The Outliner of Giants

The Outliner of Giants was commercial Outlining Software. Like other outliners, it allows the user to create a document consisting of a series of nested lists. It is one of a number of browser-based outliners that are delivered as a web application, used through a web browser, rather than being installed as a stand-alone application.

The Outliner of Giants was first released in 2009. The service was shutdown on December 31, 2017 and only exports are allowed at this time.

Feature set
Unlike most other browser-based outliners - which often focus on providing a minimum viable product - The Outliner of Giants has much of the functionality typically associated with a desktop outliner, such as the ability to use of columns to structure information. However, The Outliner of Giants does not support offline editing, requiring an active internet connection in order to make changes to an outline document.

Outlining
Like all outliners, The Outliner of Giants supports the creation of a hierarchy of items, with users modifying the parent-child relationship between items in order to structure a document. This includes the ability to promote or demote items up or down the hierarchy, or move an item up or down a list of siblings on the same level.

The Outliner of Giants does not support the true cloning of items (where an item can appear to be in multiple places within the hierarchy at the same time), although it does support the copying of single or multiple nodes.

Import
The Outliner of Giants can import both plain text and the OPML XML format, which is commonly used to transfer data between outlining applications.

Editing
Outline documents can be edited using a WYSIWYG editor, as well as the Markdown, and Textile markup languages.

Annotation
The Outliner of Giants supports a range of functionality to annotate an outline, such as the ability to add colored labels, highlights and text, as well as tags and hastags.

Collaboration
The Outliner of Giants supports real-time collaboration, where multiple users can edit the same document, and can see the changes made by another user as they happen.

Publication
Outlines created through The Outliner of Giants can be published directly online through the service, either as outlines, pages or in a blog format.

Export
The Outliner of Giants can export outline data as plain text, HTML, as well as directly to the Google Docs Word Processor.