Looks like on August 15, we'll all be forced into the WYSIWYG editor. :(

[tzsebe]

I noticed an ominous message above my editor box today, "On August 15, your editing experience for card descriptions and comments will be updated." (haha I couldn't paste this in, it kept pasting it to the end of the message -  it looks like "paste" doesn't work correctly in this editor - dear me, I hope this bug isn't in the new Trello editor too)

I've been going to trello.com/my/labs and disabling the WYSIWYG editor every time I logged in on a new browser.

I like to use Markdown, but I hate when the editor changes formatting on me as I type. Just let me write my markdown and I'll tell you when I want to preview it!

Will there be a way to get the old mode (or just "disable update as you type" in the new editor), or are we stuck with needlessly-distract-as-you-type mode? I can't be the only one who hates the new experience, but I'm not finding much discussion about it... so maybe I am?

[Taco Joe]

> At this point, very few people are still using the old Markdown editor. For a long time, there wasn't much downside to keeping it around for people who preferred it, so we were happy to leave it as an option. However, that's no longer the case

Gee, I wonder why, when you force users onto the new experience without asking them and whenever their cookies get reset, then obfuscate how to turn it off. 

[mnicky]

I want to echo Taco's point - the option to keep the old editor was not very visible, so it's understandable that many couldn't find that and are using a new editor.

Even some advanced users at my  workplace, for example. E.g., only recently I found one guy that was very frustrated  with the new editor and would LOVE to switch to the old one, but he didn't know that it's possible (at least until August 15th).
The switch in labs is pretty decently hidden ;)

So I want to say that the fact that majority of your users use the new editor doesn't mean that they wouldn't use the old one if they knew how to. You should take this into consideration when making decisions.

@Caity On the other hand, couldn't the option to edit raw markdown be added to the new editor? This way, everyone would be satisfied, even the minority of us, Trello's advanced users.

[Seweryn Kalemba]

Hello Trello community,

I have some good news. :) I've developed a browser extension that will bring back legacy markdown editor in the place of new WYSIWYG editor. The extension will be lightweight, available free of charge and won't collect any of your personal data. It will come with other handy features, so make sure to check it out.

It's currently in the process of review for Chrome Webstore. An extension published in there can be installed in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Opera.

I will update you once published in this thread.

Update (15/08/2024): 

The extension has been approved and published to Chrome Webstore: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-trello/dnhdnenpngcecekbhklemaidbdpibiae

Update (17/08/2024): 

The extension is available on Firefox Addons as well: https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/better-trello/

[Anthony Smith]

@Caity, I find that quite a patronising way of avoiding the real issue and question.

Perhaps you would like to justify your misdirection? 

[Tyler Johnson]

As Taco Joe points out, this is the result of a user steering dark pattern that  isn't about user preference, but about manipulating users into a predetermined choice. 

[Taco Joe]

and look, not even the atlassian proper WYSIWYG markdown editor works LOL (see how it failed the block quote?)

[Adrian Williams]

This all makes me very sad.
Sad because I don't have the energy to move to another platform.
And sad because I'll probably have to.

[Anthony Smith]

I agree; this was not a preference; it was a forced change with no obvious method of reversion.

The WYSIWYG editor is so bad in Trello I generally can live with them if required, but it seems that Trello has gone down a path with their Wysiwyg to make it as NOT user-friendly as possible, defeating the entire point of them.

Example: (1 of 100's I could give)

In what universe did the Trello developers believe that if I want to copy some data out of a single cell in a spreadsheet and paste it into the description on the card, what I really want is to NOT paste what I copied and instead upload the entire spreadsheet to the card.

Not only is this beyond insane, but it could have GDPR and security implications. What if there is sensitive information in that spreadsheet? Perhaps I wanted to copy and paste a piece of information that was not sensitive, but no one... NO ONE!!! I would expect to upload the spreadsheet upon ctrl+v.

With respect, this decision must have been made by someone who lives in an echo chamber and listens to no one but his or her inner monologue about what a great job he or she is doing.



@Caity if I just keep changing your monthly payment for your phone to a higher price and offering no practical way for you to stop me, I am ok to assume that means you want to pay more?

Please reconsider this and escalate!

[Brian Schack]

> At this point, very few people are still using the old Markdown editor. For a long time, there wasn't much downside to keeping it around for people who preferred it, so we were happy to leave it as an option.

