How cool is it? OK, here’s a screen shot of this post, being composed on WriteMonkey.
Click to Enlarge
I reduced the size of the image for blogsake. My monitor is on the larger size for common PC screens. But what you see, the open gray field, text in the center, name of the document at the bottom, is all I see in my monitor. This is the latest, and in my mind, the best so far, of the trend toward using distraction free text editors. That used to mean Notepad, but Notepad has nothing like these features.
There are no buttons or toolbars or anything. Just the space and the words.
On the Writemonkey web site, we find:
“Writemonkey is a Windows zenware* writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood, it helps you write better. Editing is for another day …”
Writemonkey is not a word processor. Word is a word processor. This is a text editor, just for creating plain text. You can make the page and the words any colors you want, and you can change the font. But you won’t have different fonts or colors in a document. Just words. No pictures or embedded spreadsheets.
Writemonkey has tools for writers such as keeping track of your writing by a percentage of a goal you’ve set. It has a spellchecker. It even has tools to help you do research on your writing. But you can’t seen any of that stuff until you want to. And when you do, it appears simply and quickly with a mouse right-click or a keyboard command. No big toolbars ever appear to distract you from your words.
Writemonkey is free, but you can donate to help make it possible. I think it’s great. Go get you some.
- Writemonkey web site, info and download: http://writemonkey.com/
- PCWorld review and download: http://goo.gl/VRu0A
Metaphor 