The iPad is often considered to be an entertainment device, the TV of the 21st century. Apple has tried hard to show with their own apps that the iPad has much more potential than that, and I believe they see the iPad as the computer of the future for many people, and expect that we’ll still be able to be creative and productive from them. I personally use an original iPad (iPad 1, shall we say?) as my full computer when I’m traveling. It’s perfect because its so easy to carry and go, and you can easily knock out a 15 minute work session in a lobby without having to wait for it to boot and connect to the ’net. Plus, an all-day battery makes searching for plugs a thing of the past. Sure, I’m working as a writer, editor, and tech support guy, but for my work, I’m able to be very productive on the iPad, with the on-screen keyboard or an external Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
So, here’s the apps I use to keep me productive on my iPad. Each of them are great, in my opinion, and many of them are nicer than their respective counterparts on any other computing platform. Seriously.
iA Writer ($0.99) - My favorite native writing app on the iPad and Mac. iCloud and Dropbox integration, a beautiful monospaced font, and extra buttons to make navigation easier seal the deal.
Pages, Keynote, and Numbers ($9.99 each) - If you need Office on your iPad, then the iWork apps are actually what you need. Don’t even try out other office apps; none others are worth it, and I’ve tried them all. Pages is the app I’ve used the most of the 3, and have written dozens of essays for college that were “required” to be written in Word. Worked perfectly. I use Keynote regularly for giving presentations along with my teaching, and it puts PowerPoint to shame. Numbers … well, you just never know when having a spreadsheet around is handy. Budgets, comparison pricing, stats, you name it, it works great. Simplest spreadsheet you’ve ever touched. Wait: perhaps the only spreadsheet you’ve actually touched.
1Password Pro ($14.99) - Keeping all of your passwords and account info everywhere makes working on the go much easier. Best used, of course, in conjunction with iPassword for Mac or Windows on your computer, but if your iPad’s your only computer, it’s still great for storing secure data on your iPad and syncing it with Dropbox. And yes, I said that: for many people, an iPad really could be your only computer.
iCab Mobile ($1.99) - The best alternate iPad browser, iCab Mobile lets you change your useragent to get desktop sites and web apps, and even lets you upload files and sync downloads with Dropbox. I still use Safari for most browsing, but iCab is where online work gets done, and is easily worth its price just by letting you upload files. That let me use my iPad 100% for college: write essays in Pages, export in Word format or PDF, and then upload to my college’s site via iCab Mobile. Perfect.
WordPress (Free) - The WordPress app isn’t perfect, but it does make managing WordPress sites on the go much easier. You can only edit posts in HTML mode, but that’s how I prefer to edit posts anyhow. I’ll write in iA Writer, and copy/paste the post into the WordPress app. For more full-featured blogging, check out Blogsy ($4.99).
OneEdit ($2.99) - If you need to bulk-edit images, such as rotate and resize images for blog posts, this app is indispensable. Before iOS 5 started taking screenshots in the correct orientation always, I used it all the time for bulk-rotating screenshots, and still use it to get them in the size I want for articles.
Simplenote (Free) - I keep all of my plain text notes in Simplenote, using their web and mobile apps, as well as nvALT on my Mac. Simple, and works perfect.
Dropbox (free) - Does this even need mentioned? Dropbox is Finder on my iPad, and the only way I could possibly keep up with all of my files on all of my devices so easily. It’s the cloud storage service you should be using. Seriously.
PDF Expert ($9.99) - It’s my favorite app for reading PDFs, but the PDF editing features are what make it really worth its price. Once you’ve filled out a form, signed it on your iPad, and emailed it to your boss/accountant/whoever, you’ll realize that your iPad just made printing/signing/scanning/shredding an obsolete process. Plus, you can use PDF Expert to access FTP servers, Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox, and more, so its a great way to access any files, not just PDFs, on your other storage services. That’s just a little extra bonus.
OmniOutliner ($19.99) - The Omni Group makes some of the best iOS apps, period. They’re most famous for Omnifocus (which their iPad app is easily their best version … but I personally can’t get away from making plain txt todos in iA Writer, and then managing group projects in Basecamp and Flow for my respective work teams.), but it actually all originally started with OmniOutliner. Suffice it to say, if you need to make outlines or check-off lists, there’s no better way to do it. Actually, since it can add in columns, it might be the best basic spreadsheet-type app for most normal people. OmniOutliner is beautiful and a joy to use. I use it to keep attendance charts for my classes, make outlines for lessons, and keep simple budgets of, among other things, the iOS apps I buy. It’s great.
