Image via Wikipedia

If you’re like me, one of the first computer skills you were taught in school is how to use a word processor. We all mastered the art of formatting words for the printed page because we were still using computers in a paper-based world. As more business and education activities move online, we are spending ever more time writing in web-based text editors, where our ideas are being automatically encoded into divs, spans, ps and ems– a language that too few of us speak fluently enough to reset the margins or change the font size.

Still, the status quo is for people to write their documents in an offline word processor like MS Word, then copy and paste into the text editor of the web-based tools they use to collaborate. Though this sounds like an OK approach, I often see people wondering what all that weird MSOffice XML code that comes along is doing there. Worse, they save the word file and upload it, forcing others to download the file before they can see what it says.

I believe it’s time for students and mainstream users to compose documents using web design tools, not paper design tools. By using desktop writing tools like Blue Griffon or Scribefire, you can compose valid HTML documents using the same simple controls you’re used to seeing in your webmail, blog editor, or learning management system. If you pay attention, you will probably also learn the basic HTML concepts that help us create good looking, semantically valid documents for the open web. The controls on a web-based editor give you hints as to what’s happening in the code of a web page, and they allow you to go look at the code produced after you added blockquotes, an ordered list, or a heading 3 using the simple, intuitive buttons.

The WordPress Text Editor- Simple, Elegant, and a Great Learning Tool

Web Processors: Some Promising Tools

My favorite text editor to work in is the default WYSIWYG editor in WordPress– especially now that they have added the distraction-free writing interface called “fullscreen”. It is an uncluttered, minimalistic writing interface like WriteRoom or OmmWriter that allows you to focus on your work. The WordPress editor gives you as much or as little assistance as you need with formatting your document, but it also finds little ways to challenge you to expand your HTML coding skills. I find this nice balance between easy and challenging has kept me using (and growing with) this tool. The downside to this approach is that it’s really best if you have a WordPress site– it feels a little silly to fire up a website just so I can dash off a document to someone. [A note to devs: I would definitely pay a nominal fee to have the WordPress fullscreen editor in a standalone desktop app. Make it so.]

For offline writing, I am starting to really appreciate BlueGriffon, a free HTML5 authoring app along the lines of NVU or Kompozer. It can do sophisticated HTML5 and CSS3 formatting in a simple graphic interface that brings high quality, modern web design tools to the most technophobic. (OK not the MOST technophobic– more like newbies with a taste for mild adventure!) The tools in Blue Griffon go from underlining, bold, and italics to helping you work with div placement and styling without touching a line of code. This tool is truly the most user-friendly way I’ve found to make the difficult art of web design feel less threatening to non- coders.

Imagine all the hours of your life you’ve spent working in MS Word– if you had spent that much time in Blue Griffon while trying to bang out those last minute term papers, you would be a seasoned web designer before you finished high school! And that’s my point– the tools we are expecting people to use today support a 20th Century workplace, not the collaborative, computer literate populace needed today.

You will find links below to some other promising HTML editors for web-based writing. I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on

Romantic vs. Classical Worldviews in Writing for the Web

Image via Wikipedia

This all reminds me of Robert Pirsig‘s discussion of Romantic vs. Classical thinking in his towering work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In discussing how different people approach maintaining their motorcycles, he touches on an interesting dichotomy in the way people look at the world. [excerpt] The “Romantic” is described thus:

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings
rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It
does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic
conscience.

He contrasts this worldview with the “Classical” which he describes as:

The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws…which are themselves
underlying forms of thought and behavior….  Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal… Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known. It is not an esthetically free and natural style. It is esthetically restrained. Everything is under control. Its value is measured in terms of the skill with which this control is maintained.

He uses these distinctions to contrast himself from his friend. He, a classicist, takes pride in understanding what makes his motorcycle work and performing his own maintenance. His friend, a romantic, doesn’t care how it works– just as long as it works and he doesn’t have to get his hands dirty fixing it! As you might imagine, his friend’s approach is put to the test when his motorcycle starts to malfunction.

This same distinction is alive and well among computer users today– most of us want to get into a tool and have everything “just work”. We don’t want to know anything about what’s going on under the hood, as long as we can drag and drop everything where we want it to appear. That was great in the desktop era where apps and the OS could protect you fom ever having to think about code. (Thanks Steve!) However, the web has some very rigid underlying rules for what works and what doesn’t, and I often see people suffering panic attacks because their romanticist attitude is coming in conflict with some real classical realities of the web. The worker of the 21st Century will be the one who can successfully unite an artistic viewpoint with the technical skills to bring it about, and there is no better way to learn that blend than coding for the web.

Your Thoughts?

