The Latest

Bloggers take note…WriteRoom is for you.

By andrew, mumonic media ⋅ March 25, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

In the digital world, computer users banter about on a regular basis about who’s better, Mac or PC. Each certainly has its merits. Apple certainly took advantage of the perpetual debate with their “Get a Mac” campaign, pitting the Vista-strapped PC against the hip and easy-going Mac.

But hardware aside, software is what makes the machine. And Mac users have bragging rights here, with high-quality, intuitive software easy to find and even easier to use. But some of the kudos need to go to Apple. They ask, even demand, that software meet rock-solid conditions and deliver a user experience unlike any other.

Apple’s die-hard support of their hardware spawns developers and users just as emotional about the experience as Apple itself. With software such as WriteRoom and TaskPaper, Hog Bay Software appears to be one of those developers. Today, we’re here to talk about WriteRoom. And hope for a little love from the folks at Hog Bay.

According to Hog Bay, WritRoom is a “…full-screen writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you’re used to, WriteRoom is just about you and your text.”

All you do is write
WriteRoom is a software tool specifically targeting writers. What makes it unique is once launched, WriteRoom is all about you and your written word. All that appears on your computer screen is a blank document and nothing else. Your computer desktop and any other applications you have open disappear, offering a dedicated place to write that you control via WriteRoom’s preferences.

Unlike other word processors, WriteRoom is designed to block everything else out, keeping the author focused and distraction free. Bloggers will be especially interested in WriteRoom, with e-mail and web browsing constantly fighting for their attention.

Preferences
In WriteRoom, you control your writing experience. Everything can be set to your liking, from the color of the text to the page you are typing on. Even the background color can be changed. All of these settings target you, allowing you to set up an environment that helps you focus on what you do best…writing.

There are other settings that come in handy as well. WriteRoom will display character, word, line and page count for you. This is contained in what Hog Bay calls the Document Info Toolbar. Knowing your word count by simply glancing at the bottom of your screen is a nice feature, especially for newspaper or magazine writers hammered by their editors for a specific article length. You can choose to show this information all the time or only when you mouse down to the bottom of your screen. The only down side we could see to this feature is that it is only visible when your working in full screen mode. But that’s the point. Not working in WriteRoom’s dedicated environment defeats the purpose.

Other preferences bear just a brief mention. Enabling smart quotes, spell checking as you type and working with plain or rick text are all there. But these are to be expected in any word processing software.

The downside…free competition
Unfortunately for Hog Bay, there’s competition in the word processing biz and writer’s have many choices. The brute, of course, is Microsoft Word. Full of every feature imaginable, Word has been around forever and is the most expensive. It’s also a bloated slug and not as Apple-like as many would prefer. Apple even has its own productivity suite called iWork 08. iWork includes Pages, which is Apple’s solution to word processing. It’s not very expensive at $79 but even we don’t know too many people using it.

Then there’s the free solutions. Apple gives you a little word processing app with OS X called TextEdit. Through TextEdit’s preferences, you can even set it up to take on a page-like user experience, though not as polished as WriteRoom’s. And with a nifty little app called Think, you can set up a dedicated user’s space similar to WriteRoom’s when used in conjunction with TextEdit. Think goes beyond altering your experience with a single application and works system wide. Think is worth mentioning here because it’s purpose is to give you a distraction-free work space, blocking everything else out but the application you are using at the time. [We may need to dedicate a post about Think at a later time.]

To summarize
In one application, WriteRoom provides the distraction-free place for writers to accomplish some quality work, whether it be blogging or the next chapter of a book. Is it worth $24.95? That depends. Are you struggling to focus on the task at hand? If so, you may need more than just software! We’ve heard caffeine sometimes helps. Can you get by with a free solution, similar to what we outlined above? Probably. But we think many people will like WriteRoom’s one-stop shop for putting words to digital paper. Why mess with two apps when one will do the job? Take a moment and download it. There’s a 30-day trial period so you’ll have plenty of time to test it out. If it works for you, $25 is a small price to pay for software that helps you be successful.