Screens ($19.99) - Ever need the power of your Mac or PC, but only want to use your iPad? Screens is an absolutely great VNC app, and using my Mac over VNC from screens feels almost as fast as using it directly. It even supports Lion’s multitouch gestures for switching apps and more. Plus, it’s rather fun to prank people with: let them use your Mac, then go in the other room and use it at the same time from Screens. Oh yeah.
Kindle (Free) - I often joke that my iOS devices are the best Kindles, since they’re useful for so many other things. I’ve never owned a Kindle device, but only ever purchase eBooks from the Kindle store (unless they’re DRM free, like the A Book Apart books). Here’s why: you can read your books anywhere, so the DRM doesn’t even feel restrictive. And it is productive too: I have more books on writing, business, and InDesign (which I’m trying to learn) than I do just-for-fun books. For DRM free ePub and PDF eBooks, I use iBooks as well. My A Book Apart library looks rather nice in it.
Instapaper ($4.99) - So, perhaps Instapaper isn’t the most productive app in the world, because you can’t use it to create anything new. But, it’s easily one of the top 10 reasons you should own an iOS device. The Instapaper service does keep me more productive, since I save links I come across online to Instapaper to read later, so I can get on with what I’m working on. And then, the app itself is so great for reading, and I do use it for articles I want to reference in my own writing, so that makes it a bit productive. Plus, since when is reading high quality writing a bad idea?
Bible+ (Free) - As a Christian, and a missionary in Thailand, studying the Bible is one of those things I do on a daily basis. OliveTree’s Bible+ is the best app for searching through the Bible and other study resources, and with their new companion Mac and PC apps, it might be the best Christian resource on any OS. For just reading the Bible, though, and not in-depth searching and studying, I still like YouVersion’s Bible app better. Plus, it has almost every language you could think of, including Thai, which is crucially important for me!
Then, there’s a few more apps that make up more of my iPad’s time: the built-in Mail and Calendar apps, which are definitely productivity tools, Tweetbot and Facebook for social networking, which is definitely not productive, and Reeder for RSS feeds, which like all news apps straddles the dangerous line of non-productivity that feels productive. Oh, and Calcbot, because you never know when you’ll need a calculator.
That’s the apps I use regularly on my iPad, and really, most of my iPad time is productive (other than reading, which can go both ways). If I had an iPad 2 or the new iPad, I’d use videochat in Skype as well, but without that, Skype isn’t nearly as useful for me on the iPad. As a writer, perhaps the iPad can be a full computer much easier than it could for other people, but the App Store has so many apps that are great for so many industries, its hard to believe that writers are the only ones who could find the iPad to be a great productivity tool.
Did I miss any great iPad productivity tools? If so, I’d love to hear your favorites, as I always love trying out new apps as well!
Waking up 2 hours early is no easy feat. Actually, waking up on time on any given day can be a challenge when you've learned to turn off ever possible device in your sleep. So, my coping strategy: set multiple alarms, and you're bound to get up within 15 minutes of the time you should.
Thus my iPod Touch had 3 alarms set this morning, each with their own ring tone: 4 AM, 4:15, and 4:30. The first alarm was successful, enough that I'd already checked email and Twitter on the iPod, and replied to a txt from my girlfriend on my phone. And I still had time to get in the shower before...
Rrring. Rrring.
You know, I thought these devices were supposed to be smart. Ok, so my iPod Touch isn't a smartphone, but it's essentially an iPhone without a sim card, so it basically is a smartphone. And if it was smart, it had every reason to know I was awake. But the 3rd alarm still went off until I could go turn it off.
My device was obeying me, ringing just like I'd asked it to. Just like the poor guy whose alarm went off during a concert. They're not truly smart, they're just logical systems that do what we tell them to. They let us know when we receive new emails and Tweets and appointments because we told them to, not because they're so smart they know what we want. Their alarm clocks aren't really smarter than that old digital clock on your nightstand. Sure, it's more powerful than a turn-of-the-century PC, but your smartphone is still rather dumb.
We're making them seem smarter. They can remind us of things we need to do at specific locations thanks to geofencing. They can auto-adjust their screen brightness thanks to sensors, and auto-sync our data with the cloud. They can even understand our voices, when we’re lucky and the internet connection is fast enough. We've made them seem pretty smart, but in reality, they're not that smart at all. At least, they're not intelligent.
