Ia Writer Basics
IA Writer is one of the most established and widely-acclaimed Markdown editors. Considered to be a “gold standard” Markdown editor, iA Writer is available for devices running macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android operating systems. The application allows you to export Markdown files to HTML, PDF, and Microsoft Word file format using custom. For seven years now, iA Writer has been used and loved by professional writers on Mac, iOS, and Android. IA Writer runs on Windows 7, 8 and 10. It comes with a custom installer. Everything is designed to make you focus on the text. What's The Apps: iA Writer Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days: (Coupon Code: TECHNO) Jon Q is back to attack and highlight another e. # What is iA Writer? It can be used without reading long manuals. Just open the app and start typing. Introduced with the original iA Writer in 2010,.Focus Mode. blinds everything out except the sentence or paragraph you are working on. Write one sentence or paragraph at a time. When you said what you feel, edit.
What’s the best tool for a writer? Many use a typewriter, Microsoft Word, or even pen and paper, and get the job done. But writing is hard enough already, and there are writing software that promise to make the process as friction-free as possible, and offer tools that meet the unique needs of writers.
Ulysses claims to be “the ultimate writing app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone”. It’s my personal favorite and the winner of our Best Writing Apps for Mac review. Unfortunately, it’s not available to Windows users and the company has not announced any plans to create one, though they’ve hinted a few times that they may consider it one day.
The Windows version is in no way associated to us – unfortunately, it’s a shameless rip-off.
— Ulysses (@ulyssesapp) April 15, 2017
What’s the best alternative for those using Microsoft’s Windows 10?
How Can a Writing App Help?
But first, how can writing apps like Ulysses help writers? Here’s a quick summary, and for a full treatment of why we love the app, read our full Ulysses review.
- Writing apps offer an environment that helps writers focus. Writing can be difficult, leading to procrastination. Ulysses offers a distraction-free mode that helps you keep typing once you get started, and uses Markdown so you don’t need to take your fingers off the keyboard to format your words. It’s pleasant to use, adding as little friction and as few distractions as possible.
- Writing apps include a document library that syncs between devices. We live in a multi-platform, multi-device world. You might start a writing project on your computer and do some editing on your tablet. Ulysses syncs your complete document library between your Apple computers and devices and keeps track of previous versions of each document in case you need to go back.
- Writing apps offer helpful writing tools. Writers need to quickly access statistics like word and character counts and appreciate a convenient way of checking if they are on target for their deadline. Spell check, formatting and maybe foreign language support are needed. Preferably these tools will be kept out of the way as much as possible until they are needed.
- Writing apps help writers manage their reference material. Before starting the grunt work, many writers like to let their ideas marinate. That may involve brainstorming and research, and creating an outlining of the structure of your document before you start is often helpful. A good writing app offers tools to facilitate these tasks.
- Writing apps allow writers to organize and rearrange the structure of their content. It can be helpful to visualize an overview of a long document in an outline or index card view. A good writing app will also let you easily move the pieces around so you can change the document structure on the fly.
- Writing apps allow writers to export the finished product to a number of publishing formats. When you finish writing, an editor may want to use the revision tools in Microsoft Word to suggest changes. Or you may be ready to publish onto your blog, create an ebook, or produce a PDF for your printer to work with. A good writing app offers flexible export and publishing features that allow you to customize the final product.
Ulysses App Alternatives for Windows 10
Here’s a list of some of the best writing apps available on Windows. They won’t all do everything Ulysses can, but hopefully, you’ll find one that meets your needs.
1. Scrivener
Scrivener ($44.99) is Ulysses’ biggest competitor, and superior in some ways, including its awesome ability to collect and organize reference information. However, Windows users are still using version 1.9.7 while Mac users enjoy 3.1.1. A beta of Scrivener 3 for Windows has been available for some time, and if you purchase the current version, you’ll receive a free upgrade once it is ready. Read our full Scrivener review here or this comparison review between Ulysses and Scrivener here.
For writing. And writing. And writing. Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more. Scrivener won’t tell you how to write—it simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing.
