Typora Review - text editor for drafting posts

The backstory

So a couple days ago I was drafting a new post here on Steemit. I took about 20 minutes to craft my words. It wasn't the best article I've ever written, or will ever write, but I am attempting to put quality into my content so I took my time.

I finished up, gave it a once over proofread and clicked Post. Nothing happened. My browser refreshed and I got a 503 error response from Steemit. A 503 response usually means that the site is undergoing maintenance. They were probably deploying an update … but I lost my post :(

At that moment I decided to start drafting all my posts in an external editor so they don't get lost again. This is a quick review of Typora a new Mardown text editor.

Minimal by design

I particularly love simple clean interfaces, and Typora has about one of the cleanest you can find. Upon launching the editor, you are presented with a single blank document waiting for your words. Click into the document and begin writing, it's that simple.

Power to the Power User

If you know how to write with markdown syntax the editor will live update your text as you insert modifiers like bold, italics, links, headings and anything else Markdown supports.

If you don't know the syntax by heart or you don't like to write it out by hand you can access the formatting options via the main menu of the software under the Paragraph or Format menu.

Themes

Typora came with 6 different themes right out of the box. There are light themes, dark themes, serif fonts, sans serif fonts and more. You can also create your own theme if you wish. I'm personally typing this post using the Newsprint theme.

External Image Loading

As you add images to your document from external sites like ImgSafe as recommended by others, the document will load the image immediately and render it into right your document.

Writing Modes

There are a few modes that you can enable on your editor that change it's behavior as you are editing text.

Focus Mode

This mode will fade out any text around the text you are currently working on. The goal here is to help you focus on the paragraph that is in front of you and not get distracted by the text around you.

Typewriter Mode

This mode ensures that the line of text you are currently editing is always in the middle of your screen. As you hit enter, or as your text wraps to a new line, the page scrolls up effectively keeping your cursor and your text right in the middle of the screen.

At first I didn't know what typewriter mode did, but now that I am using the feature it is quickly becoming my favorite mode/feature of the app.

Source Code Mode

If you want to see the extra syntax bits that markdown uses to format your text, you can turn on/off the source code mode and it will show you the modifiers used to format your text. This is also a great way to quickly edit the modifiers (like headings) if needed.

Conclusions

While I have only been using this editor for a couple of days, I'm really happy with my experience so far. Its a great editor that works perfectly for drafting my posts here on Steemit.

• The interface is clean and simple.
• Type with markdown syntax and have it previewed immediately
• Choose from several different visual themes to customize your styles
• Load and preview external images immediately in the document
• Enable several modes that are useful for focusing on your writing

If you've been looking for a simple editor to focus on writing your posts, I definitely recommend Typora. You can download Typora here.