For simple, distraction-free text editing, I had at first settled on Darkroom for Windows. It was pretty good but seemed somewhat unfinished. Then I found Q10 and decided it was the way to go.

Then a reader, Arch1k, suggested that WriteMonkey was the best editor in this genre. I’d never heard of it, but after finally downloading and trying it, it’s clear that my prior choices were inferior; WriteMonkey is much better. By a long shot.

WriteMonkey has some unique features.

Besides well-executed text editing, WriteMonkey includes features that set it apart from others such as Q10 and Darkroom.

Progress Bar – a thin line on the screen edge grows downwards as you type, indicating how far along you are towards a document length goal. The default is 3000 characters but can be set to any number of characters (with or without spaces included) or words. In the image above you can see the progress bar—it’s the thin line in the upper left. Click to view the larger image.

Jumps – pressing alt-J will bring up a list of locations within the document to which you can quickly jump. The list includes bookmarks, headlines, and paragraphs.

Repository – pressing alt-R will toggle between the edit display and a text repository, where you can keep snippits of text, URLs, etc. Essentially a scrap of electronic paper.

WriteMonkey executes typical features well.

Well-executed from front to back, WriteMonkey has yet to get in my way or make me grumble about some bothersome aspect.

It supports most of the normal things you would expect from a full-screen text editor: customizable fonts and colors, typing sounds, text statistics, spell checking, find and replace, and so on.

Notably, find and replace supports wildcards and regular expressions. Also, it seems to handle multi-monitor setups well.

Another nice feature is its support for zooming; control-scrollwheel zooms the text size and editing width, shift-scrollwheel zooms the text size, and alt-scrollwheel zooms the editing width.

WriteMonkey is the best full-screen text editor. So far.

So, for now, WriteMonkey is the best option I have found for distraction-free, full-screen text editing. It has more features than either Q10 or Darkroom (or others for that matter) and gets the job done better than either.

Check it out.

Modern computers are chock full of features and widgets and icons and gizmos, but when you’re trying to focus, it is all just noise. There is something to be said for an old green or amber monitor, showing nothing but your immediate task.

Update: Distraction-free text editing has a new contender. Check out my review of WriteMonkey.

Dark Room for Windows

Over a year ago I was impressed with Dark Room, a simple, full-screen text editor for Windows. It is a full-screen text editor with no distractions. However, though it serves its purpose and is nice in some respects, using it is a chore. The biggest problem is that it feels slow. Wait, the biggest problem has to be that it lacks find-and-replace functionality. Seriously, though Dark Room works, it feels like it’s an unfinished project.

Dark Room Editing

Dark Room Preferences

Distraction-Free Text Editors

So Dark Room is a decent choice for Windows users looking for a simple, full-screen text editor, but it has some problems.

So, are there any other options? Yes, there are.

jDarkRoom

jDarkRoom is a Java-based alternative. Since it’s Java-based, it will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its feature set is limited. Also, at least on my Windows XP system, there was a serious problem with distracting graphical artifacts, which kind of defeats the purpose of distraction-free writing.

jDarkRoom Editing

jDarkRoom Preferences

jDarkRoom Help

WestEdit

WestEdit is a Windows application. It works, but to me it feels too lacking in features to use or recommend.

WestEdit Editing

WestEdit Preferences

WestEdit Help

Q10

Q10, a Windows application, has built-in spell checking, font selection, find-replace, a note feature, configurable document statistics, a writing alarm, adjustable typing sounds, auto-correct and “quick text” word expansion, and several other nice features. Very nice.

Q10 Editing

Q10 Preferences

Q10 Help

Writeroom

Writeroom, from Hog Bay Software, is the original distraction-free editor for the Mac. It costs about $25, though you can dig around and find an older version for free. (Oh, well, I did the digging for you. See the Writeroom Releases page for old versions.)

Since I don’t have a Mac handy, here is a wee screen shot from the Writeroom website. As you can see, it features a hip, shiny look. So it is a superb choice for shiny Apple customers.