And we could make them smarter. Perhaps they could take network and app usage as an indicator that we're awake. Perhaps they could do an even better job waking us up, presenting us with the weather, schedule, weather, and news instead of blasting an alarm for 10 minutes (wait, maybe that'd just give us more reason to pull the covers back over our heads). We could add more logic, and make them seem a lot smarter. But intelligence? Really knowing what you need, when you need it? That's so far off, it seems impossible. iOS 5.1 still thinks I want to be woken up while I'm in the shower.
So then I go outside. It's been raining, and I'd left my shoes outside under a bench. I reach down to pick them up, and our Shitzu dog jumps on the bench. Excited to see me, he shakes all the rain off his coat, right into my face.
Smartphone? Please. I don't even have a smart dog yet, and he's actually alive.
The word processor is a stupid and grossly inefficient tool for preparing text for communication with others. That is the claim I shall defend below. It will probably strike you as bizarre at first sight. If I am against word processors, what do I propose: that we write in longhand, or use a mechanical typewriter? No. While there are things to be said in favor of these modes of text preparation I take it for granted that most readers of this essay will do most of their writing using a computer, as I do. My claim is that there are much better ways of preparing text, using a computer, than the word processor.
The wording of my claim is intended to be provocative, but let me be clear: when I say word processors are stupid I am not saying that you, if you are a user of a word processor, are stupid. I am castigating a technology, but one that is assiduously promoted by the major software vendors, and that has become a de facto standard of sorts. Unless you happen to have been in the right place at the right time, you are likely unaware of the existence of alternatives.
For the past several years, I've increasingly avoided word processing apps. Sure, I have iWork Pages and Microsoft Word 2011 on my Mac. Pages is a beautiful app for laying out formatted documents, and Word, well, is a necessary evil, especially when you're in college. But I hardly ever type directly into either. Instead, almost everything I write is written in plain text, in iA Writer or Typerighter, then saved to Simplenote or just as a plain text file in Dropbox or iCloud.
If it's getting published online, then I'll put it in WordPress and add the HTML it needs. If it's getting submitted to college or someone else as a Word document, then I can format the text there. But the most import thing is, my text is always just plain text. It's searchable, will always work on any computer, and never needs converted into another newer format. It's just text, and it always works.
Plus, it's so much less distracting to write in plain text, and not have to mess with formatting. Just get a minimilist plain text writing app, and write away.
Amazing this essay was written over a decade ago, and yet only recently are most people starting to see that they actually don't have to have a word processor to write.
Over the past year, my daily workflow has increasingly included a number of apps that do one thing well. Writing apps that have no toolbars or buttons. Email tools that just do email. Browsers with almost no extensions. File sync and backup without having to think about it. Anything to reduce complexity in computing.
But can you take simplicity too far? Can you strip out too many features? That depends on what features you're removing. The best apps are designed by people who strip a tool down to its most essential elements and only focus on those.
Wren for Mac is that: a Twitter app designed for sending tweets, and just that. You might need to tweet for your job, perhaps posting to multiple Twitter accounts throughout the day. Or you might just want to share a link to the blog post you just wrote, or that witty thought you'll forget in 5 minutes. Whatever. The last thing you want to do is get distracted from your work. You need to post to Twitter, and get back to what you're doing.
If you open Twitter.com, or Twitter for Mac, or Tweetbot, or Tweetdeck, or any other standard Twitter app, you'll end up reading your Twitter stream or seeing what others have @replied you. Just sending that one tweet turned into a 20 minute internet buzzfest. That's why Wren was designed. Andrew Ramos and Kevin Smith designed it to do one thing well: send tweets. Not distract you, not help you waste time, just send tweets from any of your accounts. It can shorten URLs and auto-complete @names, and even shows you the last thing you tweeted so you won't repeat yourself. And you can save tweets you want to send later, for those ideas that are too good to tweet at 2AM when no one else will see them. Everything you need to make you great at sending tweets, and nothing else.
It's beautifully designed, and if you're using it on OS X Lion or newer, be sure to check out its unique Full Screen Mode implementation. For such a simple app, it's rather fun to look at. But actually, don't look at it too long. Because the whole reason its worth buying is to save you time. So you'll stay socially engaged, but quit being so distracted.
