One of the things I’ve always chided myself about over the years is the fact that I don’t drink enough water. Worse still, when I do drink anything, it’s typically coffee and the occasional cocktail - both of which dehydrate you further. I’ve tried several different methods to drink more water - carrying around water bottles, setting repeatable timers, using counter apps to count the glasses I’ve drunk in a day - but none of these strategies stuck.

I always figured there was an app out there that could remind me periodically to drink a glass, all the while keeping track of just how much I’ve drunk during the day. To date though, I’ve never found one that I felt was worth my money or, more importantly, ongoing attention.

That all changed though when I stumbled upon 1 Gallon a Day, a clever iOS app by Mathias Nilles. 1 Gallon a Day does one thing and one thing only: it prompts you to drink periodically throughout your day, whilst keeping track of the volume of water you’ve ingested. In short, it was everything I needed!

[gallery columns=“2” size=“large” ids=“9441,9440”]

But the remarkable thing is, and it’s the reason I am writing this review, is that Nilles has created an app that makes the monotonous task of drinking glass after glass fun. With a colorful UI that is card based, you go into the app after being notified, swipe up on a card that fits the volume of water you just drank - small glass (8oz), large glass (16oz), or one bottle (32oz) - and tap the check mark. You are instantly greeted with a puff of colorful confetti and a progress ring that adds a bit more to the circle as you get closer to drinking your daily gallon of water.

It’s this delightful gamification that keeps you coming back too. You feel compelled to see that confetti fall and getting that ring to 100%! I’ve been using it for a week now and I feel great! The pace of the notifications won’t have you running to the bathroom all of the time and the tap targets in the UI are perfectly large enough that you can easily use the app one-handed while holding a glass or bottle of water with the other.

I’ve really enjoyed using it and it’s got me living a healthier lifestyle. Hopefully it’ll get you doing the same.

Here’s the link to it: 1 Gallon a Day

The free version will get you started in the right direction while an in app purchase gives you the following extra goodies:

Hey everyone, sorry this blog has gone a little dormant in the last two months. Truth is, I’ve been busy with work [footnote]not complaining one bit though, it’s a great problem to have[/footnote]. For the first time in a while though, I had a down day and felt like writing, so I thought I’d whip up quick review on an app you may find useful! Just a heads up though, the app is Mac-only. Good? Good.

Being a freelance web developer that wears a lot of different hats when it comes to client work, I’ve found over the years that I’ve come to rely quite a bit on file converters. Whether it’s changing a .wmv file to an .mp4 or .jpg’s into .png’s, I am always amazed at how much time I spend converting files that clients hand to me into something more web-friendly - or just more useful to the rest of the world.

If you search for file conversion apps on the web, you’ll find there are hundreds out there and they all predominantly do the same thing: change your existing files into a different file format. I’ve tried more converters than I care to remember [footnote]or admit[/footnote] but the one I’ve settled on is Fuel Collective’s app, Permute.

Permute does two things extremely well - media file conversion, and getting out of your way.

Media File Conversion

Any good file converter should be able to handle a variety of file formats and Permute handles most, if not all. From AAC to XVID, Permute will handle 99.9% of anything you need to throw at it. Conversion processes occur lightening fast and, yes, it does batch conversion as well, handling multiple simultaneous conversion processes with the utmost ease. Have a folder of images that you need to change along with a couple of video files? Just drag them into Permute, set your file format, and hit the "Start" button.

That’s it!

Getting Out of Your Way.

A lot of the file conversion apps I’ve tried in the past had convoluted workflows, making me click a variety of buttons and toggles before I can even start the conversion process. Those wasteful tasks are gone with Permute.

When you fire up Permute, you are presented with a very spartan grey box instructing you to drag and drop your files into it. Once you do that, you only have to choose the file format that you want to convert to and then click start. It’s so simple and straightforward that it got me wondering why this UI/UX hadn’t been adopted by other more popular conversion utilities years ago.

It also has builtin support for OS X’s notification center, so that when it’s done with each file conversion, it will let you know with a modal window floating in from the top right of your screen.

What It Doesn't Do (that you may need).

What Permute doesn’t do, and this by design, is allow you to tweak its existing presets on a micro level. Yes, you can change a few standard settings that you’ll find in any "Save As" process, but if you are looking for access to a HUGE toolset of changes before the conversion process begins, than Permute is not for you. It is meant for the "set it and forget it" crowd - those folks who prefer streamlined ease over sweating the details of filters, audio track separation/modification, color changes, or other high-end production editing.

It also only focuses on media files. Images, audio files, and videos. At the time, that’s all it will convert.

But if that’s all you need than I can’t recommend Permute enough. It’s lightening fast, incredibly easy to use, and I’ve yet to have a botched file conversion.

Rock solid and absolutely worth your hard-earned cash if you are in the market for a new media converter.

Links:

• Official Site: http://fuelcollective.com/permute
• Only available in the Mac App Store: $9.99 click here to get it.

PLEASE NOTE: All images were created by the fine peeps at fuelcollective.com. I did not create these.

Hey everyone! Just a quick and easy tip for all of you folks who use Marked as your Markdown previewer when writing in Scrivener.

One of the microscopic issues I have with using Marked in conjunction with Scrivener is the lag between when you write your Markdown (or any text) in Scrivener, it autosaves, and a few seconds later it shows up in Marked. This isn’t a bug in either programs - Marked shows what your document looks like after it is saved, and Scrivener autosaves after a preset amount of time after you stop typing (usually a matter of seconds).

I know, I know, not a big deal. But did you know that you can change the amount of time it takes for Scrivener to autosave? You can! It’s in the preference pane. Open up Scrivener, head to into the preferences menu and click the general tab, you’ll find in there.

You can go as low as 1 second (I tried 0.5 seconds, no dice) in this field. Set it to that and close out of preferences. You should see a bit of an improvement to when Marked displays your Markdown now. It doesn’t get rid of the lag completely, but it does make it much less noticeable, creating a more seamless experience between apps.

So if it’s been distracting you or worse, keeping you from pairing these two juggernaut apps, try tweaking this auto-save time increment lower and see if that makes the experience any better for you. I know it did for me.

If you are a web developer/designer you know that there is no shortage of color pickers out there. I’ve toyed with dozens of them over the years and I recently ran into on the I found to be exceptional. That color picker is “Sip” by the Ola Brothers.

I am pretty picky when it comes to selecting development tools and color pickers are no exception. When I need to capture a color value, I don’t want to click my way through a series of menu systems to grab what I need. I just want to enable the tool, hone in on the color I need, click it and have the color value automatically copied to the clipboard for me to paste into my CSS.

Sip does all of this (and a good bit more) exceptionally well. Whenever I need it, I use Alfred to open it (or you can have it open on start up), I click the Sip icon in the menu bar, and I then click the target in the upper-left corner of the drop-down menu. After that, a loupe appears and I hover over the color I want (which can literally be any where on your screen) and click it. The preset color definition is then copied to my clipboard and I proceed to paste the value anywhere I need it.

You can also choose a color manually buy clicking the Sip icon in the menu bar and choosing the color wheel in the upper right corner of the drop down.

So many flavors to choose from!

Almost all color pickers out there give the option of RGBA or Hex, but Sip gives you WAY more options than that. So if you need anything other than the standards, Sip’s got you more than covered. To access the presets just click the Sip icon in the menu bar again and then click the side-loading menu directly below the bullseye and color wheel up top. From there you’ll find the selections afforded you and I’d be shocked if what you needed wasn’t included.

