| Hi Guys, Since June 2021 I have been co-developing my side project - Difree https://www.getdifree.com/ - a rich text editor to write on many things in a distraction free way. When I asked myself a question, is my side project, the project: where I don't care if it makes money or gets a lot of attention, but I am working on it regardless.
I answered 'partially' :-)I mean, 1. I don't care about if it makes money or it gets a lot of attention. 2. But I would love people to find Difree and find it useful, as I do. That's it. Does it mean, I want 'a lot of attention'? I don't know. Right now with Difree I have been basically scratching my itch. We have been developing it, because I found I had a problem and there was no suitable solution for that. In the past, I missed a tool, where I can write something longer and/or more meaningful, like a reply to an e-mail or a post on Reddit, in a simple manner without distractions. Built-in editors in websites like Gmail, Reddit, or Slack leave much to be desired, eg. 1. Gmail's text editor is poorly designed. By default, I have to write an e-mail in a small window, in the bottom right corner of the website. 2. Slack's text editor is full of distractions. While writing I am usually being bombarded with incoming messages. 3. Reddit's text editor is... well, both :-) My workaround was, I wrote the text aside in an external tool and then copy-paste it. But I couldn't have found the right external tool, e.g. 1. Notepad sucked at formatting. 2. Evernote was slow to start and difficult to write. 3. MS Word is not free and cluttered. 4. Google Docs is overcomplicated for this purpose. 5. Google Keep is for taking short notes, not meaningful writing. The only tool that partially worked for me was iA Writer. It looks neat, simple, and elegant. Writing is distraction-free. I used it quite often, but I missed two things. The ideal text editor for me should be handy and fast. 1. By handy, I mean I could work on many things. 2. By fast, I mean open in a second. This was when the idea of a simple, fast, and distraction-free editor came to my mind. Using the proven framework for text editors like Quill and making it easily accessible as a browser's extension, seemed to be the fast lane. The keynote for Difree is to build the text editor that is 1. distraction-free, 2. fast, 3. and handy I guess, if it works for me, that's fine. I am sure, there will be people having the same problem as I had and find Difree useful. |