I love WooThemes' Canvas Theme. It's so versitle and simple to use, which is why I decided to use it for Techinch's redesign last year. Since then, I've tweaked it in a number of ways, mainly using just Canvas' internal settings. No code, no mess, just simple settings and a quick Save and you're done.
I was pretty content with the way everything was looking, except for images. Canvas puts images in a white box with a light grey border, which looks nice enough for standard photos but looks rather awful with full window screenshots that include shadows with transparency. But try as I might, there's not an option to turn off (or tweak) the image background in Canvas.
WooThemes forums to the rescue. A quick search later, and I found the tiny line of code I needed to add. So, if you want to remove the Canvas image box background and border from your site, just add this line of code to Canvas' custom CSS box in its settings:
And that's it. Full image transparency support in Canvas, so your site with a non-white background color or texture doesn't look so odd anymore. And if you happen to still want a background and border behind some images, just add a caption, and you'll still get the original styling. Works great so far for me.
In early 2011, I decided to start focusing more time into writing for Techinch. I’d written for a number of sites by that time, and wanted to take my own site to the next level. It was a rather successful move, at first: Techinch was mentioned in a number of sites, including Wired and CNN, and the site made about 5% of my income in 2011. Not too bad.
Life kept me busy, though, and I took on new responsibilities throughout the year. I started doing tech support and documentation work for CoSupport, and through that now work directly for Metalab Design’s Flow app doing their tech support. I also became editor of Web.Appstorm.net in May of 2011, and much of the time I might have otherwise spent writing here went into my Web.AppStorm writing. I also graduated with my Bachelors degree from Florida Tech in December, so a large portion of my time went into writing essays in Word and tackling MySQL problems for database classes.
And now it’s 2012. I’m still editor at Web.AppStorm.net, and the tech support guy for Flow, and I’d still like to keep writing at Techinch. My workflow’s changed: I switched to a Mac last year as well, work from my iPad 1 on the go, and continue to use more web apps as part of my daily workflow. The site’s just barely changed: I ditched the sidebar and old logo, and will keep making small tweaks over time. We’re also back to using Adsense, since Techinch’s pageviews dropped rather sharply after I quit writing as often. But the tech world continues to get more interesting by the day, and there’s dozens of things I’d like to write about that don’t fit into the world of web apps that I cover at Web.AppStorm.
So that’s why I’m back. I hope to update Techinch more often, perhaps with more link posts and light content, and then with longer full-length articles as I can. I want it to be a place I love to write, which is why I’m clearing out anything that’s taking away from the site’s main content. Most of all, I hope to write articles that make technology make a little more sense, and help you take the complexity out of your tech life.
Over the past year, I’ve found that the simplest apps are the ones I use the most. The simplest sites that focus on the content end up being the most interesting. And that’s what I want to cover. The simplest apps and tips that make your life easier, and the interesting analysis that brings everything better to make the larger picture of tech make more sense.
Predicting the future is difficult at best, and while many predictions have ended up being correct, others sadly never came to pass (jetpacks, anyone?). That's why this set of commercials from AT&T are amazing. They were run during the '90's, and essentially predict a number of things we have today: iPads, video calls, GPS, online meetings and ticket purchase, and more. Checking out a book from hundreds of miles away? I've bought Kindle books from the back of a taxi whizzing through Bangkok before. The future is here, folks!
The graphics show these current tech with '90's tech style, but otherwise, they're spot-on for what you could find at your regular tech store today. Incredibly, everything mentioned is really a part of the tech scene today. And the commercials were run in '92-'93, years before Windows 95 was considered cutting-edge. Fascinating.
The past few years have brought tons of change to the world of computers. The iPhone showed us how great touch screen computing could be, and the iPad showed that sometimes, new interfaces can make apps much nicer. Today, Apple has released the latest version of their flagship product, Mac OS X Lion. It's the first major OS that shows how much mobile computing has affected the computer industry, and brings many of the things Apple has learned from touch screens and iOS to the Mac.
So what's in Lion? Beyond the already popular features in OS X, Lion has added a number of new enhancements that bring the best of iOS style to the desktop. I personally have only ever had limited exposure to OS X, but am looking forward to using Lion much more extensively. Here's my quick thoughts on it so far.
