SURPRISE: We have a brand new text editor! Our amazing alchemist beta testers have given it the final rundown, it’s already gaining mythic tiers, and it’s ready for use!

What’s new in World Anvil’s Visual Editor?

We’ve taken all your feedback on board and made these key changes to your writing experience:

  • No BBCode for formatting! Format faster and see it in real-time.
  • Autolinker and browser Spell Checker (and loads of other improvements!) now included.
  • Instant tables! Instant lists (bullets and numbers)!
  • Drag and drop images directly into your texts
  • Quicker to embed timelines, maps, family trees and other entities, using a / command menu
  • Add spoilers, key value pairs, and dice roller buttons in seconds.

Get the full guide to World Anvil’s Visual Editor! 

Where can I play with this new editor?

If you want a taster, the Visual editor is already available for everyone when you create articles and secrets! You can also select the Visual editor for a new world, which means you’ll see it for article creation and edit (quick and full edit), timelines, and more.

In the notebook, the new Visual editor has also been implemented! Your new notes will automatically be created in the new Visual editor (called “Standard editor” in the notebook). If you want to, you can still create “plain” notes like the old style notes. For example, some users find the notebook a great place to store BBCode or CSS snippets, and plain text works better for those cases. If that’s you, just toggle the drop down from “Standard Editor” to “Plain Editor [BBCode]” when you create your note.

Don’t worry – nothing has changed with your old notes. They’ll still be in the “plain editor”. In the future, we’ll be bringing in the chance to update your old notes to the new editor, but that’s not available right now.

Eventually, this editor will also replace the old WYSIWYG editor (Plato) across worlds. We’ll be rolling it out across pre-existing worlds currently set to Plato (Old WYSIWYG)!

Have you tried out the Visual editor? Let us know how you found it via our feedback form! 

Feedback is so critical for making World Anvil better, so please fill in the feedback form if you’ve tested out the new Visual editor. We do extensive testing, but when YOU GUYS (and there are LITERALLY MILLIONS of you!) let us know how you found something, we can get the breadth of feedback to know how its working, and what improvements still need to be made!

Why did World Anvil create a new Visual Editor?

Put simply, you asked us for it!  Following your feedback in January’s Forge the Future 2024 (our annual survey), we’ve invested a lot of time, effort and research this year into creating a shiny new Visual Editor. You asked for an editor which was more beginner friendly, and didn’t need BBCode to format. You also asked for an easier way to make tables, upload images, and see your formatting in your text in real time. And we listened! Of course, the new editor also still had to work with article mentions, map (and other WA entity) embeds, and all the other major functions of World Anvil! It’s been a tough ride, but we’ve incorporated all your feedback into the new Visual Editor.

And it seems like we’ve got it right so far! Here’s what our alchemist beta testers are saying:

  • Directly creating and editing embedded secrets is the best feature ever!!! | -Soullink
  • I am loving this new interface. Especially that you can edit articles without having to exit the current page | -coolg1319
  • The updated tools are wonderful! Convenience all day long! | -jdebroart
  • Love the new article quick create. The icon select next to the title is ✨ amazing | -pomegarnett
  • Love the new create button! | -mochimanoban
  • The title bit from the new create button is REALLY RAD! I love it | -incaseofgrace
  • I already love it | -milladamen
  • Wow, just wow! | -graylion.
  • I barely noticed [the UI changes], it was so smooth and nice. | -nnie

What can’t the Visual Editor handle?

The visual editor is designed for standard formatting and embedding on World Anvil. You can add line breaks, headers and quotes, alouds, spoilers, images, etc. Lists and tables of all kinds are easier than ever. And you can do fancy things with colours you couldn’t before! You can, of course, also embed World Anvil maps, family trees, aloud and quote boxes, and secrets.

However, the Visual Editor isn’t designed for really advanced formatting. If you’re a World Anvil POWER user, and you like to use advanced BBCode formatting like containers, subscriber containers, or columns in your articles, then you should stick with the Euclid editor.

By default (and based on your feedback!), Euclid users will still have the visual editor on Article Create and Secret Create. However, Euclid users will be able to change this later, by world, to a “Euclid Everywhere” setting!

And if you’re a CSS wizard, don’t worry! There’s no impact on your world and article CSS, regardless of which editor you used to create it.

So what are your thoughts on the Visual editor? Let us know via our feedback form! 

 

Psst! If you created your account after 1st October please ignore this announcement! You already have the new editor in your world!