No toolbar, no status bar, not even the header strip with close, minimize and maximize buttons.
While you are actually typing, everything else disappears from the screen. The app has a super-minimalist UI designed to give a typewriter-style feel. If you’re one of those people who seems to spend more time choosing your typeface and tweaking app settings than you do actually writing, iA Writer may be your saviour. But if you’re writing shorter pieces, and want to get to work straight away, Pages is a solid choice. mobi – which is one of several reasons I recommend using a more sophisticated app for a novel. Pages doesn’t, though, support other ebook formats like Kindle’s. If you’re writing for publication, you can export your manuscript to Word to send it to agents and publishers, or choose ePub to turn it into an iBook. That functionality is baked right in, so you don’t need to do anything special to take advantage of it. Pages uses iCloud by default, so you can create a document on your Mac, continue writing it on your iPad and add the finishing touches on your iPhone. If you want to add tables, illustrations or photos, you can. By default, none of the formatting or page setup features are shown, just a single row of buttons with largely intuitive functions.īut as soon as you want to apply formatting, for example, clicking the Format button opens up a column offering everything from bold and italics through line-spacing, justification, indents, bullets, links, columns and borders – through to more advanced features like widow & orphan control (ensuring that a single word or line from a paragraph doesn’t end up on a new page). It achieves this by keeping the bells and whistles tucked away out of sight until you need them.įor example, create a new blank document and you’ll see a pretty clean view (below).
That’s because the app is intended to look simple and non-intimidating to new users, while offering plenty of features under the hood for power users. Pages is a deceptively powerful app on both platforms with a superbly-designed user-interface. In fact, some might question why you would ever need anything else, so let’s start with this before considering some of the alternatives …
The obvious starting point, of course, is the app Apple gives you for free: Pages.
WRITING APP FOR MAC MAC
In my comments, though, I’m focusing on the Mac versions as that’s the platform on which most people are likely to do the bulk of their writing. But as writers are sometimes known for their procrastination techniques, and choosing the right app could be the excuse for putting off work on your Great American Novel for several days, we thought it would be helpful to provide a few pointers.Īll of the apps featured are available for both Mac and iOS, as I feel it’s important that you can work on the move as well as at a desk. That said, if it just keeps doing what it does I should be happy.Whether you are tentatively planning your first ever blog post or are a best-selling novelist working on your latest blockbuster, there are plenty of apps out there designed for writers. Of course, if I have any issues, if they have not been addressed *after* reaching out to support, I will note them here. I hope others will also toss a tip in when they are able in order to keep the app in active development. The cherry on top is the price! $9.99 for an app I can use (and enjoy!) every day? Some have complained about the price, but ten bucks is a steal. I have a couple of other apps that do these things but fail in other areas. It jives with my minimalist mentality without forcing me to go absolutely barebones.Īmong my favorite features are Typewriter Mode, which keeps my text vertically centered so I never have to tilt my head to the bottom of my screen or readjust my window and Focus Mode which keeps only my current paragraph or sentence (my choice) highlighted and fades everything else to grey. So clean and simple while still being powerful and functional enough to do everything I need.
0 kommentar(er)