We've got history.

Sip also keeps a history of colors that you’ve chosen in the past. Which is awful handy when you need to revisit older colors and don’t want to repeat the color picking process or remember what value it was. There is even the option of sharing colors or deleting them from the history if you no longer need them. The default history is initially limited to 5 colors but you can up that value (or reduce it) in the settings which you’ll find under the gear icon in the Sip dropdown menu.

In the preferences you can also tweak code and color formats as well enable and see the keyboard shortcuts given to you in Sip. Keyboard shortcuts are pretty key to my development workflow, so having them integrated even in something as simple as a color picker is a prerequisite for me.

Taking It to the Next Level: Leveraging Sip on the Go.

Sip also has an immensely handy iOS app that leverages your iPhone's camera to dynamically capture full color palettes from whatever is in the view finder. You can even do the same from pictures you've already taken! It's quite a sight to behold honestly, and it's a great way to grab color palettes from clients photos or anything that is aesthetically pleasing to look at in your day-to-day life. From the app, you can save and label the palette for future reference or you can also share palettes by swiping left to right on the palette, tapping the share icon that appears. The colors in the palette then show up individually pre-formatted in an email that you can send anywhere.

Going Pro!

With an in app purchase of $9.99, you can upgrade your Sip installation to a Pro version which affords you even more powerful ways to wrangle colors on your Mac. It brings the color palettes to Mac version of Sip and it also allows you to sync palettes via a cloud service from your phone to the Mac so that you don’t have email them manually to yourself any more.

The Pro upgrade also allows you to pick more than one color at a time. Which helps streamline the process a bit more. Particularly if you already see a palette developing in a scene in front of you on your screen. Without the Pro version, you’d have keep enabling the loupe after you click each individual color.

It also allows you to edit and fine tune the colors you’ve chosen, allowing you to tweak existing Sip color formats or even create your own custom formats!

Going Pro??

While the Pro account is very appealing to someone in my profession, I don’t necessarily see it as a “must-buy” for everyone else. You get so much from Sip’s basic offerings that I could absolutely see many people getting everything they need and more from the what Sip offer’s out of the box.

Which is great, because Sip out of the box can be had for the ultra-cheap price of free.

Since incorporating it into my workflow, I can’t imagine designing and developing for the web without it. And with a non-existent barrier to entry, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t at least want to try it for yourself.

Download:

• Sip for iOS. Download - Free
• Sip for Mac. Download - Free
• Sip Pro - More info. - IAP - $9.99

Back in 2013, I wrote a post about digitizing your life and getting rid of the dead-tree paper taking up space in your day-to-day. I’m happy to say that I am still using that exact same paperless system to awesome effect. But I’ve also since left my corporate job moving to freelance full-time and, if you’ve gone that route, you know that the one thing you amass in a short amount of time is the small stuff: business cards and receipts.

Rapid Reduction.

As a small business owner, you need to document your business expenses. No exceptions. After meeting clients for lunch, dinner, evening drinks, coffee, or purchasing supplies and buying hardware… it’s pretty crazy how quickly receipts can pile up. When I finally noticed it was genuine problem it was almost too late. A physical file system of tiny sheets of paper was clearly not sustainable. I was already misplacing receipts in my wallet, back-pockets, folders, my back-pack - to either be worn down and unreadable or worse, to go through the wash and become a small blob.

Without a doubt. I needed a quick way to archive this stuff.

There are a lot of scanner apps out there and I’ve used the bulk of them. Basically what they do is allow you to take picture of a document with your device and convert that picture into a .pdf file that you can store locally on your device, or in cloud storage. This isn’t going to be a review of those apps, this is a detailing of what I’ve specifically integrated into my workflow. Luckily I’ve only needed two apps to accomplish this. They are beautifully developed, fast as hell, and they are a genuine joy to use.

For Receipts? I use Scanbot.

vimeo.com/89477586

Scanbot is an app for iOS and Android that does what a lot of other scanning apps do, but it does so with flare and style. UI and UX aside, it also is thoroughly exceptional at the following:

• It has excellent corner/edge recognition to limit the cropping you'd have to do after snapping a pic of the receipt.
• OCR. Any app that you choose should have the ability to OCR [footnote]Optical Character Recognition[/footnote] the receipt/document so that its contents are searchable as a PDF document. Scanbot does this accurately and, most importantly, very quickly.
• Contrast. Your receipt scans don't need to be full high res. color pictures. Color adds unnecessary size to your files which can take longer to upload and open. Scanbot offers four options: no filter (full resolution), a color filter (image compressed/optimized), grey scale, and a straight up, high contrast, black and white filter. I use the black and white filter. Scanned receipts and documents are crisp and readable and this particular filter reduces the size of your scanned pdf's to smallest size possible.
• Cloud storage options. Once your scan is complete and OCR'ed, you should be able to quickly upload to your file system of choice in the cloud. Scanbot support nearly all of them. I have my current file system on Dropbox. A very appreciated bonus: Scanbot also offers one-tap shortcuts to upload files to a specific location in cloud storage. So if you have a "receipts" folder that you always upload to on your cloud solution of choice, you can link that up specifically so that after you scan your doc, you just tap that shortcut and it gets uploaded automatically to that folder. Fast, simple and convenient. You can also upload your pdf's manually of course, but the shortcuts are a really nice addition.
• Prepended Titles. Scanbot allows you to prepend your titles with a naming convention of your choice. So if you like to add the date of a receipt to the front of the title of your scans, you can do so automatically. This saves you time and gives you confidence that the repeatable stuff you always do to organize your documents by title is automated.
• Security. On the app level, Scanbot offers password protection and (if your device supports it) Touch ID if you want to restrict access to the documents stored locally on your device. Open the app? It asks for a password.
• Document options. Scanbot adds a lot of convenient features that allow you to augment your files after they've been scanned. Stuff like high-lighting text, password protecting your files on the file level, leaving comments to share, adding additional pages after the fact, and the ability to add a digital signature, are wonderful options that can take your pdf editing capabilities to the next level. All on a portable device too, it's kind of crazy!

In short, Scanbot gets my full endorsement. I’ve used it for almost a year now, often daily, and it has eliminated so much friction in my business organization workflow that I honestly can’t stress it enough. I use it on receipts, hardware manuals, insurance policy documentation, monthly invoices… anything I need to file away and search for later.

The barrier to entry is low too. You can download the app for free, but with limited features. To unlock much of what I detailed above you need to buy the “Pro” module which you can get in-app after you download it. It’s only $4.99, and what it adds is invaluable in my opinion. Definitely worth the five-spot.

• For more info, check out Scanbot's site here.
• To insta-buy it, sight unseen, click here of iOS and here for Android.

For Business Cards? I use Evernote's Scannable.

www.youtube.com/watch

Relatively new to the scene, Scannable is Evernote’s answer to Scanbot. It’s sole purpose is to create digital documents and then share them. My only issue with Scannable is that it’s a little too stripped down for my use-cases. It does create digital documents to share quickly, but it doesn’t:

• OCR them (unless you export to Evernote). It also scans them to .jpg files and I prefer the pdf format. UPDATE 01/26/15: As of a few hours ago, the fine folks at Evernote updated Scannable to export to either .jpg or .pdf formats! W00T!
• Doesn't offer color filter options. You just get color. Though it is optimized and compressed when saved.
• Baked in sharing options are limited [footnote]but it does give you access to the iOS share sheet which, in theory, is limitless.[/footnote]. It does, however, allow you to auto-export to Evernote. Which is nice if you use it.
• There is no in-app editing tools. None.
• There are no prepended title options.