2. Inspire Writer
Inspire Writer (currently $29.99) has a striking resemblance to Ulysses but doesn’t include all of its core features. It does use Markdown for formatting and organizes all of your work in a single library which can be synced between multiple PCs.
Writing is hard enough, and the blinking icons in the system tray and flashy animations on the browser just make it even harder to stay focused on what you want to say. So your productivity suffers. Inspire is clean, light, and is free from everything that can get in the way of your writing.
3. iA Writer
iA Writer ($29.99) is a basic Markdown-based writing tool without all of the bells and whistles that Ulysses and Scrivener offer. It has a focus on distraction-free writing, and the current Windows version is ahead of the Mac version by including document outlining, chapter folding and automatic table alignment.
iA Writer creates a clean, simple and distraction-free writing environment for when you really need to focus on your words. It’s delightful to use.
4. FocusWriter
FocusWriter (free and open-source) is a simple, distraction-free writing environment that offers writing tools that get out of your way while you work. Live statistics, daily goals, and timers and alarms are included.
FocusWriter is a simple, distraction-free writing environment. It utilizes a hide-away interface that you access by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, allowing the program to have a familiar look and feel to it while still getting out of the way so that you can immerse yourself in your work.
5. SmartEdit Writer
SmartEdit Writer (free), formerly Atomic Scribbler, lets you plan your novel, prepare and maintain research material, and write chapter-by-chapter. Tools are included that help you improve sentence structure and identify word and phrase overuse.
Ia Writer Spell Check
SmartEdit Writer – free software to plan your novel, prepare and maintain research material, write your novel scene by scene and edit chapter by chapter in a modern Windows application that has a similar look and feel to Microsoft Word.
6. Manuskript
Manuskript (free and open-source) is a tool for writers who like to organize and plan everything before they start. It includes an outliner, distraction-free mode, and novel assistant that helps you create complex characters and plots. You can get an overview of your work through a story view at the bottom of the screen or on index cards.
The snowflake method can help you grow your idea into a book, by leading you step-by-step and asking you questions to go deeper. While writing, keep track of notes about every character, plot, event, place in your story.
7. Typora
Typora (free while in beta) is a Markdown-based writing app that automatically hides the formatting syntax when you’re not editing that section of the document. It offers an outliner and distraction-free mode and supports tables, mathematical notation, and diagrams. It’s stable, attractive, and custom themes are available.
Typora will give you a seamless experience as both a reader and a writer. It removes the preview window, mode switcher, syntax symbols of markdown source code, and all other unnecessary distractions. Replace them with a real live preview feature to help you concentrate on the content itself.
So What Should You Do?
If you’re looking for the next best thing to Ulysses on Windows, try Inspire Writer. It has the same look-and-feel, uses Markdown, offers light and dark mode, and can sync your document library to all your PCs. I’m reluctant to vouch for it too confidently because I haven’t used it on a long-term basis, but user reviews on Trustpilot are positive.
Alternatively, try our Best Choice for Long-Form Writing: Scrivener. While that review is for Mac apps, Scrivener is available for Windows, and that version should reach feature-parity with the Mac app in the near future. It is more functional than Ulysses, and that brings along a steeper learning curve. But it’s popular, and a favorite of many well-known authors.
Ia Writer Basics Book
But before jumping on one of those two programs, read through the descriptions of the alternatives. Download the trial version of a few programs that interest you and evaluate them for yourself. Writing is a very individual pursuit, and you’re the only one who can discover the best application for your working style.
Its no secret that I find writing difficult. It takes me more time than most to write something, and then get it into a state that I am happy with before posting it to my blog. Recently however I have found a tool to help me with my writing, called iA Writer (Website).
iA Writer is a MacOS, iOS and Android writing app with some nifty features to help you write.
