General comments about Markdown.

Hi @DoctorBrown

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I'd be happy to share mine. 😃

Why do you continue to introduce major features piecemeal across all the devices you support? No doubt it's a resource constraint. I could be wrong but this will inevitability lead to slow adoption and frustration because of the issues moving the data among the devices. I've already read several posts describing just this issue. I would hold off releasing it until it's completed for the majority of the devices.

We're working toward significantly narrowing these gaps. With 1Password 8, we moved to an entirely different model for development. Instead of separate teams being responsible for each platform we support, each working on their own schedule and codebase, we've moved to feature/function area-based teams with a unified core codebase. One of our founders, Dave, wrote more about this approach here:

Behind the scenes of 1Password for Linux | by Dave Teare | Medium

As a result of these efforts, the parity between our desktop apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux, along with our mobile apps on iOS and Android, should be pretty darn good. But there are a couple of big pieces that are outstanding. Our https://my.1Password.com web app has yet to use the core. Our browser extensions utilize it, but not to the degree our desktop and mobile apps do. We plan to narrow those gaps in the future, but they are large time-intensive projects.

Long story short: we're aware of it and have taken concrete steps to minimize it. We continue to work on further improvements in that regard.

Why, in this day and age, do we have to live with embedding actual formatting syntax into a document? And another format syntax to learn! At least from a Windows (primarily), Android (limited editing), and Apple (limited editing) user. I surmise that there are plenty of editing apps that are WYSIWYG that can accomplish all that with a formatting tool bar and such.

We chose markdown because that accounted for the substantial volume of customer requests. E.g.:

Feature Request: Markdown for Secure Notes

We built what folks were asking for. 😄 It helped that we were already using markdown extensively, and it is inherently human readable even when not rendered, whereas RTF is not. Also, RTF is proprietary, whereas markdown is an open standard.

Why not license one (if needed) and integrate it into your apps? Why not use a more standard rtf editor?

A WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") editor could be built on top of the existing system. That is something we'd consider. I'll be happy to record your request for that with our Product team. 👐

Ben

ref: PB-34127298

Ben

I really appreciate the time you took to respond to me. And I'm definitely more enlightened that I was before...

Instead of separate teams being responsible for each platform we support, each working on their own schedule and codebase, we've moved to feature/function area-based teams with a unified core codebase.
Glad to hear that. This has been a source of frustration at times. I welcome the effort.
We plan to narrow those gaps in the future, but they are large time-intensive projects.
I can appreciate that it is very time-intensive. I believe you will get much better user satisfaction after all the dust has settled.
We chose markdown because that accounted for the substantial volume of customer requests. E.g.:
Was this just from the most vocal users, or were you able to run a survey to see what editor features are most wanted?
I think getting the WYSIWYG going is important. I, for one, won't use Markdown in Notes until I don't have to learn a new formatting syntax that I'll rarely use.
I just tried it out and if you copy/paste the text out of 1P the formatting is lost. To me this is an issue. In Mozilla Thunderbird you can copy from Word or a browser and paste into a message and the formatting is retained (or chose to paste without formatting). This is just a quick test I ran so I'm sure there are things I've missed. This is what I'd expect from an editor today. I just tried it and formatting is not retained going the other way either.

I have a very frustrating incompatibility among platforms on the PIM app I use. In this case they introduced Tables into the desktop app, but neglected to do it on Android. And when I use bidirectional sync, the Androd wipes out the Tables on the desktop. Not cool.

But the PIM app does retain similar formatting to and from other apps, like Word.

One of the downsides of the 1Password Markdown implementation is the limited feature set. Personally, I severely miss the functionality to create a table and to create indenting. It's not possible to organize structured text this way.

Since 1Password is mainly used for storing short and concise information, and such structured information often comes 2-dimensional as table, this is really something missing. Being able to just make text bold, bigger or cursive makes it like some kind of a toy, but not for real usage.

I will share a quick personal experience about the Markdown formatting option that was a bit of an issue:

I have some Secure Notes where I still stored some old passwords that I wanted to keep in case I need to remember it at some point (i.e. some old device, or service that I have not yet remembered to change). Some of these weren't that important enough to justify creating brand new logins.

At some point, in the process of "moving" some of these passwords from one Secure Note to a different Secure Note, I just highlighted the passwords I needed and pasted it... Because some of these passwords contained special characters that would show up as formatting, of course, that meant I copied wrong passwords, which I didn't realize some time later. Lol. Luckily, I was able to recover from non-1Password sources, but it might have been a potential issue.

Three things I learned from this:

1. Whenever I install 1Password on a new device, I ensure to turn off Markdown the first thing.
2. Of course, I can avoid this by going to "Edit" and then copying information from there. But, I don't usually require formatting; so, why risk it.
3. WYSIWYG would be great. I didn't realize people specifically requested Markdown formatting.

Just a personal experience. No feedback needed. Thanks.

Thanks for your additional feedback folks.

Was this just from the most vocal users, or were you able to run a survey to see what editor features are most wanted?

We gather feedback from our customers via feature request emails or here in the 1Password Support Community and pass this along to the Product team by way of an Insight.

I think getting the WYSIWYG going is important.

This request has previously been sent off to the team for consideration.

Regarding the use of tables in Secure notes, I've created a new Insight for the teams consideration and sent this along to our team.

ref: PB 34215711

@lodaka - We appreciate the details and feedback about your experience Markdown formatting. I've included a request for the inclusion of a WYSIWYG editing tool on your behalf. 👍

ref: PB 34214598