First, the Mac App Store and its Launchpad sidekick are a brilliant move for Apple. I've bemoaned for some time the increasing lack of new, innovative apps on Windows. There's just so little new stuff to be found. Apple is making it so much easier for new developers to target Mac users with apps, that there's simply an explosion of interesting and high quality apps on OS X today. Plus, Apple has brought it's own iWork apps to the App Store, which effectively gives you a high quality Office suite with most of Office's features for $60. Better still, you can run all App Store apps you purchase on all of your computers. Suddenly, just with the cost of Office and a couple more apps, PCs start sounding more expensive.
Second, the pervasive use of multitouch gestures is a great way to let normal users get more power out of their computers. Most people find keyboard shortcuts very confusing, but multitouch gestures are, for the most part, very natural. One thing I'm less sure about is the new reversed iOS-style scrolling, but you can always change that if you want. One thing about it: if you get Lion, make sure to get a Magic Trackpad as well to take advantage of the new touch gestures.
Third, the bundled apps are again setting the bar way above Windows. Mail, for example, supports Exchange by default. In Windows, you have to purchase Outlook just to receive mail from an Exchange account. There's another way Macs are seeming cheaper. Then, the new full screen apps look beautiful, and it'll be interesting to see how developers use these going forward to make new immersive app interfaces.
So, that's a quick breeze through my thoughts on the new features. I can't wait to get my hands on it, and will definitely write more about it then.
Getting Lion
Apple has been working for years to get us to quit using CDs and DVDs. The iTunes store lets you get your music and movies without disks, and then the App Store brought program installs without disks. OS X Lion now brings your new operating system without a disk, too.
This is actually not the newest thing. I personally installed Windows 7 and Ubuntu on my PC with a USB flash drive, and hardly ever use the DVD drive on it. I've installed Office, Photoshop Elements, and almost everything else from downloads instead of disks. It's been slightly more difficult for some things, but it just feels better to install software without using a DVD. Plus, it takes one step out of the process.
So Apple is now making this mainstream with Lion. If you have a Mac running Snow Leopard, you can purchase a Lion upgrade in the App Store for $29, and upgrade today. Then, all new Macs now come with Lion preinstalled, and the newest Minis and Airs also include a new feature Internet Recovery feature that can let you download and install Lion if you replace your hard drive or have some other critical problem. That is a very, very neat feature in my opinion. Finally, later this year, you'll be able to purchase Lion on a USB drive if you want a physical copy. One thing missing: optical disks.
Reviews
The tech community has outdone itself this time with OS X Lion reviews, so if you'd like to dig deeper and see more of what's new in Lion, here's the best articles so far for your reading pleasure:
And, if you'd like to really dig deep into OS X Lion, you can't miss John Siracusa's 19 page in-depth review of Lion at Ars Technica. It's an impressive article that digs into the most geeky parts of OS X, and shows why they matter. It also included perhaps the best ending, that summerizes what Lion is all about:
“Over the past decade, better technology has simply reduced the number of things that we need to care about. Lion is better technology. It marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what’s been added. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what’s been removed.”
Best of all, if you're an Ars Technica subscriber, you can download it as a PDF or ePub eBook. Alternately, you can purchase it a copy of the full review from the Kindle Store for $4.99.
I can't wait to try it out, and let you know my own thoughts on it. For now, though, there's more than enough written about it to know Lion inside and out before you upgrade or buy a new Mac. Apple is really on a roll, and they're not stopping yet. Best of all, they're actively working to make computers simpler for anyone to use, and that's a policy I can easily get behind. Bravo.
If there's one type of software that is hard to get perfect, it's support software. There are dozens of popular customer support web apps, but it's often hard to find one that fits exactly your needs. Some keep everything private, others keep all of your support public. Some work great with email, others work great for creating beautifully formatted documentation for your own app. But with hosted services, you've got to take what's included, and often you're not going to be perfectly satisfied with the feature set.
That's why I'm excited that WooThemes has created a brand new support system out of WordPress: SupportPress. WordPress may have started out as a blogging system, but it can be used for far more than just that today. WooThemes is pushing the boundaries again by creating an advanced theme that uses custom post types and taxonomies to turn WordPress into a full features support center. You can manage support tickets, create beautifully formatted documentation, and update users on your site's status, all from one simple WordPress install.
By default, support tickets in SupportPress are private, but you can turn them into public knowledge base articles anytime you want. Your customers will get customized emails when you update their support tickets, and the theme is designed to work great on any size browser, even a smartphone. And you can manage profiles, respond to tickets, send internal messages to other team members, and more, without ever opening the WordPress dashboard. It does so much, it's easy to forget that you're still using WordPress.
