Dan McCullum DesignDan McCullum Design

Distraction Free - A Writeroom Review

Monday, February 25, 2008


Writeroom

One of the problems of owning a Mac is that it can be easy to become distracted by all the shiny buttons and slick programs. Sometimes, there is just too much "stuff" cluttering up the screen and drawing away attention that needs to be elsewhere. Fortunately, there is a cure for this problem.

Enter Writeroom ($24.95, Mac only) from Hog Bay Software. Writeroom is a bare bones text editor with a sense of style. The secret agent-esque green text and black background lend themselves fully to the sense of coolness that envelops you when you use this program. It is definitely the best solution I have yet found for coping with the everyday distractions of having a Mac.

Writeroom 1.0 was indispensable for taking notes during class, and version 2 has taken it up a notch. With the ability to do both plain and rich text, I don't have to worry about reformatting things later on.

I'm interested in the "Edit in Writeroom" feature, which allows you to edit text from other applications in Writeroom, but unfortunately, this feature does not work in Leopard yet. However, the developer appears to be working on a solution.

There also seem to be a lot of features "in the pipes" so to speak, so I await them eagerly. Personally, I'd like to see an option to temporarily disable the internet connection while the program is open, set adium/ichat status to away, and silence all system and growl notifications.

If you have a Mac and want a "distraction free" writing tool, I highly recommend you take a look at Writeroom.

For Windows users, there is a similar program called Dark Room.

On a final note, I would like to point out that this review was done with a promise of a free license for this program; however, I have used this program (at least, I have used version 1) for quite a long time.

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One small step for man...

Saturday, February 09, 2008

One giant leap for web design.

Well, I've done it. I've really done it. I have switched over to hand coding my websites. I plan to hand code all my future design jobs.

Why?
Dreamweaver on Mac is still very slow, even though it is now Intel-compatible. It also lacks a native interface, which is somewhat detrimental. I decided to go cold-turkey and create a tiny little test site (http://dmdzine.net/codatest) entirely with Panic's Coda, one of the nicest pieces of software I have found yet. While it is still missing a few key features (automatic link management and templates/library items), I am willing to put up with that because of the nice interface and quick workflow. I may end up using CSSEdit (which I got in the MacHeist bundle) for my stylesheets, but overall I really like Coda.

The switch from visual to code has not been as difficult as I imagined so far, though only time and a large multi-tiered website will tell.

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