(faux) folders - there's no folder structure, but it uses hashtags to organise things so you can type #my-test-folder/my-subfolder and it shows a collapsible nested hashtag tree in the sidebar.Pinning posts to the top of the list of posts is really useful, and seeing the time since edit right next to each post is nice.Being able to paste in images is nice, and not worry about where they are stored - it just works.bullet points show as bullet points, headings as headings etc. I like it’s hybrid Markdown/WYSIWYG view with a nice-preview as you type - as a long term Markdown user my fingers know what to type, but the UI preview is nicer - i.e.It’s cheap for what it is - about £14 or so for a year, and the free version gives you loads of features out of the box.Rock-solid sync - it uses iCloud, but it seems to have its own algorithms for doing so and is always really fast.Screenshot of Bear showing the search in action, with hashtag sidebar, post list, and post detail Notable features of Bear I’ve found: Price - Free + £14 per year for premium features Quick Search to find notes - ideally keyboard accessible.Image support (I watch webinars and add screenshots to my notes).Desktop experience - good experience on the desktop.Mobile experience - good experience on the iPhone.Data Portability - ease of getting 1000s of notes into/out of a tool if I switch.Ideal criteria I need in a note-taking/writing app (I’ve never found anything that does all of this well): Markdown export - Ease of getting notes into a form I can publish.Longer-form writing - more in-depth blog posts which might be formed over several days.Short quick blog posts - usually a link and a thought around it.Note-taking - mainly out and about on the iPhone - ease of creating new notes for idea generation.They are all excellent tools with loyal large fan bases, so safe to say they are all good in their own ways, but I thought I’d do a quick comparison of these two tools based on my needs: I’ll update this post if I ever settle on one long-term.I’m a big fan of Bear for writing notes and outlines for blog posts, but if there’s one thing I like more than procrastinating about writing on my blog, it’s procrastinating while thinking about writing tools! I’m still futzing around w/ both apps really like them both. No exporting another file to open and copy from. I opened that quick note from earlier w/ the markdown list, selected the text, and found Copy HTML in the menu. “… both let you write in Markdown, copy as HTML, export as …” I was doing a little research this afternoon and stumbled across Matthew Temple’s article comparing Ulysses and iA Writer. I keep going back and forth trying different features in each app attempting to get myself to commit to one. I love the simplicity of writing in Markdown and with either app, I have access to my all my notes across phone, tablet, and laptop. Lately, I’ve been torn between iA Writer and Bear apps. Someday… I’ll get something quicker figured out. It got the job done but was still more steps than I’d like. I then exported that file as HTML, popped it open in Sublime Text 3 to copy the well-formed markup and paste it into WordPress. I copied the text from an email into iA Writer and added the dashes to each line to make it a Markdown list. In fact, earlier this morning, I received an unordered list of topics for an upcoming seminar. This process isn’t hard but takes a few steps and I’ve always fantasized about automating it somehow. I’m kinda glad I don’t know how many times I’ve copied that content, reassembled it, and manually massaged the HTML in WordPress. At my day job, I get a lot of web content that starts out in email messages or Word documents.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |