[DONE] Bring back expandable Rich Text boxes - please!

I just noticed that one of the key features for my team - the ability to expand Rich Text boxes so they take up the screen - has been removed. This was a key feature for us and I’m not really sure why there would be a need for the Fibery UX team to remove it - I pretty much think the UX/UI in Fibery is about as good as there is in the market, very well thought-out and deliberate improvements that almost always are spot on and helpful. But this one I don’t understand.

Some points:

  1. Docs are not full-class citizens in Fibery (for example you can’t find them by public ID in search), and in fact we think you can use Entities to meet every need you have for a doc, and we do just that. We have named various db’s in fact to serve as specific types of docs that a team might need (Marketing, Dev Wiki, etc.). It is useful to have a state of a doc as well, so entities meet that need. However, one of the key ways you can use entities as full-fledged documents is by maximizing all the capabilities of the Rich Text boxes. One of them was to pop the Rich Text box open onto the full screen and write away!

  2. I think one of the greatest features of Notion that sets it apart, and is almost possible in Fibery, is that everything is a page and therefore of equal status. Importantly, you can reference everything in Notion equally. We still can’t reference views or spaces, which I have had many instances of wanting to do, if nothing else to have a hyperlink in a doc (which in my case I’m using an entity for that doc) so another user can easily click over to the app in question. Apps have come a long way - we now have descriptions, the ability to see all entities within an app by clicking on it, etc. - all stuff that wasn’t around and are good improvements since I first came to Fibery in Oct. 2019. But I never thought we needed docs as a separate item-type in Fibery alongside Entities, since entities have just about all you would need to write a document. One of the greatest aspects of Fibery is the flexibility and unified nature of having in essence just one “type” of item within Fibery that you need to use. This comes through with search, where you just start typing and you know you’ll find what you need (except apps, which I wish were indexed :wink:).

  3. The ability to pop out a rich text field is front and center in Coda, and I have always liked that they had that. I used Coda before Fibery, and I was very glad to discover when I first got to Fibery that it’s here, too. So without this feature, we have regressed vs. Coda

I’m not sure there is any hope of getting this put back, but I would dearly like to see it again. And curious what some of our more active correspondents such as @Oshyan or @Matt_Blais think about this one.

Thanks for listening!

Hmm, might it have been removed because they added the “Collapse Field Columns” button/option to Entities? I don’t use either one all that much because I work on a 4k monitor and generally have plenty of space. :smile: But I did like having the “Expand” option. I haven’t tested “Collapse Field Columns” enough to know if it addresses enough of the same need.

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Yes! Please add this feature back. I also believe it happened when the sidebar collapse was implemented (a second time?).

Some databases have multiple rich text fields which makes the the rich text field smaller for each one added as the container itself for all rich text fields doesn’t expand.

Thanks as always for listening!

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Yes correctly @Oshyan and @cssrctech I think the intent was that the Collapse Field Columns replace this, but it is not the same functionality and I really preferred being able to open up the Rich Text box and have it on the screen like a doc. With the Collapse Field Columns, you get a different effect. If there is a technical reason we can’t have both, then that would make sense, but if it’s not a big issue to bring the expandable Rich Text boxes back, I’d really like to see that.

Thanks to you both for responding! And if either of you have a vote to spare, would appreciate you sacrificing one for this!

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Voted :+1:


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Thanks @Matt_Blais and @cssrctech for the support of this!

I’ve put in my vote, still miss it.

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Well, we decided to bring it back, thanks you all for your feedback.

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Great news, thanks guys! Very helpful

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I see they are back. Thank you again!

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