But observing writers in the research phase we found that the main procrastination in writing apps was just that: Settings, formatting, typography. Writer has no option for choice of typeface, font size or color. It has been a tough battle, for instance, to design it without any settings. Our goal was always to produce a writing divide where all your thoughts go into the text-instead of the program. And that is easier and faster than versioning through file names and copy-paste-send-copy-paste. With iCloud your document gets automatically updated. Adding iCloud for instance created a lot of friction, but overall, it made the program easier. We are only adding functionality if it simplifies the whole process. OR: Simplicity and speed are the top priorities. It's close to impossible, but we have done it before and we will do it again.īI: How important was simplicity when you were designing Writer? Innovation only works if it fulfills all expectations and-and at the same time-exceeds them in a way that gets people to do what they hate most: Changing behavior. Innovation in interaction design is extremely hard. The next features are going to be even further ahead in terms of innovation than the first features we introduced. With what we are currently developing for the editing/reading mode, I think we have more material for patents. And if even bigger companies start copying us (the latest version MS Word now suddenly has a blue focus optimized cursor, just like Writer), we better have something to prove that this was our idea and not Microsoft's or Apple's. Dealing with copycats is not all sunshine and rainbows. But we don't make the rules of the industry. While feel that Reading Time should be a common standard for everybody (other text editors and Websites started using it now as an indicator of text volume), we have a patent pending for Focus Mode. It took a long time to figure out all the details (what happens when you scroll? When does it get activated/deactivated, how does auto markdown behave, etc.). OR: Focus Mode, as well as Reading Time and the disappearing top bar (Mac only) are our inventions. It is very close to a mechanical typewriter without the hurting fingers and all the writing specific benefits of the digital medium.īI: Is "focus mode" something you came up with, or is it implemented in other editors? It looks nice, but the true beauty of it reveals itself only in its use. The UX people on Writer are all passionate writers and you can feel that using the program. You only feel whether what you have built feels good if writing is something that you do passionately. You need to love writing to get an idea that is really needed. The requirements for writing code are similar in some ways, but in others they are completely different. The main problem with current text editors is that they were written by programmers. What a writer needs first of all is a program that lets him get his thoughts out. A typical page in Word, formatted in a 12px Times with a line height of 1 is a desert of distraction in itself, even if you strip off all the crazy toolbars that surround it.Ī professional writing tool is like a scalpel, not like a Swiss army knife. While many demand those features and enjoy playing with them, it actually holds them away from writing. With all the formatting features, none really work as expected and when, as a professional typographer, you look at people's choices in font choice, line height, type size, you quickly realize that people that write are not supposed to know how to format text. They have drafting modes, editing modes, formatting modes, you can do all kinds of fancy stuff, but the main thing, writing, is lost. OR: Current text editors are like Swiss Army knives. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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