ByWord2

ByWord,

The iOS App ByWord claims to use Markdown, or Mark something-or-other, inorder to provide dynamic text that you would normally find in say, an RTF or Word Document. So far, it seems to be a strait forward application for saving plain text. You can use do a few things like:

• Create a list
• Add BOLD text
• Or even italics

This, of course, is part of the markdown *syntax that ByWord uses. Honestly it reminds of posting on Google+. Weather or not any of these marks acttualy translate into formatted text remains to be seen.

One of the things I have noticed, and it kind of made me … erked … was the ability to publish directly with ByWord was an add $4.99 in-app purchase. This, after the original $5.99 app price puts the total app at $10.98. A little expensive in my opinion, and to be fair, the publisher did list the in-app purchase in the description. I guess that’ll teach me to read everything before committing.

Another pet-peeve that I found was spellcheck was disabled by default. Why would you do that? The navigation is also more than little lacking. I can only assume it meant to be spartan. However, if you have never used the app before, it is a little less than intuitive.

Over all though, I really like it. I like that can save documents to dropbox, I can open iCloud documents and basically it gives me a lot of flexibility. Something that is all to often missing in iOS and the apps available for it. For this reason, and a few others that more personal preferance, I think I will come to like this app very much.

This largest hurdle to overcome has been the markdown itself. As I am not used to using markdown, as such, it has been a case of trial end error.

The above image is one I posted on Instagram a long time ago, and is only being used to test image support in ByWord and to see how well it shows up in Blogger.

The one thing I wish Byword did offer, was a way to publish as a draft to Blogger. Although, I probably would be doing that now instead of learning to get the Markdown correct before publishing. Still, it would be a nice feature.

I have also discovered that by using the “eject key” on my keyboard (a standard Apple Bluetooth) I can bring up a menu at the top, and there is an option to preview the Markdown before publishing. A great addition. So, as I said before, the interface has a learning curve, but it is meant to be spartan.

All in all though, the clean interface allows me to concentrate more on writing and less on formatting, which I like a lot.