Writer

Writer is web-based, and for what it is, not too bad. However, there are a few problems with this concept. First, web-based storage: I know it’s hip but letting someone else store my documents seems foolish. Second, it is not full-screen, so you’re left with the browser and anything around it to distract you. (However, you can get around a lot of this with a full-full-screen mode on your browser. A Firefox Addon called Fuller Screen works well, removing all browser chrome and making the website truly full-screen.) Writer does, on the other hand, have some handy features; send to email or a content management system (here again, you give them your userid and password—yikes!), download as text or PDF, and print. Interesting, but not compelling for any but the most trivial writing.

Writer Editing

DarkCopy

DarkCopy is another web-based text editor with a full-screen mode and the ability to save as a text file. There’s not much more to this editor, so it might suffice for the odd job, but unless you can’t use anything else, I don’t see a compelling reason to use this one. The full-screen mode doesn’t work so well for me, but nothing about DarkCopy makes me want to figure out what the problem is. Not bad, but no big deal.

DarkCopy Editing

Which distraction-free text editor is the best choice?

For Windows users, Q10 is the way to go. It’s fast and feels solid. The other choices work but are outshined by Q10.

For Mac users with cash left over after buying their overpriced systems, Writeroom is the standard-bearer; for those left indigent by Apple, the free JDarkRoom should work okay.

Linux users can use JDarkRoom or one of the web-based alternatives like Writer or DarkCopy.

The best option I’ve found is to use SUPER© (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer), which provides a GUI wrapper for ffmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, and ffmpeg2theora. More info and a faster download link is at VideoHelp.

After trying several converters that either watermarked the results, failed to convert, or simply built incompatible files, I stumbled across a reference to SUPER at VideoHelp.

Right away I was able to convert an FLV (Flash Video) file to MPEG4 H.264 format. It was huge, as the defaults are set to very high quality. Since the input was a low-quality FLV file, dialing the quality back quite a bit (see the two circled settings below) and keep the file size under control. With some additional tweaking I’m sure the video can be shrunk even more.

The SUPER© software is a little odd but it seems to work very well. Just drag a file from Windows Explorer over to the job list in the lower part of the SUPER window. Also, options are available by right-clicking anywhere on SUPER.

Anyhow, then I had an MP4 file ready to transfer to my new Zune.

At that point, I had to struggle a bit with the Zune software. Tip: do not manage your files inside the Zune software. Point it to your media directories and delete or rename them, etc. from Windows Explorer.

Also, it helps to send the SUPER output files somewhere Zune isn’t looking, then rename and change the meta-information (like Title and so forth) before moving the video to your media directories.

Speed Dial is a concept, introduced with Opera 9.2, where several (usually nine) thumbnail shots of preselected websites are presented in a grid. The user can easily choose from these items.

The really handy thing about Speed Dial is that it extends the concept of a browser’s home page. Instead of new pages or tabs always opening to Yahoo or a feed reader or the Drudge Report, you now have several options. When you open your browser, you aren’t always doing the same thing, so multiple starting points is a good thing.

Opera First, Of Course

Opera was first browser to implement tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, integrated and custom search, a password manager, URL nicknames, session restore, tab previews, and other innovative features. Now they’re first with Speed Dial. To date, Opera is the only browser to implement this feature.

Firefox Add-ons Catch Up

Just as you can trust Opera to innovate, you can trust the Firefox community to crank out an Add-on that catches up. Much like mouse gestures and tab previews, there’s an Add-on for Speed Dial.

Firefox Speed Dial is still in the Sandbox, so you’ll need to register and sign in, but once you do you can add Speed Dial to Firefox.

Firefox Speed Dial Add-on

To setup the Firefox Speed Dial Add-on, sign into the Mozilla Sandbox, download and install the Add-on, then restart Firefox. You then need to add the Speed Dial button to the navigation toolbar. Open an empty tab or window, click the Speed Dial button, and start assigning slots in the grid to websites.

Comparison

At the moment, the integrated Opera Speed Dial feels and looks much cleaner. Given that you have to dig Firefox Speed Dial out of the Mozilla Sandbox, that’s not terribly unexpected. Hopefully the Add-on will improve and Firefox users can enjoy it as much as Opera users are. On the flip side, the Firefox Add-on gives you a little more control.

Bonus: Tab Preview

In the screenshots above you can see that a thumbnail preview of the third tab is visible. This feature also comes standard with Opera, and it is also an Add-on for Firefox.

Firefox Tab Preview Add-on