I understand the goal of incredible simplicity. But, while use of plain text and textile formatting is, conceptually, “simple,” it is not simple from the standpoint of an average user outside the software industry.

There are plenty of message boards and web apps that have click-to-format buttons. This should be an easy add to Basecamp’s writeboards and messaging.

To stick to textile formatting in this day and age is just a bit too primitive.

Jeremy—you’re definitely not the first to ask for this, there have been plenty of discussions on WYSIWYG editing.

Check out this thread: http://forum.37signals.com/basecamp/forums/3/topics/567

Responses from both Jason and David should clear up where they are at on this at the moment.

I just installed basecode and it helps with simple icon based formatting, as well as right-click formatting options