But, what it does do exceptionally well, is scan business cards.

It seems funny to have an app dedicated to doing such a small task, but Scannable scans business cards so well, it’s hard to pass it up. There is a caveat though. Scannable’s full potential hinges heavily on your use of Evernote. Which I do [footnote]and do so gladly[/footnote]. I use Evernote as my space to put things that I need to permanently archive at a glance. Business cards fall into this category for me. But they might not for you.

Caveat aside, using Scannable couldn’t be easier. Put a business card on the table in front of you, fire up Scannable, it rapidly finds the edges of the card [footnote]Unbelievably, I’ve never needed crop an image in Scannable or Scanbot. Not once.[/footnote], snaps and loads it optimized in under two seconds, making it ready for you to share or export. If you do export to Evernote, it will OCR it on the fly so that it’s searchable within Evernote’s interface.

One added bonus! If you are a LinkedIn user it will also scan its vast user-base, find the business card owner and add any additional information from their profile to your scan! Complete with their profile snap, clickable email addresses, web site urls, and phone numbers. All beautifully formatted, looking wonderful in Evernote. You can even add them to your address book if you want. But if they are not on LinkedIn, you don’t get this additional feature, which is kind of a shame. It’d be awesome if it added the same exact fields that are on the card itself. Not to mention, LinkedIn isn’t always up to date.

But it’s hard to criticize an app that is free, that gives you this much. When it works, Scannable is kinda magical! And even when it doesn’t, it’s still incredibly useful.

• For more info, check out Scannable's site here.
• You can also snag Scannable here: currently iOS only.

Soooo... Should I Get One? Or Both?

Well, obviously I chose both. But everyone’s needs are different. If you can swing the investment, I’d definitely snag Scanbot. If not, and you are a staunch Evernote user, Scannable will take great care of you.

If two apps are too many options for this particular task, Scanbot does take excellent scans of business cards and it even auto uploads to Evernote too. It just doesn’t have the LinkedIn profile info injection, which I really like.

It’s also important to note that’s still very early days for Scannable. Evernote is a really reputable development house with a wonderful history of implementing user requests. So I am sure Scannable’s feature set will only grow with time.

I am happy to introduce version 4.0 of thaddeushunt.com!

I don’t know if doing a theme redux is an annual thing for me honestly. This year though, it felt right.

I typically don’t get into much personal stuff anymore on this site and that isn’t going to change this year. Suffice it to say though, between quitting my corporate job to work for myself full-time and all of the upheaval therein, 2014 was quite a year for me (don’t worry, 98% of it was all good things).

So in tribute to that change, I thought I’d redo the theme on my personal site too. Truth be told, I was already 75% of the way through a 100% original theme of my own making when WordPress' “Twenty Fifteen” theme dropped. I wasn’t keen on it at first, but then I got to play with it and saw the potential. This site has always been about its content, so when I saw how this theme put your words front and center, I started entertaining a child theme. Fast forward a month later and you have what you see here. The changes I made from the parent theme were subtle. Mostly font-based, with a tightening up of some spacing/layout issues that bugged me.

My aesthetic leanings are often toward flat, uber-clean design. With easy to read fonts and nothing garish. As you can see, I ditched the header images and horizontal nav/search of the last theme for a more vertical layout, giving more room for my words and cleaner edge-to-edge featured images in my posts: something that I hardly every did in the last theme because it made everything too busy. I also really love the responsive design that is baked into this theme. It retains the look and feel of the big screen version well and offers a much superior mobile menu to themes I’ve used in the past.

Anyways, I think it’s about 95% there, with only a few things left that are bugging me still. Not enough to hold off implementing it live into the wild. I hope you all like it and that it makes reading a here that much more of a joy.

Please feel free to kick the tires. If you find anything broken or “off”, please leave me a note in the comments below. I’ll look into it as soon as I am able.

Happy New Year everyone!

~Tad

Anyone who has been to my site a few times knows my affinity for Markdown and the many editors that support it. This last week the folks at Realmac Software dropped their most recent entry into the Markdown editor arena and I thought I’d do a quick review on it for you all.

A New Spin On An Old Idea? Not really.

When Realmac first announced the beta of Typed (one that I was not included in, for what it’s worth) I was intrigued by their pitch, but was not exactly champing at the bit to try it out. Spartan Markdown editors have been done before and adding what they call a “Zen Mode” into the mix isn’t exactly a new idea. Omm Writer launched its editor specifically on the auspice of its fullscreen, non-existent UI, low friction, zero-distraction edit mode years ago, and they implemented it exceptionally well. People really loved/love what they did with that idea (myself included) and since then, droves of other developers have implemented their own take on full-screen, distraction-free writing.

So my first thought was, are these guys REAL late to the party?

After using Typed for a few days now my answer is: not exactly. In fact they might be just on time.

Delight Is In The Details.

What Realmac did exceptionally well was create a new version of an old idea with an attention to detail that other Markdown editors lack.

In short, though there is nothing new here, you can’t take away the fact that Typed is simply a joy to use. Everything it does is intuitive, simple, and very polished. The lack of options/preferences is certainly reminiscent of iA Writer’s UI. Except in Typed, you can find everything you need (if you even need it) by mousing over to the left where a preferences pop-up menu fades into view. There you’ll find a beautiful variety of font pairings to choose from as well as two other separate theme views (one of which is “night mode” for those tired eyes during late night writing sessions), you’ll also find the requisite HTML preview mode, as well as the baked-in share sheet extension that comes with most apps in OS X Yosemite. It’s all implemented thoughtfully, appearing when you need it and literally disappearing when you don’t.

To complement Typed’s “Zen Mode” (which is basically the full screen mode we’ve all come to know), there are 8 separate looping music tracks you can use if you really need the background noise. They are all pleasant enough and certainly calming (particularly with headphones), but they are also somewhat buried and hard to find unless you know where to look, which I found a bit counter to everything else Typed does so well. That’s a small, non-essential quibble though.

Lastly, there are a few other options up in the top menu bar of Typed. Specifically export options and keyboard shortcuts for commonly used Markdown syntax. And for those who like to keep track, a word/character counter can also be found in the top right.

Aside from that, what you see is what you get.

And what you get, frankly, is delightful to use.

Since it dropped last week, I’ve already fired it up several times for a variety of jobs. I did so simply because Typed felt like the right tool for my writing needs at the time. Your text is laid out beautifully and the layout flows perfectly whenever I have to resize my window or pop out of full screen mode to grab something. The translucent background picks up everything behind it subtly (it can be turned off by the way) and everything responds immediately, with zero lag.

It’s hard to put into words, but Typed, despite all of its similarities to other apps, captures a solid writing interface that you can trust, all the while giving you distraction free writing that is purely just that.

So far I’ve loved using it when I just need to get something down. Those singular moments when you write a letter, draft out a blog post… anything that simply needs to be, well, typed. I wouldn’t write a novel or anything long-form in it (that’s for Scrivener). I also wouldn’t write anything that needs a proper editorial workflow in it either (that’d be a job for Writer Pro).

