In Excel, there is an option to use icons for conditional formatting: either beside the cell data or instead of the cell data. For example, I can have a row where the cell values are the difference between numbers in two other cells, and then instead of displaying that number, I can display one of three icons based on where that difference number is in a range. It's a great feature for dashboards.

I would be willing to settle for better color range formatting as a stop-gap. It seems unpredictable right now.