I accept your assertion that the majority of users use the WYSIWYG editor. But as others have said, the WYSIWYG editor is the default, and switching to the Markdown editor is difficult (and soon to be impossible).

If you had given us a free and fair choice between editors, then higher usage would indicate our preference. But since you set a default and then enforced it, higher usage indicates your preference.

[RichardJECooke]

Thanks @Caity , but there's no way to copy Markdown *into* the textfield anymore is there? The `view markdown` option is readonly.

[Robin S]

"continuing to support both of these experiences would slow us down"

Yeah, because it's soooo hard to maintain a simple markdown editor for a big company like Atlassian... even though there are so many great open source components available 🙄.

In my opinion, this is the usual kind of "dictatorship" of too large companies who think to know exactly what their users want... like Microsoft and their great start menu in Windows 8. Or more recently Google with their new Google Maps Gray in Gray styling because some UX designer got bored. Or very recently, Sonos and their "great new" apps where ratings are dropping massivley for months now.

I don't think WYSIWYG ist a bad thing, but it seems to be really hard to do it right. I just fighted with this simple editor of yours to quote the line in the beginning... in the end I decided to simply format it in italic... Or just before in Trello, trying the new editor again: after just a minute the editor got confused to separate a bullet list from a formatted headline above and mixes it all up so I had to delete most things and try again. Markdown on the other side means to precisly define what you want, when your software can't.

The funny thing is: In our pretty large company I can nearly every day see tech experts, software architects and product managers fighting with your editor experience in Confluence, especially when taking meeting notes where things have to go fast. But it's hard to get rid of it (and it's horribly dumb search functionality) because it's tightly integration with the "beloved" Jira. At least we are going to say adiós to Bitbucket even though it's one of the better products regarding UX (but not for stability).

Honestly, I kind of like the decision because that way it's easier for me to finally move on to something else after all these years. I don't need most of this extra stuff and paid extension nonsense. Maybe the free Obsidian with some Kanban extension, at least for personal use.

By the way, we live now in the AI-supported age. I can imagine that in a near future people will be able to specify in ChatGPT-style what kind of software or app they want and it gets build to their preferences from basic building blocks. Something that everyone can use and the AI could ask in a polite way if it should adapt the app to a specific working style after some day of usage.... something individually customizable. Ideally as simple as: "Build me a fullstack application that works like Trello with these and those features including mobile apps for Android + iOS and deploy it to AWS"... done.

[JD]

This may be the nail on the coffin for me after using Trello (and paying for it) for longer than I can remember.

As a developer, I find it appalling that such a SIMPLE and already-present feature would be axed after a non-trivial amount of community users have repeatedly vocalized their dislike for the new editor for a long time.

To say "At this point, very few people are still using the old Markdown editor" after everyone was forced to the new editor and the setting to turn it off was effectively hidden is patronizing and offensive.

To say "continuing to support both of these experiences would slow us down" is an outright lie.

[Anthony Smith]

@Caity Thanks, bug report filed.

As for 1, 2 and 4. No, you have not answered those questions, you have danced around the edge of them.

But I appreciate you probably have some supervisor preventing you from giving direct answers or inhibiting your ability to just be honest, so I won't push you into a difficult position; just again express disappointment and the lack of openness and transparency. 

[RichardJECooke]

How are we supposed to copy markdown into and out of cards with the new editor though?  I backup long cards that we use as notes in plaintext, and with the new editor this is going to be impossible.

[Juan Ochoa]

That is good to know up front.

One of the only reasons I have stayed with Trello for so long (basically since the first year of the service) was the markdown mode since I use MD for writing notes practically everywhere. I rarely every use the old M$ editors, or GDocs, or any similar. They slow me way, way down.

Follow-up question:

Is there a bulk download mode for our information? Or is manually copying and deleting our old cards, lists and boards the only way? Thx!

Edit: note that I am looking for a way to download the data and keep the markdown format. The JSON and/or CSV formats would probably require writing a bash script to convert them back to markdown, and that might be too error prone. So, not the path I want to take.

[Seweryn Kalemba]

@mnicky It will be available for Firefox too :)

@Adrian Yes, once I clear up the code I will publish the repository on GitHub and it will be available for community contribution.

[mnicky]

> "continuing to support both of these experiences would slow us down"

Thinking more about this...