Do the Markdown editors I mentioned above have more to offer features-wise? Absolutely. But none of those offer the polished experience quite like I’ve found with Typed. Not to mention this editor doesn’t seem to even want to be that feature rich and I personally think that’s what makes it so appealing.  All of that attention to detail that Realmac puts in to this editor pays dividends to you, the writer. By creating a clean writing experience with tools that are not far out of reach, Typed becomes an experience to look forward to. It’s a starting point. A clean sheet of paper waiting patiently for you to begin.

Realmac is currently offering a trial period to use the full version of Typed for free. I whole heartedly recommend checking it out if you are looking for something new to add to your text editor tool kit.

**All pics found in this post were taken directly from Typed's own press kit.**

By now you’ve all read the countless reviews of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Hell, you have probably even read reviews from people “one month in” to using their 6 Pluses. I know I have. I was lucky enough to snag a 6 Plus online on launch day and eagerly awaited everything about it. Yes, I was one of “those folks” that cut out the template of the form factor of the 6 Plus, taping it to a stack of index cards, carrying it in my front pocket for a week just to steel the confidence behind my purchase.

But there was no denying that, when it showed up at my front door, I laughed nervously thinking “Holy crap! This thing is HUGE!”. Not just bigger, or slightly over-sized - it was simply larger than I imagined - and that genuinely surprised me.

Like anything though, I thought I’d get used to it.

It fit in to all of my pants and jeans pockets relatively easily. Yes, it jabbed my hip when I sat down, but not in a remotely uncomfortable way and aside from that seemingly small quibble, there was a lot to like! I thoroughly enjoyed the larger screen! Reading/consuming on the 6 Plus was (and still is) one of the best iOS experiences I’ve had to date. In fact, the size got me using my iPad so infrequently (writing on the Plus was a joy by the way) that I almost considered it a more than capable replacement. I also really dug the creative use of the extra screen real estate in some apps when the 6 Plus was in landscape mode. Add in the battery life and the speed, and I actually can’t stress enough just how much of a joy it was to use this beautiful hardware.

Still, even with all of that, there was always something nagging at me.

Something about my new phone didn’t feel quite right. In hindsight, it was painfully obvious, but at the time I just plugged along and made do. Eventually though, the reason snuck up on me when I held a close friend’s iPhone 6 at a party: the 4.7 inch 6 just felt good in my hand. Not huge, not too small - not anything - it just felt right. Once he let me slip it into my pocket, that sealed the deal. It was official: I had bought the wrong phone for me.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I went hiking in Virginia with my wife. It was a beautiful Autumn day and I wanted to capture as much of it as I could. As I hiked along snapping pictures and the occasional slow-mo video of leaves falling to the ground, it finally hit me as to why I disliked my phone.

I was constantly aware of it.

All of the phones I’ve owned in the past slipped into my pocket, going completely unnoticed, until I either needed it for something or I had a call/text come in. Never before had I owned a phone that, through its sheer physical size, made me constantly aware that it was on my person. It was why I took it out in the car and put it in a cup holder while driving. Or why I would leave it on the dinner table when I was out to eat or sharing a meal with someone. Or why I’d leave it on the desk while I worked. Simply taking it out of my pocket wasn’t a solution either, because once on the table it is constantly within eye-shot; consciously or sub-consciously begging for your attention.

Therein lied the problem.

Sometimes I like, no… I need technology to disappear. The 6 Plus, for me anyways, couldn’t do that. For all of its virtues and its undeniable strengths, the Plus is just too big for me to incorporate into my day-to-day life.

Eventually I made it into the Apple store here in Durham where they took pity on me, allowing me to exchange my phone for the 4.7 inch iPhone 6 well outside of the 14 day return policy window. I slid it into my pocket and I’ve never looked back.

Where I really liked many aspects of the 6 Plus vert much, I love just about everything on this iPhone 6. Sure I miss the unique landscape layouts of some apps, the undeniable all-day battery life, and typing on the 6 is noticeably more cramped than on the plus… but everything else? It’s easily just as beautiful and more of a joy to use.

And, because it disappears into my pocket. I am back in love with having my iPhone with me.

www.youtube.com/watch

Twin Peaks was by far the most formative TV show I have ever watched. So damn much of my young imagination was nurtured and grown in that beautifully dark and bizarre world. For me it was a gift, and now another mini series? Written by Frost and Lynch with all episodes directed by Lynch himself?

I honestly can’t wait for June, 2016. Can’t. Wait.

Non-techie post, I know, but I was so tickled to see this news today.

Planning the content layout of a new website is a daunting task to say the least. You always want your content to be easy to find, logically laid out, and as clean as possible navigation-wise. A new site (or a redesign of an old one) is a great opportunity for you finally to wrangle your site’s content and make it more accessible for your readership.

To do this, you need a plan of course and, for me anyways, I tend to go the visual route.  Luckily, you don’t get much more visual than Literature and Latte’s mind-mapping software: Scapple.

It's All in the Bubbles

There are a ton of different ways to visualize a site's content layout in Scapple. I decided to keep mine as simple as possible, but you can certainly tweak it to fit your tastes.

For the title of the document, I simply put the name of the site. Below that, I put a bubble where the top banner is going to be, labeling it as such. Then directly below that, I place individual bubbles for each horizontal navigation tab, labeling them individually for what each tab was going to point to (“Home”, “About Me”, “Contact”, etc… ).

Next, I create a vertical line of square bubbles going down the right side of the content area, roughing out where a right column full of widgets would be. If you know what the widgets are going to be, feel free to label those as well. Otherwise, I just labeled mine “Widget 1, Widget 2, Widget 3…” - you get the idea.

After this, I place a big bubble in the middle of the layout that represents the main area where my content will be displayed.

Last but not least, I frame it all out with a bubble at the bottom that runs the width of the design for the site’s footer or colophon.

Here’s what I ended up with:

KISS: Keep It Simple. Seriously.

Use your first draft of this document to quickly get your ideas out and in front of you. Once it's roughed out, you can tweak it to be cleaner visually ¹ or label everything differently so that it translates better for you at a glance. Above all though, the goal of this document should always be simplicity.

By keeping the document intentionally simple, it affords you the luxury to drag and drop these blocks around, resizing them to accommodate new ideas and layouts. I guarantee that once you get the basics fleshed out in this document - the core bits of content that you must have on your site - the process of manipulating the layout becomes WAY less of a chore and might even become a little fun (gasp)! So yeah, simple, simple, simple.

Now that you’ve got your layout nailed down, it’s time to fill out the content that is going to go in these bubbles.

This is where Scrivener comes in!

Old Hacks That Still Work

The approach I used in my post, blogging with Scrivener, can also work like a charm here! Now that you have your content blocks set up in Scapple, all you need to do is assign content to the sections that need it. Luckily, Scapple and Scrivener play so nice together!

I start with a blank project (or choose whatever template you like) in Scrivener, again, using the name of my site as its title. Then I immediately drag and drop my Scapple file into the “Research” folder in the left column in Scrivener renaming that folder “New Site Layout”. This way it’s always easy to reference moving forward.

With that all in place it’s time to wrangle your content.

Every Folder is a Section of Your Site Layout

In my case, I had a “Header/Banner Area” section, a “Horizontal Navigation” section, a “Right Column” filled with widgets, a “Main Content Area” section for my content, and “Footer/Colophon” area for any information I wanted at the bottom of my site.

Since these are all definable areas of my site that will have content in them, I go ahead and create the following folders in my Scrivener project:

• Banner
• Horizontal Navigation
• Right Column
• Main Content Area
• Footer/Colophon

These folders don't need to be in any particular order at all, but I like starting from the top of my site and listing these sections out in the order of where my eyes naturally navigate across the site layout itself.

