More than 3 font colours

Hello,

After 10 years of development there’s a story behind each design decision I guess :slight_smile:

We always thought 3 colors are just enough to prioritize. But we couldn’t decide between bg colors and font colors. Even 10 years ago Checkvist customers had different preferences.

So in the (very) beginning there were 1, 2, 3 keys for the three font colors, and shift-1, shift-2, shift-3 for background colors.

Soon after we’ve realized there were not just English/international keyboards, but also German/Czech ones - where you need the Shift to press any number.

Voile - 1, 2, 3 for font colors, 4, 5, 6 - for background colors.

Now we have a plan to make the colors customizable - you’ll have all 9 keys - and an opportunity to select a color (font or backround) for each number. Something similar to the tag color selection, most probably.

Hope we can release it as soon as possible – but not sooner :wink:

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No problems, thanks.

I’m glad you have doing something about this, and that sounds great. :tada:
Is there is a shortkey for any color? I mean I use 1, 2, 3… to quickly switch a pre-defined color, and use a special key, like 0 or 9 to select a not pre-defined color, when I press this key, a panel open, and let me select. this will give users the most choices. Thanks!

2 Likes

Well, this is an interesting idea! Have 8 colors with 1-8 shortcuts, then 9 for ‘select’ panel, and 0 to revert color back to the defaults. I like it :clap:

By the way, if we were to add smart syntax for colors/priorities – would something like !, 3!, etc. work? Any other ideas?

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Hi,

That sounds great - can I ask if it would still be possible to return the font colour to black by pressing the same shortcut key (e.g. Press 1 to get red, then 1 again to get back to black). I find that more intuitive than press the 0 shortcut key. I don’t know about anyone else.

Thanks

I think a color syntax would be useful, because the color info will be in the plain text, and can be modified in a batch way using Regex or just simple replace.
!, 3! maybe too simple to describle what color is, and cannot be used for inline text. But for now that’s OK.
If you can extend markdown, and use something like {css-style| text} (eg., {color: red|text} ) or anything else, there will be more fun.

Actually, it works both ways :slight_smile: You can toggle a color with the same shortcut, or press ‘0’. We’ll keep it like this in the future.

Ah, I see. Color syntax you are talking about is a bit different thing. In Checkvist, colors serve also as priorities. You can search for ‘color:red’ or for ‘priority:one’, for example. Having several red words in the list item can be confusing in such environment :thinking:

If Markdown supported the text color syntax, it would work. But as long as I know, it’s not supported, and we don’t want to write custom extensions at the moment :slight_smile:

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I’d like to have a special syntax for priorities. Should work with import/export (semantically, not just by color). Currently I’m using tags for this: #p1, #p2, #p3.

Regarding the priorities smart syntax we considered something like !1 smart syntax. And, make colors for priorities customizable.

@Ralf What do you mean work semantically with import/export, for which scenario?

Thanks,

Import/Export: It should be possible to export and import priorities. Currently, it’s just color that’s exported (in some formats). The term “semantically” should differentiate the meaning “that’s a priority 1 task” from the visual representation color: red. I guess all import/export formats have to be revisited to find a better representation than color (or nothing).

Scenario: For me, Checkvist is one tool of many. Data should flow from one tool to the other. OPML is the intermediate format if I want to do some XSLT processing. Checkvist’s export to OPML has a checkbox for “task color”, the result is something like color="red". Once the colors can be configured by the user, I cannot know which priority that is. If, on the other hand, there is an attribute like priority="1", there can be a (XSLT-)rule that adds a :star: to all priority 1 tasks, for instance. Or filter/group those priority 1 tasks.

It is possible to use old-fashioned html for unlimited colors, e.g., font color=orange. Just add it to the beginning of the line.

Yes, indeed that is possible. But better would be a way that retains the priority information.

The “!” character should be reserved for Boolean NOT modifiers (for inverting a search tag) - e.g., !#tag, !color:1 !due:now, etc…
That’s for when you finally get to improve the search :slight_smile:

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@Ralf Using priority=1 in OPML is a good idea and we will definitely add it, especially when we will make colors customizable.

@Paul_Sampang That’s right, font color=orange works for HTML but it won’t work for filtering search. On the other hand, people care about priorities, not color values.

@xBergade Glad to see you here :slight_smile: Boolean NOT is in plans for this year, but closer to the end of this year, sorry. My idea was to enforce NOT and OR wording in search conditions to make it less cryptic and more clear. If we’ll use ! for NOT, which smart syntax would you suggest for priorities?

Thanks!

+1 - the colours provided aren’t the best on dark mode.

In dark mode colors may be not best but we tried to adapt them to dark scheme.
Is there a situation when they look really bad? Could you make a screenshot?

Thanks,

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This would be AWESOME!!!

I find background colours much more visually distinguishing than font colours. I don’t need nine priorities but knowing me I’m sure I’ll find a use for all nine slots!!!

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Same here, I only use background colors in my custom CSS.

Hello,
Just posted an update – you can now test 9 colors and color customization on Beta.checkvist.com :sunny:
We still have to finish and polish it, but with your help and feedback polishing will be much more thorough :slight_smile: