We’ve covered Word and Pages, so no we move on to the more interesting specialty writing tools. Today, we’re going to review Byword, a very nice little plain-text markdown editor. It’s available for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone (No PC), and uses iCloud to keep everything in sync between the devices. You can also use Dropbox quite easily as well.
I’ve mentioned Markdown before, so I’m not going to get into explaining that here, but suffice it to say, Byword is an excellent implementation of Markdown. It features previews of Markdown output. For example, if I type *example*, it displays withing the editor as *example*. If I go with **example** you’ll see **example**. You get instant feedback on what you enter, so if you’re a Markdown newbie, you’ll get instant feedback as to whether you typed what you think you typed.
The interface is well-done, with just enough customization options that it’s not ugly, but not so many that it gets distracting. There’s a dark and light theme, half a dozen fonts (all of which are excellent) and the ability to set the size of the text. That’s about it. The focus here is on your writing, not fiddling with settings.
Other than just getting your words into Byword, it’s important that you be able to get them back out again. You can easily export in HTML, PDF, RTF, docx, and Latex formats. Save it as docx if you need to send it to someone who uses Word. Use PDF if you’re going to print it yourself, HTML if you are pasting it into a blog, and one of the others if you need it. You save your plain-text working files in Markdown, but you export it however you’re going to need it.
The apps costs $9.99 for the Mac, and another $4.99 for the iPad/iPhone universal App. It’s well worth it to have a system that syncs across all your devices so easily. There is also a $4.99 in-app purchase (for the Mac, $2.99 for the iPad) that allows you to publish to WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger blogs, as well as Evernote and Scriptogram. This is a pretty bare-bones posting system, and it doesn’t include a lot of features of some other blogging utilities. I recommend writing your blog posts (or whatever) in Byword, then exporting them and posting them on your blog some other way.
The iPad version of the app has everything mentioned above, as well as the addition of an extra keyboard row on the on-screen keyboard. It’s got right and left arrow keys to easily move your cursor around on the current line (Why doesn’t everything have this?) as well as keys for the major Mardown functions like headings, linking, images, lists, emphasis, etc. It’s even got a TAB key. Slide the uppoer keyboard row to the right, and it’s replaced with a word count. It’s pretty basic, which is the point, but everything is very attractive. I spend a lot of time looking at whatever it is that I’m typing into in front of me all day, so appearances and aesthetics are as important to me as features in some ways. I especially like the Dark Theme, I am quickly getting to the place where I won’t write on anything that doesn’t have a dark theme of some kind (Word and Scrivener don’t, for example, they’re very, very white and hard on the eyes).
If you are a plain-text junkie like me, or are learning (or have mastered) Markdown, this is a great app. The no-brains, no-frills way it syncs between devices impresses me, and the way they keep it simple and attractive keeps me using it. I’ve also NEVER had it crash on me. It’s good to have a dependable app that does what it says without fear.
Byword for Mac
Byword for iOS
by Metaclassy Lda
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