Now that’s in order, it’s time to fill those folders!

Every Page is a Block of Content

For my content I only use the text/Markdown that I want for each of these sections of my site. But you should feel free to drag whatever you want into these pages - pictures, PDF’s, etc… whatever you’d like. Just don’t make it confusing or cluttered. Again, keep it simple.

So for the “Banner” section I add the text and byline that will go in front of the banner image. If you don’t want text? Drag the top banner image into the page for reference.

For the “Horizontal Navigation” section, I add a page for each tab in my layout. In each of those pages I put in the text that I want the page to display. So the “About Me” page contains all of the text that I want to display on my “About Me” page. If the tab is a link to somewhere (as with the “Home” tab), I make sure that, that that information is written plainly in that page. If a tab links to something more form-like (as with the “Contact” tab), I list that info there as well, giving the fields that I’d like in the form along with what is required info when the visitor clicks the “Send" button.

I use the same methodology above for my “Right Column” section as well, giving each widget its own respective page. In those pages are descriptions of what each widget does along with formatting needs.

The “Main Content Area” section is more than likely going to be dynamic so there’s not much to add to this page other than its description. However, if your site is going to be filled with predominantly static content that rarely changes, than feel free to add whatever this page will contain. Tweak all of this to fit your site’s needs. It is important to remember that this is merely a guide/example of what you could do. Not what you should do. Do what makes sense for you and your project.

For the “Footer/Colophon” section I just add the blurb of text that I want showing up statically at the bottom of my site, regardless of where I navigate to.

Lastly, Don’t forget to save! Scrivener does a bang up job of backing up your work automatically, but when the thought flits across your brain - save your project.

Why I Like This Approach

I've built a ton of sites for clients and myself over the years and I can't tell you how many times I have finished a design, handed the client the keys, and the site laid dormant for months ² while they gathered up the strength, time, and patience to tackle their own content.

Do you need Scapple and Scrivener to pull something like this off? Of course not. There are a lot of alternatives out there to choose from. I just chose them because they are powerful, intuitive, easy to use, and play well together. That and the idea of this nebulous task being collected, organized and bundled up into a single .scriv project file is tidy and easy to keep track of.

It also gives you a HUGE headstart on your new site design and since it is separate from your site’s file system, it is a very effective back up of the structure and content of where your site started. This is a huge win if you ever have a catastrophic failure and somehow loose your site and all of its content. With this, you’ll always have a copy of that gigantic “step one" to fall back on.

It’s also something you could easily hand to a designer who you’ve hired to build your site. Instead of saying “I think I would like this…” you’ve already taken the time to create the site that you need so you can say “I really appreciate your help. Here’s what I’d like you to build…”. ³

Trust me on this one. That developer you’ve hired? He/She just might openly weep tears of joy if you handed them something organized and fully realized like this.

I know I would.

I have a hard time shooting these concepts down because I actually do think this where the future of interface is going.

When the soft keyboard debuted with the iPhone in 2007, it was met with extreme skepticism. But over time we all got used to it. There’s an entire generation now that looks at a phone with a physical keyboard much like my generation would look at a 14.4k modem.

How long before our kids’ kids look at a any physical interface at all and laugh?

I’m just about to leap into my 40’s and I imagine the days of buttons are going to be replaced by our fingers dancing through the air long before I head to a nursing home.

Still, while I love the portability and the idea of concepts like AirType, I do wonder how long it would take for my keystroke accuracy to catch up to how fast I can type on a physical keyboard.

We shall see! Probably sooner than we think too! I look forward to finding out.

vimeo.com/90766615

Hey all! This will be a short one. A few posts ago I had a write up about an Alfred workflow I wrote that opened your Scrivener .proj files in both Scrivener and Marked simultaneously.

@thaddeushunt bonus: did you know you can have @ScrivenerApp open automatically when you open a .scriv in Marked? http://t.co/dBSnqZRRVu

— Marked (@MarkedApp) May 21, 2014

After I published that post, many of you pointed out (including Marked’s very own Twitter account) that with the right preferences checked off, simply dragging and dropping your Scrivener project file into Marked should accomplish the same result. I totally agreed with this sentiment, but I apparently found a bug that was preventing me from doing so: dragging a Scrivener project file to Marked in the dock did in fact open both Scrivener and Marked but, for me anyways, Scrivener the app would open but the project wouldn’t. Long story short, I detailed the issue to the Marked account on Twitter and was assured that the bug would be fixed in a future release of Marked.

@thaddeushunt btw, I found the issue. Next version will actually open the project like it's supposed to :).

— Marked (@MarkedApp) May 22, 2014

Well, today Brett Terpstra (Marked’s developer) announced the release of version 2.3 of his software and, true to his word, the issue has been resolved! So, if you own Marked and didn’t want to pony up for the Powerpack that Alfred offers, you once again can drag and drop Scrivener project files into Marked on your dock. Both apps will open simultaneously with your cursor blinking in Scrivener; waiting patiently for any Markdown you want to throw at it.

Much, much gratitude for the fix and the prompt response when I brought it up!

If you create content in markdown in Scrivener and don’t use Marked? You are absolutely missing out. I whole-heartedly recommend it. It’s worth your hard-earned cash and I am not ashamed at all to admit that I don’t even come close to utilizing all that it can do. I use it daily and can’t imagine writing for the web without it. It’s grown with me and my ever-changing workflows .

I am betting it will do the same for you.

I am an avid reader of The Magazine ¹, and one of the first things you will notice when reading any issue is the clever handling of footnotes in their pieces. Commonly you will find these links to footnotes either inline or in the form of a tappable button with a symbol in it (in their case, a star) embedded throughout The Magazine’s thought-provoking paragraphs. Whenever you tapped one of these links, something kind of unique happened. Instead of being whisked away to the bottom of the page, the content of these footnotes would pop up instantly over the text in a modal window.

Read its contents. Tap anywhere outside of the modal. Done.

The popover disappears and you continue on with the article you were enjoying without having to tap a “scroll up” link or, worse, having to literally scroll back up to where you were previously.

I got used to this delightful bit of UI/UX rather quickly and instantly started searching for a way to implement the same effect into my own online prose.

Problem was, I couldn’t find anyone that was doing it. At least not at the time.

Fast Forward Six Months

Ironically where I ended up finding my answer was on the personal site of the original developer of The Magazine: Marco Arment’s Marco.org. He put up a post back in December stating how he too was searching for a way to implement these types footnotes into his site without having to develop his own javascript solution. Luckily, someone had already done it for him (and us).

Believing in Bigfoot

A fella by the name of Chris Sauve went ahead and created Bigfoot and that opened the door to exactly what Arment and a handful of us were looking for: more useful and powerful footnotes on our sites!

Still, after implementing it on thaddeushunt.com, I immediately thought that its implementation wasn’t terribly approachable for everyday users. Surely someone must have created a WordPress plugin for this.  Maybe with some sort of shortcode for ease of use?

Well, it turns out that someone did that too.

Enter WP-Bigfoot…

A dramatic slow clap is due for Roger Stringer who took the time to create the WordPress plugin “WP-Bigfoot”. Not only is it a breeze to install and activate, but it’s also super easy to add to your posts and pages in WordPress via some short code.

