Onword - a simple, distraction-free writing web app

I'm a bit hesitant to click through. What will I get when I sign up? Will it cost me anything now or later? Can I bring my own domain? Is there anything I can bring my domain to? And first of all, why is it any better than my favorite text editor that has no need to connect to the internet, no browsers, no URLs and no accounts to connect. Sounds like a good niche product, though.

Come on! Public posts with no warning? I mean, I seriously thought I could start migrating all my short stories. I actually migrated 4 of them. Then I noticed the URLs being generated. Then I messed with the IDs and found out I can see anyone's posts! Developers: Consider. Please.

Very neat, I like the general feel, including simplicity and colours, the minimal permissions from twitter and the list of documents, though I don't know why saving changes quits to the list. It also forces a pretty narrow column for text (~20 characters).

It's hard to get that feeling of immersion with a webapp though. You can fullscreen, I know, but browsers tend to be easily excitable. Locally, I'm using pyRoom[1] which just covers everything and with a little configuration can show nothing except for the text you're writing.

[1] http://pyroom.org/features.html

I like it. It's simple and I guess it does what it says it does.

However, it's no different to other "minimal writers".

Plus, personally, I don't "just write". By that, I need formatting, I need bullet points. I need bold, italics, underlines if I want to emphasize, stress and make my point. It's great to just write things down and I guess this wouldn't be for heavily formatted documents, but I feel that it's just too minimal for my use.

Is it by design that all notes are public?http://onword.co/100

Love the Interface.

The save button could be hidden for less distraction (Use SUPER + S to save) and logo + logout link on hover only.

I don't have a Twitter account. Is it too hard to add at least one other signup method for folks like myself?

very nice. I would've wished for an even more pulled back interface. I tried to do prototype something similar some time ago, but never finished it: http://jsfiddle.net/dirkk0/MySJf/show/

looks fantastic no doubt. i am hesitant to click the twitter auth button, however. maybe some sort of app preview would cure my (and possible some others') paranoia?

looks great, well done!

Nicely done, but how is this better than using google docs?

Nice app. But i dont understand the point.

The app is beautifully simple. Good job.

Like try it but I don't use Twitter.

This app very lacks autosaving.

This looks really cool!

I've used a lot of distraction-free writing tools in the past. First it was DarkRoom, then I tried that thingy that was/is a YC startup ... forget the name, but it had the feature of recording your editing so you could view it later. Lately I'm using iA Writer to write my book and it's the best I've used so far.

The idea behind iA Writer and Onword looks pretty much the same - take away my freedoms and force me to focus on the writing.

But I think iA Writer is better at it. Because it's native, it can take over my whole screen, very important because it then feels like I'm writing paper where the "screen" also doesn't have any other features. I also prefer iA's colour scheme ... but this is just a preference.

I will give Onword a try, but for any serious writing I would need files on a hard drive.

@teopeurt "Thanks everyone. Just a heads up - currently, all posts are public to anyone. Bear that in mind. Private posts are coming." From Twitter.