(via One Thing Well.)

As is so often the case with these things when I went searching for the site myself I’d forgotten the name. I knew of WriteRoom (an OS X application that popularised the distraction-free concept and on which DarkCopy is based) so I went looking for web-based alternatives to it.

While I didn’t type the right things into Google to get DarkCopy to come up I did discover another alternative in my search, Writer. Writer styles itself as the ‘internet typewriter’ and does pretty much the same thing DarkCopy does while adding a teeny weeny bit more functionality. It’s still mostly text on a black background but in addition there’s a word count, the ability to print, email, convert to PDF and, for me the most important difference, save your work. Writer autosaves your work to its servers so you don’t need to worry about accidentally closing the window or having to leave your work half-written (it uses cookies to remember you so it’s not even necessary to create an account, it starts saving stuff right away).

This extra functionality sits relatively unobtrusively at the bottom of the page. True aficionados will point out this still provides a distraction but as someone that rarely finishes a piece of writing in one sitting it’s crucial for me to be easily able to save and recover documents I’ve written previously.

The only thing I dislike about Writer is it doesn’t appear possible to resize the input window. If you have a large viewing window this isn’t too much of a problem but as someone who uses it on my wife’s 12″ iBook it’s a little frustrating to be able to only see two paragraphs of text. Particularly when the layout leaves a good deal of space empty at the very bottom of the page. I tried a few Firefox extensions that claim to resize text input fields but they didn’t help either. I’ve sent off an email to the site’s creator, John Watson, suggesting it as a feature he might like to implement but considering how many people there are using the site on their wife’s 12″ iBook (a rough estimate puts it at one) I don’t really expect anything to materialise any time soon.

So, in conclusion, Writer comes recommended as an excellent (and did I mention free?) alternative to Word, Notepad, Windows Live Writer or whatever it is you’re currently typing your stuff into.

There were difficulties at the start. For about a week I hated threaded conversations. What were interesting side diversions on the occasion I would log in to Gmail in the past became an entangling mess. Or at least they seemed to be. After that first week was up I couldn’t quite work out what I didn’t like about them and after another week I think I’d find it difficult using a mail client that didn’t have them.

Similar issues cropped up with Google Calendar. The only way to add categories to my events seemed to be to create separate calendars. That wasn’t such a chore but the way Google Calendar indicates the difference between calendars by writing the event title in a different colour text just didn’t seem as easy to read as Outlook’s presentation (see image). The niggles about this haven’t departed quite as quickly as my Gmail gripes did. I still think Google should allow you to add categories, or at least tags, to events but it’s wasn’t enough to push me back into Redmond’s embrace.

And what of Prism? For the most part it works. When you consider it’s still a prototype (what we used to call a beta?) that’s pretty impressive. My main problems so far have been in relation to its occasional failure to properly detect whether a link should be opened in the system browser (ie. Firefox/IE) or whether to open it itself; and its broken download manager (it will download files, it just won’t let you save them anywhere other than the desktop). The former could be fixed by an option in the context menu to open the link in the system browser and the latter I’m sure will come in time. Neither are what I’d call deal breakers.

In short, I’m sorry Outlook but I think it’s time for us to see other people. We’ll always have the good times but it’s time for me to move on. No hard feelings?

And a few days ago I left it.

I left it for Mozilla’s Prism. Prism aims to fill that gap between the traditional desktop application and the new breed of web-based programs itching to take its place. If you’ve ever wished there was a desktop version of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Maps (just about any Google app); it’s your man. Or at least your prototype of a man.

Essentially, Prism is a program that launches an incredibly stripped down, separate Firefox window for every ‘site’ you tell it to. The windows have no extensions, no tabs, no URL bar. All they do is display that one site you specify. Should you try to navigate somewhere else outside of the site they’ll just launch a new window/tab in your default browser.

While that might not sounds particularly interesting what it means in practice is that you can all but throw out your desktop applications and simply replace them with Prism instances of your favourite web-based alternative. In my case I’ve left Outlook behind and replaced it with two Prism windows: one running Gmail and the other running Google Calendar. I could get rid of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint if I so desired (replacing them all with Google Docs).

About the only thing Prism is missing is offline storage. Should you not have Internet access things get a little hairy. But to be honest how many of us aren’t online 24/7 with our computers these days? Perhaps I’ll be hit by some sort of Internet outage in the next couple of days that has me running back to Outlook, begging for forgiveness. We’ll have to wait and see.

Offline storage might not be that far away, anyway. Firefox 3 is supposed to have that covered and if it’s in Firefox chances are it’s likely to find its way into Prism. I’ll keep you posted on how the experiment goes.