So, now with a free WordPress setup on your server and a $100 copy of SupportPress, you can have a fully customized support system for your whole team. No restrictions on the number of users or customers, no extra fees or even ongoing costs for updates. Want to customize the design, or change how something works? The whole theme is built on HTML5 and CSS3, so you can tweak it to your heart's content.
I've been using it today on a test install at support.techinch.com, and have been really impressed with it. I'll be writing up a full review of it on Web.AppStorm.net soon, but for now, feel free to check it out there and read more about it on WooThemes' site. If you've been wanting a more customizable way to support your customers, or have wanted a cheaper alternative to the increasingly expensive support web apps, this might be just what you've been looking for. I'm personally very excited about the potential of app themes like this, and the new ways we can take self-hosted web apps farther than ever before!
The more I write, the less I want in my writing apps. It seems crazy at first. Why in the world would you want less features?
Because sometimes, less is more. Less distraction means getting more done. Less features means more focus on the features that are most important. Less UI means more content.
That's why I've fallen in love with focused writing apps, from OmmWriter to iA Writer to Simplenote, over the past few years. They take away the buttons, the settings, the features, and leave you with a space for your thoughts. They, they focus on the features that make a difference in your writing: a calming environment in OmmWriter, brilliant Markdown formatting in iA Writer, and powerful search and publishing in Simplenote.
Between these, I've got ways to write in an elegant manner on Windows, OS X, the iPad, and the web. But what about WordPress? WordPress has become increasingly cluttered over the years, and you can easily spend more time tweaking your blog than writing your posts. That's why I often compose posts in another writing app, then bring them over to WordPress to add formatting and post them.
Not any more. For the past several weeks, I've been beta testing a new WordPress plugin that brings simplicity back to blogging: Artsy Editor.
Artsy Editor strips away the extra stuff in WordPress, giving you a focused writing environment right in your blog. Hit F11 to take your browser full-screen, and it's almost as nice as iA Writer ... except in WordPress in your browser. There's a little bit of UI in Artsy Editor: a post button on the top right which also lets you see the HTML of a post, a settings button in the bottom left, an Upload button in the bottom right, and a close button in the top left. Start typing, though, and all of that disappears, leaving you with your content.
Minimalist UI that fades away
Need formatting? Artsy Editor has you covered, too. You can use all of the standard keyboard shortcuts to add formatting to your text, or just select the text you want to format. A small pop-over editor will appear, similar to the mini-editor in Office 2007 and 2010, with all of the basic text formatting options. You can add any of the headings, and your most recent one will show on the button. Or, add links and check the box to open in another window if you want.
Quick and simple HTML formatting
Then, there’s one thing that always bugs me with WordPress: adding images. It just takes too long to add images with the Upload button. Artsy Editor solves this by letting you upload pictures to your post just by dragging and dropping them into your browser. Simple and easy. You can then move or resize the image right in the post, or scale the image by holding Shift down while resizing. It works just like you’d expect.
Drag and drop photo upload is awesome
The black text on white color scheme isn’t for everyone, but you don’t have to settle for just that. You can pick from 5 color schemes in Artsy Editor, including darker and pastel color schemes. You can also choose from several popular fonts such as Helvetica and Georgia. Plus, if your favorite choice isn’t available, you can always change the code if you want!
Simple writing, your way
Artsy Editor was just released today, and it has already improved a ton over the past couple weeks. There are still a few small quirks: the upload button is cut off on the edge in Windows, and there’s not an option to add captions to images. Still, Stephen Ou, Artsy Editor’s amazing developer, has been quick to fix bugs and answer questions, and has worked hard to make Artsy Editor a great solution for writing in WordPress.
If you’re usually writing short articles or articles that take a lot of HTML formatting, Artsy Editor might not be for you. But if you enjoy writing long-form pieces in WordPress, Artsy Editor might be the tool you need to make writing in WordPress enjoyable again.
I’m currently using it to write the bulk of my articles, only jumping to the HTML mode to add my final tweaking. I’d been doing my main writing in other apps and copying it into WordPress before, but now, I’m writing more in the browser. That’s one less step to blogging, and it’s made my daily workflow that much simpler. Plus, I’ve wanted drag-and-drop image uploads for some time now!