And it doesn’t stop there either. Out of the box it looks pretty great, but if you have some chops with CSS you can even tweak the baked in style sheet to taste so that it better matches the aesthetic of your site! It’s also responsive, so it changes dynamically depending on what size screen it’s rendering on.²

[gallery type=“rectangular” ids=“7246,7245,7247”]

Great Solutions Rarely Come Easy…

There’s almost always something that needs to be tweaked or edited to fit your site and its needs. This is one of those rare occasions though where something works perfectly out of the box. Once I found what I was looking for, I was up and running in under 5 minutes. Seriously.

So if you’ve been looking for a better, more elegant and helpful way to add footnotes to your web-based content, I hope this post saves you some searching.

(UPDATE Jan. 2017: A kind visitor recently let me know that the original workflow I created years ago, had stopped functioning properly. I've since fixed it and wrote a follow up post here).

A heads up: As the title implies, this post assumes (or, in a way, suggests) that you have purchased Scrivener, Marked and the Powerpack option in Alfred 2.

One of Scrivener’s shortcomings (yes, they do exist) as far as Markdown support is concerned, is its inability to give an HTML preview of your Markdown syntax while you write in it. There is no workflow for accomplishing this other than exporting your MD or MMD, opening it in another editor that reads MD (or the converted html) and checking it there before cutting and pasting the code into your blog’s editor.

In all fairness, that’s not what Scrivener was created to do and just because I’ve found some slightly unconventional uses for it, I can’t expect the good folks at Literature and Latte to change their software to accommodate lil ole me. We all know Scrivener is much, much bigger than blogging and writing in MD and MMD.

The good news is that even though Scrivener doesn’t have an in-app html preview function for your markdown, there is one program that you can use in tandem with it that can.

That Program is Marked.

You can read about Brett Terpstra’s “Marked” in a slew of different places (including its recommendation in the comments on this site ) so I won’t write a review of it here (maybe another time). In a nutshell though, Marked is a realtime markdown converter that works with any text editor you throw at it. Open a text file in its respective editor, open Marked, then drag the same file into Marked and go back to the text editor to continue writing/editing. As you save your markdown document, you’ll see it update in Marked, displaying the converted HTML instantly.

Cool right? It’s also a game-changer.

Integrating Marked has made my blogging workflow in Scrivener much more streamlined because of Marked’s handling of MD/MMD as well as its plethora of options and amazing tools for authors. But, that all said, getting a file into each application is clunky at best and almost immediately after doing that a couple of times, I wanted/needed to automate that initial step so that it was smoother.

Enter Alfred

Alfred is another popular tool out there whose sole function is to streamline everyday tasks like launching multiple apps at once, finding files quickly on your computer, searching the web, quitting apps, shutting down or restarting your computer… you get the idea. It does all of this from your keyboard and once you get used to its commands, you’ll get addicted to not touching a mouse or track pad. In truth, it’s one of the first apps I install when I get a new computer.

But aside from these baked-in options that you get for free, you can also pay for the Powerpack option and unlock a slew of very powerful tools that give you immense control over your Mac. One of these tools is the ability to easily create custom workflows. Once I encountered the dilemma above, I dove in and immediately came up with a solution.

Now, one caveat. I am not much of a programmer, so I made my workflow out of the built-in modules that Alfred gives you out of the box. I am sure that with some custom scripting this workflow could be made even nicer (if you have suggestions for improvements leave them in the comments below please). That all said, I was really happy with how this workflow came out. To save you (and I) some time I’ve included a link to the workflow below, so that you can download it and add it to your own personal workflows in Alfred. Just download it, double-click and add it to Alfred. Easy.

The way the workflow works is you bring up your Alfred prompt. Type in the keyword, which in my case is “scrivmarked”, that then allows you to browse your “Documents” directory right in Alfred. Once you find the .scriv file you want to open, arrow down to highlight it and hit the right arrow key where you’ll find a file action to open the file in both Scrivener and Marked, arrow down to that action and hit enter.

Make it Your Own

One of the best things about workflows In Alfred is that you can tweak them to suit your needs relatively easily. Hate my keyword? Choose a different one. Have your Scrivener project files in a different location outside of the Documents directory in OS X? No problem, tweak the search scope. These, and many other aspects of workflows, can be tweaked easily in Alfred without knowing a single line of code.

But, again, if you do know a way to make this better, I’d love it if you posted your modifications in the comments below! I am sure there are many ways to make this workflow even more useful to us all!

Useful links:

• “scrivmarked” Alfred 2 Workflow: download
• Marked 2: download
• Alfred 2: download
• Scrivener: download

If you’ve been coming to this site for a while, you may have noticed one of my earlier posts about a writing system I was using at the time. Well, two years have gone by and after years of faithful use, one of the main ingredients of that system, a Dropbox editor by the name of Elements, has finally been sunset.

Change is good.

So with that sad fact come and gone, I’ve been faced with task of finding a new Dropbox editor to fill the iOS void that was wonderfully filled beforehand. If you haven’t read the post that I linked to above in the first paragraph, I invite you to do so. Much of that writing system still exists today and if you write on the go like I do, you may find it useful. Also, I don’t plan on rehashing it here so if you are looking for context, definitely give it a quick spin, it’s not too long.

Back? Excellent!

So after some research I’ve found two beautifully developed and highly capable Dropbox editors that have been out for a good bit, so I guarantee that you’ve heard of them. That old adage “Change is good” definitely has its place in this tale and, truth be told, the ending of Elements might’ve been the best thing that’s happened to my workflow in a good bit.

Bridging the Gap.

The fun thing about workflows is that no matter how much you love a process, it can always be tweaked into something lighter and more efficient. Even though I loved how versatile my last writing workflow was, there were places where it was quite clunky process-wise or hampered by the limitations of iOS at the time. I dealt with it all because those things were mere quibbles and they didn’t slow me down that much. But with Elements out of the picture, it was an invitation to see if I could refine everything a bit, maybe get rid of a few things and, hopefully, add functionality that could make writing anywhere that much more efficient and enjoyable.

So without further ado, here are the editors I settled on.

Writer Pro by the development firm Information Architects Inc and Editorial by the one-man shop OMZ Software headed by Ole Zorn. Both of these text editors fulfilled all of the current needs I had and then some. Without a doubt, the three main stipulations I had were:

• Markdown support
• Instant sync across platforms, or robust export options
• The ability to save my flat text files to Dropbox

Of course there were others on the list, but these were the main ones.

One thing to note, these two apps are still somewhat new and are constantly being developed to accommodate much-requested user features. If you don’t see something in this post that you like, I highly recommend that you go out to their respective sites and have a look a the complete list of features, as well as look at what’s in the pipeline for the future.

None of these editors are perfect, arguably they never will be, but they are a joy to use and are well on the way to being even more feature-rich with the raw talent behind them. I mention this because writers are a finicky bunch. We like our writing experiences to be just so.

So I write this post knowing full well that these editors won’t be for everyone, but maybe for a few. Let’s hit Writer Pro first and then Editorial.

Writer Pro.

vimeo.com/82169508

Writer Pro was a bit of a tough sell for me. I already owned its older sibling iA Writer (which is still just as awesome now as it was then) and was curious how they were building off of the stark minimalism that they’d strived and gotten so many accolades for in the past. Would it now be cluttered? Not as easy to use? Or worse, would the extra UI/UX come off as unnecessary?

Luckily, the answer to these and all of my concerns were “no”. I can say this, if you are an iA Writer fan and can’t think of a single thing that it could do better, stay put. There is no reason to jump ship to Writer Pro. But, if you’ve loved the experience of writing in iA Writer but wished it had a more robust feature set above Writer’s wonderfully implemented “just open it and write” aesthetic, than Writer Pro is more than likely your answer.

