Notebooks 3.6 for Mac

Notebooks 3.6 for Mac introduces new options for document styling using custom CSS classes, enhances Markdown syntax highlighting, improves MathJax compatibility, adds more flexibility when importing or bookmarking URLs, and ensures that context tags within code blocks are ignored.

Notebooks 3.6 had an issue where it refused to launch on Intel Macs with macOS 11 or older. We’ve addressed and fixed it in version 3.6.1, so Notebooks is running smoothly on all Macs again. It also brings a few refinements to the built-in document themes.

The update is available from this website and from the Mac App Store. Users of the non-Mac App Store version can use Notebooks‘ automatic update option as well.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

The Changes in Detail

Custom Classes for Document Styling

Notebooks now supports custom CSS classes for formatting both Markdown and formatted documents, in addition to traditional styles like headings, bold, italic etc. Custom classes can be applied through the paragraph formatting menu in formatted documets or with the > %...% notation in Markdown, with available options depending on the current document theme.
Some built-in classes like “Caption,” “Box,” and “Sidebar” are already available, with more to come. You can add your own classes to custom document themes and use them right away. – For more details, please refer to the documentation.

Formatted Documents

  • The formatting menu now includes heading levels 5 and 6, plus custom classes defined in the current document theme.

Plain Text

  • Autocompletion enhancement: When autocompletion yields just a single option, Notebooks immediately insert it instead of showing a table.

Markdown

  • Auto-suggestions for custom classes: > % followed by TAB presents a list of custom styles available with the current document theme. (The syntax for custom styles is > %sidecar%, for example).
  • Headings now use variable font sizes with syntax highlighting.
  • Checkbox detection in rendered view: Improved accuracy when tasks contain links or multiple tasks start with the same line.
  • When there are no headings in a document, Notebooks ignores the {{TOC}} tag and does not add a table of contents.

MultiMarkdown

  • You can now use table of contents with custom classes, as in >%sidebar%\n{{TOC}}, which makes it appear in a sidebar (Handbook theme, for example).
  • Added support for [](class: caption), abbr:, and id: notation, which is already available in Notebooks’ default Markdown converter.

Mermaid in Markdown

  • Automatically recognize .mmd and .mermaid file extensions as Markdown for Mermaid rendering.
  • Updated Mermaid rendering with new styles, and avoid borders around charts in the Default Theme.

MathJax in Markdown

  • Enhanced compatibility, especially for inline math with subscript and superscript.

Document Themes

  • New support for Custom Classes, see extra section.
  • Handbook Theme: Optimized custom styles “sidecar” and “box”.
  • Default Theme: Adjusted numbered lists to prevent empty items from overlapping.
  • When inheriting from other themes, <link...> tags are placed at the end of the resulting style to guarantee correct functionality.

Document List (Book)

  • When saving a URL as a bookmark, Notebooks now retrieves the original title, if available.
  • Smart Books display item paths as a tooltip.
  • When pasting text you can choose whether to add it as a Webarchive or a Formatted Document.
  • When selecting multiple documents, Notebooks now maintains the order of selection, important for compiling and other actions.

Contexts

  • Context tags are now ignored in fenced code blocks (Markdown and plain text) or in code sections (formatted documents).

Misc

  • Many more interface refinements.
Notebooks 3.6 for Mac