They don't mind slowing _us_ (their users) down with a new editor. They mind _them_ being slowed down. Probably wise to move elsewhere...

[Edward Walker]

I am one of the people still using the old Markdown editor, mainly because of its support for nested quotes.

Quite often I will quote part of someone else's comment to give context to my own reply — especially if the ticket has a few different conversations going on in it (this is my approach to solving the problem in https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/How-to-create-a-nested-response-in-a-card-s-comment-feed/qaq-p/2458089).
In this case, it's very handy to be able to quote exact formatting, including dot points, lists, or indeed other quotes in their comments.

This works fine in Markdown, as Markdown blocks like quotes and lists are recursive.

But the new editor blocks are not, so if I quote someone else's list, quote, etc. it makes a mess of the formatting. This is especially bad if I'm quoting emails or other documents that do have nested formatting.

Until this is fixed, I don't consider the new editor a full-featured replacement for Markdown, and I will remain with the Markdown editor for as long as possible. I've also been encouraging my team to switch back until nested quotes are supported.

[Anthony Smith]

They are avoiding the question entirely, though. That is what is going to frustrate people more than anything. If you make a decision, fine, but stand by it and be prepared to justify it.

@Caity just essentially said "sorry not sorry" and avoided the actual question asked all together.

I have raised a bug report anyway, as this is a literal security nightmare, and they are in the firing line for making it possible to accidentally upload sensitive, possibly vulnerable individuals' private information directly onto their servers... GDPR NIGHTMARE!!

[RichardJECooke]

Looks like there is no way to do this. For other people reading this issue (or this one https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/How-can-I-switch-off-the-new-Editor-It-s-catastrophic-in-my-case/qaq-p/2260763) in future, Google Docs has just released proper markdown support. Probably better to switch to that since Trello is killing their support.

[cklvdigital]

Please vote on https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/TRELLO-601 to bring back Markdown support.

[Juan Ochoa]

Moving my boards has been slower than I would have liked, but I'm almost done. FWIW, I will be moving on to Obsidian notes. As a dev, I've seen lots of other devs I follow on various social channels and community Slacks/Discords say very good things about it. Plus as a heavy user of Neovim, that integration and plugin will be a very valuable addition to my workflow. Paying for syncing will be easy as well, though there are many, many ways to sync w/o paying Obsidian. Another bonus is that it's just text files. The plugin ecosystem is another positive for the plugins I've added. I also looked at Notion, but for the simplicity of Obsidian and just working with text files ... this made it a winner for my use cases. Good luck everybody in finding your solutions outside of Trello. Or in adjusting to the new editor for those of you that won't be able to move off Trello. And thank you to Trello for the many years it helped me stay productive and when it still worked well for my use cases. It was a very valuable tool for many years.

[Nate Reinar Windwood]

@Caity, why would anyone invent their own document format when Markdown (with a few extensions) is already perfect? Did your devs contract the “not invented here” syndrom from Microsoft? Stop mutiplying standards! Also, WYSIWYG is cancer and always leads to shitty code.

[Anthony Smith]

@Caity, it is disappointing that you need the questions made so direct, but I will do my very best to help.

1. Do you believe that you have accurate desired use statistics on the preference of MD vs WYSIWYG when the mechanism you have clearly said you have used is that you force users onto the new experience without asking them, and whenever their cookies get reset, then obfuscate how to turn it off. 

2. If you were truly catering for the end users, why did you remove the link to turn it off link/option? this lasted a very short time, I suspect this is because the lack of takeup did not fit the narrative.

3. Are you confirming that the development of the WYSIWYG editor intentionally upon copying a cell from an external spreadsheet and pasting the cell into the WYSIWYG editor expecting the contents of the cell as text instead uploads a picture of the text/cell content or the entire spreadsheet sometimes at random.

4. This is probably the most important question of all, Are you honestly saying that you had a 99% willing and active user-driven takeup of the WYSIWYG editor? No one was forced into the new editor in any way, shape, or form. This includes simply applying defaults through any mechanism that changed the editor from MD to WYSIWYG on behalf of the user.

[Seweryn Kalemba]

@Robin S Thank you for your feedback, I will make some improvements in that matter.

@mnicky and Firefox users: extension is available now for Firefox as well: https://addons.mozilla.org/pl/firefox/addon/better-trello/