Ability to Clone and Customize Default Snippets

[dwillis77]

Problem to Solve

Hello,

Initially I was going to just request a couple new predefined snippets. However, as I was writing this, a new idea came to mind - the ability to just customize existing default snippets, as a sort of a compromise between a full custom snippet and the defaults. See description of the problem it would solve below.

I know the custom snippet feature was recently added per #1760 which is great. Unfortunately, per #1996 , it is not necessarily able to retain custom formatting from the captured template for a new custom snippet.

This presents a problem for me as having to re-stylize all instances of a snippet I deploy would add a few steps to a process I use often. Specifically, the ones I'd like to create are quite similar to some of the built-in ones we have (like Info Box or Warning Box) , but because of the formatting loss , if I try to make my own I have to fix table border visibility and icon every time, and maybe other stuff as well. But I understand it would be a significant effort to implement full retention of formatting for custom snippets.

So at first I was thinking - could we perhaps just add a couple more predefined snippets for specific scenarios? These are the scenarios I deal with often in my workflow, but I imagine they may be useful for others with other use cases as well. My own use case is technical notes which commonly turn into full-fledged guides, and occasionally go a step further to be published into PDF walkthroughs or how-to for users. So these types of snippets (predefined boxes like warning and info) come in handy for that.

However, thinking more about it, the idea of customizing the default snippets came to mind - I'm wondering if it may make the feature more flexible and be a good compromise to solve the problem of custom snippets not retaining formatting , but hopefully without the significant investment that implementing retention of the custom snippet formatting would require.

New Feature/Solution

The two snippets I had in mind to request were a "Caution" and "Update" snippet boxes. But then I realized - both of these are very similar to existing default snippets (Warning Box and Info Box), but just with different background color, icon and title.

So instead - since the custom snippets may not retain formatting, but default ones work very well with their predefined formatting - would it make more sense to just add an option where users could do two things:

1. Clone existing default snippets and give them a new name and then,
2. Change the default background color and/or title of said snippets
3. (Optional) Being able to also change the default icon would be a bonus but not a requirement for me at this time.

With the ability to do 1 and 2 on that list, we could likely make the handful of default snippets that are already available work for all sorts of various scenarios.

Alternative Solutions

Alternative would be my original idea of just adding more predefined snippets. However this seems less sustainable and flexible, as users have to request things specifically rather than just be able to customize to their needs.

Therefore if it would not be a huge lift to allow cloning and customization of basic aspects of default snippets, I think that could add a fair bit of value.

Thanks in advance for the consideration.

[stevencohn]

You can already customize the built-in Notes or Warning boxes, changing the background, icon, and title. The only caveat(s) is that the width is not saved and it renders with table borders visible by default. But it's otherwise functional as is and can even be used to wrap selected content by adding the {SNIPPET_BODY} token to the box (see here)

More background: You may have missed this comment #1937 (comment)

Basically, while snippets were a genius idea (if I do say so myself) the biggest problem with them is that OneNote does not provide a nice way to save native OneNote content and then rehydrate that back in a useful way.

The "box" snippets are generated programmatically on demand; they are not templates or saved "snippets" of content that are then copied onto the page. In fact, the boxes are unique in that they can wrap selected content; they're not just standalone snippets that are injected midstream.

So, what this would mean is an extensibility model to customize the background, title, and icon of a standard box snippet. That's possibly a lot of UI to drive something relatively small. I understand it's about perspective, but it's about balancing one person's use case against the implementation and long-term maintenance costs.

[dwillis77]

The problem is the main benefit of snippets is their ability to provide a quick one-click way to wrap some selected text with a predefined, formatted box (or other formatting). Changing title manually is easy enough but when we get into having to change color , border styles or others on every snippet used, it unfortunately cancels out the benefit a little (for me anyway). The custom snippets would solve this, but I found to re-create similar snippets manually did not work out well when i tried it. As I recall it was not only table border but also some issues with the icon staying intact - basically it didn’t look nearly as nice as the default ones do when I use them (where I can select the text, apply it and move on - with the custom ones there was a handful of extra steps)… I can give it another try though.

I understand they’re generated on demand, but some aspects of the built in ones are predefined right? Like color , icon and title…presumably there must be something different about how the default vs. custom ones work, because those aspects get applied perfectly with the default snippets but not so with the custom ones. I know that’s already been identified as a limitation of the custom snippets, but that’s why I was hoping it might be easier to just allow tweaking basic aspects of the default ones. If it would be a lot of work then maybe not worth it unless others would find it useful as well.

[stevencohn]

some aspects of the built in ones are predefined right?

Sorry, what I meant was that you can create a custom snippet that handles that already:

1. Insert one of the predefined boxes
2. Update the icon, background, title as needed
3. Add {SNIPPET_BODY} to the content of the box
4. Select the entire box and save it as a custom snippet

When you insert this custom snippet, it will preserve the custom icon, background, title and optionally wrap any selected content.

The only caveat, as I said, is that the width may not be consistent and you have to hide table border - less work at least than what you would need to do with one of the built-in snippets alone.

[stevencohn]

@dwillis77 Before I say "won't action"... is there one or two standard changes that you make to these Info/Warn/Notes box that you'd argue should be part of the base set of snippets?

[dwillis77]

hi @stevencohn , thanks for the response. I did try to create the custom snippets per your instructions when the custom snippet feature first came out, but as you can see, it unfortunately doesn't work out quite the same as the default ones 😄

The width, the icon, and the table borders together - three things having to fix on each usage of it would add up quite a bit over the course of many snippets. Whereas for the default, I just have to change the title and color (but I get the consistent default width, and well-placed icon, plus it looks "clean") - it's actually quicker to do that. Hence the reason I was thinking it might be beneficial to add the ability to change basic aspects of the defaults, in order to take advantage of these "special" traits that the default snippets have over custom ones (ability to use a consistent width, icon and background color).

For me I'd say the most common changes I'm making to snippets would be background color and title. A third would be adjusting the default box width but that isn't a big deal since the default snippet width works pretty well for me (it's a little larger than my default outline width in OneNote, but not much more, so I usually just resize the ON outline to match the box - and I only have to do that once since they all use the same default size).

Best regards

[github-actions]

Merged in PR #2601: 2575 custom boxes