Markdown
The first thing is that it uses Markdown. If you know me, or read some of my other stuff you will know I am a big fan of Markdown. I first came across it in the world of coding but now use it for most writing tasks. I find that markdown helps me concentrate on my content and not worry too much about the presentation. This is important because I don’t need to deal with the presentation until I enter the post into WordPress. This allows me to concentrate on my ideas and what I want to say. In Markdown you can hint at some formatting, using a simple syntax. I won’t go to much into detail about markdown but you can read about it on wikipedia or read the syntax. Having an app that I can write markdown straight into is really useful. There are other applications that support markdown, these are mainly coding tools like Atom, Sublime, IntelliJ and many others. These applications though are not really set up for writing, and so lack some basic tool support like spelling and grammar checking and correction.Fullscreen
iA Writer supports MacOS native fullscreen mode, although this isn’t unusual in MacOS apps these days it is a big help. MacOS added fullscreen mode a while ago and as the name implies it allows you to make an app fill an entire space, i.e makes it full screen. The latest MacOS update El Capitan went one step further and allowed you to split the screen showing multiple apps together. I have found that this has helped me concentrate on what I am writing without been distracted by other things. The new snap feature on MacOS also helps me as when needed I can snap iA Writer and a Web browser for research into a single space. The fact that iA Writer fully supports the native MacOS tools is an important feature for me.
iA Writer – Focus Mode
Focus Mode
Another feature that helps me concentrate on what I am writing, and getting my ideas down is called Focus Mode. Focus Mode is part of iA Writer and basically fades out everything but the current section your working on. In iA Writer you can decide what you want to use as the focus in focus mode. You can select ether the current sentence or the current paragraph. I leave mine set to the default of the current sentence as that is the one I personally find the most useful.
Night Mode
iA Writer also includes a dark theme called Night Mode. Dark themes are popular in the development community where you are staring at lines of text all day in the form of code. As the name suggests Night Mode uses a darker colour scheme. In iA Writer this takes the form of white text on a dark blue/black background. The main advantage of this is that is easier on your eyes when staring at blocks of text for a long time. Been a developer I have become use to editing large blocks of text using a dark theme. This for me makes iA Writer easier and nicer to use as I can carry that through into my writing.
iA Writer – Syntax Hinting
Writing Features
As you would expect iA Writer features all the normal writing tools that you would suspect from any writing focused application these days. It integrates nicely with the default MacOS grammar and spell checkers which is alway useful in hinting and catching mistakes. It also features character, word and sentence counters. As well as these basic stats iA Writer also has an average reading time counter. These tools are of course useful for tailoring and managing the length of my blog posts. Something else that iA Writer has, which is as far as I am aware is unique, is sentence syntax highlighting. When enabled this highlights the sentence structure to help guide you in structuring your sentences better. It highlights each of the important word types in a sentence in different colours such as verbs, nouns, Adjectives etc.
Integration
The last important thing for me when it comes to writing blog posts, which is currently what I mostly use iA Writer for is that it has built in integration with WordPress and iCloud. The WordPress Integration means that when I have finished my blog post content I can simply “push” it to my WordPress blog. This is much more reliable than the copy and paste method which can often have problems. Unfortunately it uses WordPress.com to be able to push the blog post. If like me you self host you can always install the Jetpack plugin from Automatic. Jetpack integrates your self hosted blog with WordPress.com’s control panel. This allows you to use a lot of the tools that are targeted at WordPress.com on your own self hosted blog.
Integration with iCloud on the other hand is very useful, when used with the iOS app. The iOS apps work both on iPhone and iPad (it may also work on iPod Touch but I have never owned one to test it). Although I don’t write on my iPhone as it isn’t really any good as a writing tool, apart from quick notes. Having my blog content on iOS is a great help for proof reading. It also adds the extra security of having my content backed up to the cloud, and be accessible from any Mac that I access.
So
I have been using iA Writer for a while now, and as a writing tool I have found invaluable. It helps me to write, and get my ideas out there in a clear and clean manor. It has many advantages over other tools that I have used. Previously I was using Evernote, but that lacks basic writing tools such as word count and spelling/grammar checking integration. I have also tried Apple’s own writing tool, Pages but that is a full blown word processor and doesn’t suite the idea of getting structured content down easily and fast. For anyone that does a lot of writing where content is more important than presentation, or where presentation can be handled later Ai Writer is a great tool. If you struggle with writing then it can also be a good tool to use, with focus mode and sentence highlighting allowing you to focus on your content. iA Writer has some other useful features for more general writing tasks, I choose not to cover these as I wanted to highlight how I use it.