I’m very curious to hear your reactions– do you think students need to learn HTML or do you think it is a dying art that will soon be done by machines? Do you think it’s possible to completely replace your Office suite with an HTML editor? Leave a comment and let us know!

Related articles

• Text Editor Anywhere Moves Text From Any Program to Your Favorite Text Editor [Download Of The Day] (lifehacker.com)
• Full Screen Text Editor for Chrome (madrasgeek.com)
• What are the defferences between text editor and wysiwyg editor (wiki.answers.com)
• Elements 2 is a restrained and remarkable text editor for iPhone and iPad (thenextweb.com)
• WriteRoom Takes iPad Text Editor Crown (wired.com)
• Getting to Know Textile (maketecheasier.com)
• Pillarbox: Distraction Free Writing in the Browser (thechromesource.com)
• BlueGriffon EPUB Edition (bluegriffon.org)
• BlueGriffon: A Cross-Platform Open Source WYSIWYG HTML Editor [Review] (techie-buzz.com)
• Disruptive Innovations announces BlueGriffon EPUB edition software (teleread.com)
• Ten WYSIWYG HTML editors for Mac OS X (tuaw.com)
• BlueGriffon 1.1.1 (bluegriffon.org)

As the blogosphere debates the death of the desktop email client, I am anxiously awaiting the stable release of Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0. Like devotees of Apple Mail.app or Microsoft Outlook, I have come to depend on the desktop app for speed, stability, and extensibility.

I am a longtime user of Thunderbird and I can’t wait until the 3.0 release. I am prejudiced to prefer desktop apps rather than webapps or AIR apps– especially for tasks that I spend so much time doing (like email).  The reason?
A dedicated app can have keyboard shortcuts and buttons that are ALL designed to speed up your workflow. Using email in a browser means that your keystrokes are optimized for any kindof website, not just email.
If I press [Ctrl+R] in GMail/Firefox, the screen reloads! In a real mail app, [Ctrl+R] means “Reply” as it should IMHO. IN TBird, pressing [down arrow] goes to the next message instead of scrolling down the page. Having intuitive keystrokes lets me FLY through my email in a way I just can’t do in Firefox.

A desktop app can respond to your actions faster and more fluidly than a website can because it doesn’t have to query the server every time you do something.

The killer feature of Thunderbird that sets it apart from all others is the tagging feature. I can assign GTD-influenced Tags (like @Archive, @FollowUp, @ActionItem) simply by pressing number keys 1-9. With one hand on the down arrow and one on the numbers 1-4 keys, I can quickly sort all my mail so I know what to do with it next (in proper GTD form).

I grudgingly admit that Gmail is quickly adding features that make the web interface more awesome. That does not, however, mean that using a general purpose browser for a site-specific task is a good thing. I would love to see Google develop apps that combine the power of their online apps with a true desktop experience.

Imagine it: a Google Docs desktop app that works like a word processor but syncs to the cloud? That would be awesome! A Gmail app (or a plugin for Chrome?) that allows you to customize keyboard shortcuts when you’re on a specific website so your app is completely optimized for the task at hand.

Until that day, I’m going to be rockin’ the Desktop app.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate Due Next Week [Email Apps] (lifehacker.com)
• Web-based e-mail features come to desktop software (sfgate.com)
• Mozilla tries to build the ultimate in-box: Raindrop (news.cnet.com)
• French Tax authorities switching to Thunderbird (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com)
• Six reasons desktop e-mail still rules (macworld.com)
• Gmail IMAP: How To enable Gmail IMAP? (techblissonline.com)
• 10 Powerful Productivity Tips For The Quickfire Outlook 2007 (makeuseof.com)

My big mission this summer is to learn how to adopt David Allen‘s Getting Things Done method into my way of handling email. Thunderbird (with the Lightning plugin) has all the tools you need to GTD quickly and easily.

Getting Things Done with Thunderbird

Updated: Please see the bottom of the article

Well, I have been at my new job for 3 weeks now and my GTD implementation seems to be holding up quite well – at least in terms of my email anyway!

As I have mentioned before the company I work for uses Thunderbird
as its main email system (although Outlook Express and Entourage are
available for those that prefer them). To begin with it was a bit odd
having to tell half the office how to spell my surname – a
centrally stored address book is certainly a big advantage that
Microsoft Outlook has over other systems. However I’m finding the
functionality of Thunderbird brilliant in my GTD habits.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Doit.im Is a Cross-Platform GTD Task Management App [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)
• Getting Things Done Explained for Students [Back To School] (lifehacker.com)
• Marc Andreessen – Guide to personal productivity (pmarca-archive.posterous.com)
• David Allen on Getting It All Done (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Tips for ‘Getting Things Done’ (online.wsj.com)