Writing — it’s one of the things we do a lot, and many of us here at ProfHacker are often on the lookout for new tools that can help us with the writing task. One of the most essential tools (other than some good ideas, of course!) for getting the writing task done is a good text editor.
We’ve covered text editors before, of course, and have been particularly fond of plain-text editors, whose power Lincoln reminded us of last year. We also like being able to access our files from anywhere, so some of the editors we’ve looked at have been online: Jason introduced us to TextDrop, and George called our attention to Drive Notepad.
I recently came across an editor that I may end up using fairly regularly; in fact, I’m using it to write this post. It’s called WordFlow, and the only Google Chrome app I’ve ever paid for (a whopping $.99).
What I like about it: It provides a distraction-free environment for writing. It keeps a running word count; spell check is built in. It also works offline, and it automatically saves your work locally in Chrome.
That last feature, however, is the one that also results in what I’ve found to be its one potential downside. Though WordFlow works with such online services as Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive, it isn’t automatic. To get a document into Google Drive, for instance, you have to save it (as either .txt or .md) to the Google Drive folder on your hard drive. It thus requires an extra step that writing in Google Drive’s word processor doesn’t. If you don’t remember to save your file to the appropriate folder, you won’t be able to access it on other computers.
Still, that’s a relatively minor quibble, and thus far I’m finding this text editor very pleasant to use.
If you’ve tried WordFlow and would like to share your thoughts about it, or you have another favorite text editor to recommend, let us know in the comments.
[CC-licensed image by the author.]
