdjf

JZ
JZ
8 years ago

Any progress on this feature since its posting? Would be a nice-to-have only.

j-lon
j-lon
8 years ago

Yes. Separate color options for @Tags and #Tags would be great, so they are easier to scan on the page and differentiate.

Vitaly
Vitaly
9 years ago

It would be nice to have at least 1 extra color. The page will still be neat

Takky
9 years ago

Great news! I’ve also been waiting, as @fateamenable, so long for markdown implementation to promote Workflowy as my best note taking app (honestly I’m also waiting for an Android off-line working app :P), but also a simple bold/italics formatting capabilities is a great step in that direction! Thanks for your work…

Hao Chen
Hao Chen
9 years ago

Just went pro after a few days of testing. The one feature I miss so much is bold text. Not fancy, just plan bold text to let the important stuff stand out. Thrilled to find out it is in the works!

Jesse Patel
Jesse Patel
9 years ago
Reply to  Hao Chen

Yeah, it is very close. We’re using it internally!

fateamenable
9 years ago

How will this be implemented, do you think? Myself, I’ve yearned for some markdown capabilities in Workflowy for a long time now!

jessepatel
jessepatel
9 years ago
Reply to  fateamenable

It is going to be a simple bold/italic initially. No markdown. Sorry!

fateamenable
9 years ago
Reply to  jessepatel

Oh no!! Never mind 🙂 out of interest how are you planning on implementing this? You’re going to allow a small amount of HTML?

jessepatel
jessepatel
9 years ago
Reply to  fateamenable

It is going to be just keyboard controlled. So, control/command+b and control/command+i, just like a normal text editor. And you can hit control+b and start typing, and it will be bold.

fateamenable
9 years ago
Reply to  jessepatel

Was wondering how you’re implementing it internally, as in how you’ll persistently save that information – presumably some kind of tag within the text data of nodes, such as HTML tags or some custom ones?

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