With Difree I have been scratching my itch. Here’s why.
In the past, I missed a tool, where I can write something longer and/or more meaningful, like a reply to an e-mail or a post on Reddit, in a simple manner without distractions.
Built-in editors in websites like Gmail, Reddit, or Slack leave much to be desired.
- Gmail’s text editor is poorly designed. By default, I have to write an e-mail in a small window, in the bottom right corner of the website.
- Slack’s text editor is full of distractions. While writing I am usually being bombarded with incoming messages.
- Reddit’s text editor is… well, both 🙂
My workaround was, I wrote the text aside in an external tool and then copy-paste it.
But I couldn’t have found the right external tool, e.g.
- Notepad sucked at formatting.
- Evernote was slow to start and difficult to write.
- MS Word is not free and cluttered.
- Google Docs is overcomplicated for this purpose.
- Google Keep is for taking short notes, not meaningful writing.
The only tool that partially worked for me was iA Writer. It looks neat, simple, and elegant. Writing is distraction-free. I used it quite often, but I missed two things. The ideal text editor for me should be handy and fast.
By handy, I mean I could work on many things. By fast, I mean open in a second.
This was when the idea of a simple, fast, and distraction-free editor came to my mind. Using the proven framework for text editors like Quill and making it easily accessible as a browser’s extension, seemed to be the fast lane.
The keynote for Difree is to build the text editor that is
- distraction-free
- fast
- handy
The question is, how we are doing?