Here’s my short-list of Writer Pro’s strengths and weakness.

Strengths:

1. Fully supports MD (with inline preview support).
2. Dropbox sync. I can already hear it now. “Well hold up Tad, I just went to the site and Writer Pro doesn’t sync with Dropbox at all!!” Calm down. You’re right. Writer Pro does not sync with DropBox… yet. But it will. Soon.
3. A built in workflow that is natural and develops habits conducive to good writing. Admittedly, I didn’t like it at first, but having written a few pieces in it, it is a nice systematic flow that makes sense to me. You can completely ignore it too, but I recommend giving it a spin a few times. You may warm up to it.
4. Syncs via iCloud to your Mac and your iOS device instantly. Truly. I know there is a lot info out there about how much of a pain in the ass creating adequate sync can be on iCloud, but iA nailed with Writer Pro. There is barely any lag at all. Write on your iPhone, and it immediately shows up on your iPad or Mac.
5. iA Writer’s spartan layout is here in spades. Not cluttered at all and easily read. Even the sidebar they added on the right is minimalist and can easily be hidden if it bothers you. 1. Incredible syntax filtering to keep you in check with exactly what you are writing. It’s hard to describe just how useful this is, or how amazing it is to watch it in action. I highly recommend checking it out. It’s truly a game changer for me and the general clean up I do while editing.
6. Saves as flat .md but exports to pdf, clean html, .docx, or .rtf. More than enough for my mobile writing needs (but some may want more).
7. Full markdown html preview. Command-R and a pop up comes up instantly, showing you your Markdown, rendered in clean html.
8. Night mode theme. If you write at night as I often do, this will save your poor eyes from a lot of undue strain. It’s a small thing but I really appreciated it.
9. Feature parity across platforms. I’m used to losing features when I move to my iPhone or iPad. So it’s an incredible development feat to see a writing experience expressed so completely across my laptop and iOS devices. Nothing (that I can see) has been lost when I move between environments and form factors. Everything you need is there and easy to find.
10. Has a very talented development house behind it. iA has some big plans ahead for Writer Pro. If there is something missing now, chances are it’ll be added in moving forward. They are meticulous folks, almost to a fault.

Speaking of faults! Here are Writer Pro’s weaknesses:

1. No Dropbox support currently. Like I said though, it is on the way. iA has already mentioned explicitly that it will be in the next update.
2. As much as I appreciate the current export options, I wish there were more. I’d love to write a message to someone and export the html straight into an email app for instance. Currently to do that I have to highlight all text, copy, open mail, start a new message, and then paste. It’s clunky and it doesn’t need to be. Adding more options would make Writer Pro a bit more versatile. Though I somehow doubt that’s what they are aiming for.
3. The structure of the workflow may be a bit rigid for some. Note, Write, Edit, Read is fine for my needs but it may not work at all for others. Want to edit it or add another stage to the process? You’re out of luck.
4. It’s definitely (and admittedly) a work in progress. The good news is that iA is definitely listening to its user-base. So if you need anything, go on and ask for it. If enough do, they’ll listen.
5. Not many options to tweak the writing experience. By design, just like iA Writer before it, Writer Pro is a very stark and flat experience. What you see is what you get. Want a different font or just change the font size? Too bad. If this tact isn’t your cup of tea, then chances are you should keep looking elsewhere.
6. Cost. Getting the iOS and Mac versions will set you back just shy of forty dollars. In a five dollar app world, this may be a tough sell. To me it was worth it though.

Editorial.

Editorial made major waves when it dropped and it’s been years since I saw such a rabid fan-base grow around an iOS text editor. Having used it a good bit now I definitely see what all of the fuss is about. I also see that I have only just barely scratched the surface of what this incredibly powerful editor can do! If you are looking for a humongous deep-dive on everything Editorial click this link right now,  and read Federico Viticci’s review on macstories.net. It’s so long he created a damn e-book out of it. Don’t let that deter you though, it’s brilliant and well worth your time.

If it sounds like Editorial is a sledgehammer to use against a tack nail, well, it can be. In truth, it’s the biggest reason why I didn’t download it initially. I just couldn’t bring myself to use an editor that necessitated another learning curve. Turns out I was absolutely wrong on that count and developer, Ole Zorn, created a text editor that is yours to use however you’d like. Everything you can do (and there’s a lot that you can do) waits patiently, out-of-the-way, allowing you to just get in there and write.

That all said, like Writer Pro it has its strengths and weaknesses too. Here they are.

Strengths:

1. Super clean layout. The first thing you’ll notice is just how inviting Editorial is when you open it. It’s even more incredible once you start discovering what it’s capable of.
2. Inline preview support for .md and .mmd. Writer Pro does this as well but I like Editorial’s presentation better. It’s not as stark and it is more readable.
3. Full markdown HTML preview. A quick swipe left immediately displays how your markdown will render on the web.
4. Dropbox support front and center. Out of the box, you can assign to a folder in your Dropbox account. I plan to link this to a synced Scrivener project folder at some point, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
5. Utilizes Dropbox versioning. Need something from a previous version? Deleted something you need back? No worries. Editorial has you covered. Super easy to use and some nice piece of mind.
6. In-app browser for research. This seemed a little kitschy at first until I used it. Now I dearly wish all of my editors had a fully functional browser built-in. Not having to leave my editor in iOS to look up a link or research a topic gets addictive fast.
7. A huge amount of options to tweak your writing experience. Head on into the settings after you get comfortable. If there is anything you’d like to change about writing in Editorial? Chances are it’s in there. Fonts, sizes, line-height, font-spacing, whew… the list goes on.
8. Support for text snippets baked in. Got chunks of text or maybe a markdown page layout that you reuse over and over again? Create a text snippet and watch it immediately fill your document with a few taps. Very handy.
9. Contains a custom workflow framework that allows you to perform a myriad of automated tasks. With these tasks you can do just about anything - like post your text into your blog on WordPress for instance - I’ve only just begun to play with these, but it’s mind-blowing what you can accomplish. Don’t have an interest in creating workflows? No problem. You don’t have to.
10. Export Options. Because of the workflows above, export options in Editorial are almost limitless.
11. Has full console-based Python support. Not a Python developer at all but if you are? You’re in for a big treat!
12. Has a night mode theme. Like Writer Pro, if you write at night, your eyes will thank you.
13. Custom top keyboard row in iOS. A beautiful custom keyboard row at the top awaits you! Streamlining workflows, snippets, as well as a very novel approach to moving your cursor around your document with swipes - it’s all about one thing, empowering your writing in iOS and saving you time.
14. Has very talented developer behind it. Like iA, only with one guy behind the curtain. It’s incredible to me what he accomplished in Editorial. The app been called a “game-changer” by many a seasoned iOS veteran and it’s absolutely deserved.
15. Cost. At $4.99, this app is a steal for all that it does.

That all said, it does have a few weaknesses. Some of them big ones. Here they are.

Weaknesses:

1. Editorial can do so much that it is truly overwhelming at times. If you are curious like I am, you can easily (and often involuntarily) start geeking out on creating workflows when you originally came there to write. Luckily, as I mentioned above, most of it stays out of the way. But it is there. All those possibilities…
2. On the flip-side, using it to its fullest potential does necessitate a learning curve. That may turn people off.
3. iPad only. No Mac or iPhone version. This is a huge point to be aware of. If you don’t write in iOS on an iPad, Editorial is useless to you. On the one hand this is infuriating. On the other, I can’t imagine this app working well on an iPhone. On the Mac though? Definitely. Until then, you’ll have to snag your flat text files from Dropbox and open them in whatever OS X editor you love.

