Escape. Be Free. Don't conform.

10.14.00pm GMT Sun 6th Jan 2008

I've been reading about the experiences of professional writers discovering the joys of word processors other than Microsoft Word.

One, WriteRoom, which takes over the whole screen so you can't get distracted by other programs or by needless features and functions.

Another, Scrivener, which is also written with users in mind.

Word, on the other hand, is written for Microsoft. Its written with clever new features that Microsoft wants to market. Why do they need to reinvent toolbars and create the ribbon things? Because they worked out that nobody could ever find the zillions of features, most of which no-one uses. Now, they can't find the features that everyone uses!

And the likes of Open Office just ape it.

I seem to spend half my life on one of the many machines at home, or at work, turning off features, trying to fix the spell checker language so it stops challenging me about 'colour' and 'favour'.

I tried Mozilla's very new Prism. Its a really cut down browser, designed for web based applications where a container is all that is required. I use a lot of web based applications at work, and with all the RSS feeds and the address bar, the temptation to get distracted is pretty irresistible.

Prism is definitely the right direction. Add just a little more functionality and I'd use it a lot; particularly tabbed browsing. A lot of the corporate applications I use have multiple links I want to open into tabs (tickets management, change management, document management) but its a little too rigid to be really usable at the moment.

Ode to applications that do what I want them to do, not what someone else thinks I want them to do ..

Related Links:

New York Times article

StevenPoole.net

Writeroom

Scrivener

Prism