Show HN: LightWrite, A Free Online WriteRoom Clone

by Mizza • 15 years ago

47 17 15 years ago

axxl• 15 years ago

Seems pretty cool! Simple and does exactly what it needs to do. However FullScreen is not working for me on OS X Lion in Safari.

Mizza3• 15 years ago

Safari Lion is the only browser I've found that the fullscreen doesn't work as instructed, unfortunately. You have to hit the arrows on the upper right corner of the browser, as far as I know. Does anybody know of any other way of doing this?

davidmat• 15 years ago

AFAIK, to activate full screen mode using a keyboard shortcut for any app using the Lion-flavored full screen, you'll need to create a shortcut yourself :( http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/10/full-screen-keyboard-shortcut...

cstuder• 15 years ago

The font looks slighlty blurry on Chrome (Windows 7). If I turn the lights off, it looks better.

Mizza3• 15 years ago

Ha! It's the result of the text shadow. It's funny you mention it because I wasn't sure if it should be included or not. To me, the slight text shadow makes the text seem more.. soothing. Perhaps other people don't feel this way.

Does this look blurry to you as well?: http://diveintohtml5.org/

dchest• 15 years ago

If you don't like how subpixel antialiasing looks, just turn it off on your computer (on OS X - System Preferences > General > Use LCD font smoothing when available [off]). There's no reason to turn it off for everyone using your website.

iaskwhy• 15 years ago

It is but since it's only the title it's mostly okay.

sidwyn• 15 years ago

Same! To poster: could you include an option to turn off that shadow?

ChrisNorstrom• 15 years ago

Same here. I hate Text Shadow. I basically go into developer tools and turn off the CSS for it when I'm reading anything long with text shadow. Sub pixel antialiasing works great on everything but certain text on websites.

gurraman• 15 years ago

If you prefer vim's keybindings:

http://projects.mikewest.org/vimroom/

yesbabyyes• 15 years ago

Thanks - this goes straight into my bundle!

whacker• 15 years ago

Ok two suggestions. Let the page title match the document name, and save all documents implicitly, or at least documents that have been edited to more than, say 32 characters. The save button is hard to find

atourgates• 15 years ago

It looks like a great tool. I was actually looking for something like this the other day, and disappointed with what I found.

I write for a living, and I've vacillated between a few different distraction-free writing tools.

Writeroom http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom - was the first distraction-free writing tool I encountered, and, not coincidentally, the first mac app I actually purchased. It's a very good piece of software, though it takes a bit of work to get it configured into what I find to be a visually appealing workspace, and now that I've experienced iA Writer's markdown support, I'll probably never go back to Writeroom.

iA Writer http://www.iawriter.com/ is what I've been using for the last month or two. I love the way it looks straight out of the box, and adore its support of Markdown, and its focus mode (wherein the paragraph you're writing is always vertically centered, and everything else is greyed out). The only features I feel it lacks is the option to export to Rich Text, and remembering my preference for checking spelling as I type. (Also, I feel that its pricing is a bit out-of-whack. While $17 is fine for someone like me who writes for a living, I'll bet they'd more than quadruple their sales if they dropped the price to $4.99) EDIT: They've dropped the price to $9.99, and added RTF export in a Sept 1st update. Clever.

QuietWrite http://www.quietwrite.com/ is the most direct online competitor to LightWrite. It adds some useful features like maintaining a document library with your login and whatnot. Sadly, its habit of bringing up its context menu every time I move the mouse bugs the hell out of me, and I'm not a big fan of its green'ish color palette.

To become the online app that replaces Writeroom and iA Writer for me, I'd like to see:

* User selectable themes. I'm not a designer (a trait I suspect I share with most of your users), but I have visual preferences, and if I'm going to stare at your app for a few hours a day, I want it to look good. Since "look good" is a subjective thing, I think a few carefully-designed theme options for fonts and colors is the way to go.

* A login that enables a document library, with sorting. Your power users, aka, people who would be willing to pay for your app, will need to keep their documents organized. Folders and/or tags would do the trick.

* Easy offline saving. I backup all my local documents, and I'd feel much more secure knowing I had a copy of my LightWrite docs saved locally. Make it automagically synch with my DropBox, and I'll be in love.

* Markdown Support. I know that in some ways, any type of formatting goes against the distraction-free writing aesthetic, but I find it essential for any serious writing tool. Whether you're writing technical documentation, fiction, advertising copy or personal correspondance, basic formatting tools help keep your document organized. Markdown lets you implement intra-document organization without any context menus cluttering your desktop. Adding Markdown support for citations would - I suspect - make your app a great option for the academic subset of your potential users.

* Export to HTML, TXT and RTF. In my line of work, the copy I write is going to a designer, a blog post or a client. These formats would cover my bases nicely, and I suspect the bases of most of your other users.

Good work, and good luck.

Mizza3• 15 years ago

Wow! Thanks for your awesome feedback!

I really like the markdown idea (and the others, but I think this should come first), so I've opened a gig if anybody wants to earn a bit of money to add that feature to it:

http://gun.io/open/8/add-markdown-support-to-lightwrite

(and there are a few other LightWrite gigs here: http://gun.io/open/tag/lightwrite/ )

templaedhel• 15 years ago

I'd like to work on this, but the gun.io service isn't something I've done before, nor really want to (it feels like 99 designs for code). If you had contact info in your profile I'd email you, but you don't. My email is my username @gmail.com, if you emailed me I would like to talk, as I had just been working on a very similar concept. However it's not as easy as you'd think, as formatting in a textarea is not possible. I would discuss in more detail over email if you want.

-Templaedhel

jashkenas• 15 years ago

Very nice. I played around with implementing a little experimental internet typewriter a couple years ago, when in-browser SQL databases first started landing in Webkit. Here's a link:

http://internettypewriter.com/

pavs• 15 years ago

Also for Chrome, Write Space: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aimodnlfiikjjnmdch...

Show HN: LightWrite, A Free Online WriteRoom Clone

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