Mini tip: Outlined (code) blocks with regular font

Update: Do this with callouts now:

Old answer for historic reason:


I think I’ve seen this trick in @Scott_Collier-Weir’s docs — making nice outlined blocks for drawing extra attention. To draw such block, one would use Code Block paragraph style. The problem with it is that it forces all the text in the block to have monospace font (see left).

image

The solution: use formulas and put all the text there. The style of text in formulas will override the “outer” style forced by the block (see right).

Bonus tip: warning boxes with side-by-side icon and text can be created with a Card hidden formula also wrapped in a Code Block paragraph:

Card(
  Image("https://cdn.coda.io/icons/svg/color/delete-sign.svg"),
  Concatenate(
    _Bold("Title"),
    LineBreak(),
    "Message"
  )
).Concatenate("")
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Hi! The block with regular font is full screen, unless multiple blocks are placed in columns, side by side. Is this correct?

The block takes the full width of the page or a column, yes.

Thanks for the shoutout!

You can also easily grab icons and input them anywhere in your doc like this:

(1) Right click on an icon in the page title

(2) Select "Copy Image Address"

(3) Paste the copied URL into an Image() formula

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One downside worth noting: this is not “free tier” friendly at all because of all those formulas.

It’s possible to reduce the number of formulas used for this by combining multiple formulas together and make it easier to edit with the help of template tables:

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Update: Also now that we have Callouts and can remove icons from those, it’s now even simpler to achieve this look.

It’s not 100% identical: this uses the page font while the trick in the original post results in a smaller font size (could be more useful for contextual tips). But it’s times easier to set up: no external tables and numerous formulas.

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