The choice is yours.

So that’s how I filled the recent gap in my workflow. It is not perfect, but I have confidence that it will get close to that quickly. Writer Pro will continue to be my bridge for when I need to sync my words across platforms and Editorial will more than fill my writing needs for when I am just carrying around my iPad. Two apps, loaded with functionality, fully mobile, facilitating my writing from wherever I may be, at any time.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Helpful Links:

Writer Pro: OS X download | iOS (universal) download Editorial: iOS download (iPad only)

One of the most requested posts I’ve seen in the comments section of this site has been for me to do a write-up on how to create a custom project template in Scrivener. It’s something I honestly had never thought of doing until I started blogging in Scrivener using Markdown and MultiMarkdown. After using that system for a bit, I realized quickly that I’d want the exact same setup for the next year (and the year after that). Without a template, I’d have to recreate everything in that project layout from scratch.

It was the first time I’d encountered a situation in Scrivener where I needed the initial layout of a project (folders, metadata, doc templates, etc…), to be a repeatable affair. Sure it’s easy enough to start a new project and recreate everything (easy, yet time-consuming), but wouldn’t it be great if I had a boilerplate starting point that did it all for me?

Luckily, as always, Scrivener makes creating such a setup quite easy.

One and done.

At first, I thought I’d use a previous project that was ideal for my needs and create a template from that. Good idea right? But then I realized that when you create project template in Scrivener, it takes literally everything in that project and adds it to the template.

In short, I’d get the bits I needed, but I’d spend even more time deleting the stuff I didn’t.

So, to avoid that situation, you need to to start a new project with zero content in it (I used Scrivener’s blank template). From here, you need to recreate only the skeletal structure of the elements that you are going to reuse moving forward. In the case of my blogging system, I only wanted the basic structural elements that I knew I’d need year after year. So that meant the folders for the months, useful, but generic meta-data, a doc template with pre-filled Markdown in it that I use in every post, and anything else that I’d recreate next year.

Once you have all of that set up, it’s time to create your template!

File > Save As Template... not File > Save As...

I remember striking out initially, while looking for this option under the “Save As…” and “Export” sub-menus under “File”. But I quickly saw the magical “Save As Template…” option and all was well.

Once you have your template structure in order. Head up to “File” and then look four options up from the bottom to find “Save As Template…”. Go ahead and click that.

This brings up a “Template Information” window where you can name your template, give it a description, assign an existing Scrivener category to it and even give it fancy custom icon so that it stands out the next time you create a new project.

Once that’s all sorted, click the “Ok” button and you’re done. Easy peasy.

Now you can either save the boilerplate project to add to it later or, if you feel confident that you nailed it on the first try, you can delete it. Don’t worry. You won’t lose your work. The template is safe and sound in Scrivener’s “Application Support” folder on your hard drive.

Let's Take It For a Spin!

Now all you have to do to use your new template is start a new project in Scrivener. Select the category you assigned to it and choose your custom template. Once the new project comes up, you’ll see all of that beautiful time you just saved!

Now go have a tall libation. You’ve earned it! :)

Full disclosure:

I am not a Facebook fan. At all.

I pretty much have an account for the few dear friends that continue to use the service to contact me via messaging and for me to stay abreast of all things “social” for my day job and freelance gigs. I use it sparingly and when I do I rarely enjoy it. The UI/UX (user interface and user experience) on their website has been a veritable, well-documented train wreck for years now. And when you add in the convoluted, borderline impossible privacy settings… it elevates the FB experience from nuisance, to possibly damning in every social regard.

High drama I know, but in my defense, the “content” (if you can call it that) is a far pinker elephant in the room than my disdain.  In my humble opinion Facebook will end up being one of the biggest missed opportunities my generation will have to fess up to before we die.

Why we changed one of the greatest opportunities in history to connect with each other into an open forum to show our ugliest selves will always bother me.

It’s not ALL like that of course. But come on… We all know what I am taking about.

A new take on a hopeless problem.

vimeo.com/85421325 So while we won’t ever change the way FB churns its gears day in and day out, that hasn’t stopped the social juggernaut from attempting to change the way we look at it all.

Over the years, they’ve iterated on their official app several times with limited success in changing anything I’ve listed above. But this week? This week was different. On Monday they launched a reimagining of their service, a not so cleverly named app called “Paper”.  And, by golly, all of that developer poaching they did over the years has finally paid off!

Making Lemonade.

The first thing you’ll notice right out of the gate while using Facebook’s Paper is that this is a far cry from the Facebook you use on an hourly basis. In fact, I would go as far to say that if it wasn’t for the ill-placed “Facebook” at the top of the initial feed you see in Paper, that you wouldn’t even know you were using a Facebook app. This is a good thing.

Gone are the columns, the click-bait ads, the blue, the shotgun blast of options, the overt notifications, the noise (dear god the noise)… pretty much everything I didn’t like about the UI/UX of the original Facebook app, has been replaced by something entirely different. You launch the app and after you get through the initial onboarding process, you are met immediately with pictures of your friends (and their kids/infants - no, that hasn’t changed), clean lines, clean fonts, very little chrome and an intuitive navigation that is almost entirely gesture-based.

It took me roughly 5 minutes to find literally everything I needed to make Facebook work as it always has for me in the past. Even though everything had changed, miraculously, nothing had been taken away. And just like that, the overall experience of using Facebook had been made exponentially better! This isn’t another rehash of the Facebook a lot of us apparently love and adore - this is its reinvention, and if I was a betting man? I’d say this is what Facebook will be in a few months.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Facebook replaced their official iOS app entirely with Paper. If only to get rid that awful app icon that Paper currently has, but I digress.

Is there anything else? What's up with these other news feeds?

I almost didn’t mention the fact that Paper also has a limited number of “feeds” that deliver content from external sources like CNN, NYT, The Verge, The Wire, Politico, etc… covering a range of topics like “Tech”, “Creators”, “Planet” and “Ideas”. Why? It’s because, frankly, I already have several tried and true, thoroughly enjoyable ways to syndicate and consume information from those kinds of channels. Facebook is immensely late to this game and adding it in now (as pretty as it is) seems like gross afterthought on their part and it definitely, unfortunately for them, comes across that way.

Will you like it better than the zillion other ways you can consume headlines on the computers on your desk and in your pocket? I highly doubt it. But they do exist in Paper if you want to check them out. Just follow the steps during the setup process when you fire up Paper initially.

Like everything else the developers did with Paper, it’s pretty, and straightforward.

So why continue using Facebook's official app?

That’s an excellent question. After a day of use, I’ve already deleted the official FB app from my iPhone and made my Facebook mobile experience solely Paper-based. And guess what? I’ve used Facebook more in 48 hours than I have in the last 3 months. No joke.

Yes the content is still the same, a lot of what I dislike is still there (I can’t blame Facebook for my feed’s complaints, topics, taste, or… well, you get my point), but man is this a great study in how changing something as subtle (and immensely complex) as an experience can change the way something old can feel.

If you are a fan of Facebook or if you’re simply curious about what the future of the service will more than likely be, I encourage you download Paper from the app store today and see for yourself.