One warning, though: If your enterprise still uses Exchange 2003, you can only set up Outlook to access Exchange via IMAP. Also on the list of current gripes is the lack of calendar sync with MobileMe. Microsoft said it rewrote the entire Sync Services component from scratch, and that just didn’t make the launch window.

Even though 2011 incorporates the ribbon interface from the Windows version, Microsoft has tried to tailor the suite for the Mac, says Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft’s Office for Mac team. “From day one, we focused on making the user experience be both Mac-like and recognizably Office,” Wilfrid says. “Over many, many years, we’ve figured out different ways to make sure that the end product is something that we as Office and Mac users would want to sit down in front of every day and depend on to do our work.”

Word 2011's Document Gallery.

While Apple’s iWork suite is a fantastic product, if you need to round-trip Office files with collaborators, you need the Office suite. In my experiences with iWork and Office translation, it does a good job most of the time, but when it doesn’t do well, the results are often disastrous.

There are quite a few things I’m looking forward to in Office 2011. PowerPoint has a new dynamic reordering feature making it easy to move items between layers (before, the only way to handle this was using the awkward and dated “Send Backward” and “Bring Forward” commands). Visual Basic macros, eliminated in Office 2008, are back, and  Word now has a built-in equation editor. Finally, early reviews indicate the suite is much snappier, a welcome improvement over the often-lethargic Office 2008.

PowerPoint's new "Dynamic Reorder" feature.

Office 2011 is available in the following versions: Microsoft Office for Mac Home & Student 2011 (does not come with Outlook, $149.99), Microsoft Office for Mac Home & Business 2011 (includes Outlook, $279.99), and Office for Mac Academic 2011 (includes Outlook, $99.99). I’m especially happy about the last version. Getting the educational version of Office usually wasn’t available at launch. As a student, I’d have to wait until after launch to take advantage of the discount, but not any longer.

We’ll be posting in-depth reviews over the next few days, so stay tuned.

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This time of year, it seems almost inevitable. There’s a forum post somewhere, a plea for help in the middle of the night, asking a time-honored question. No, it’s not “the answer to Life, the Universe, Everything!” It’s more profound than that: “I’m starting school this fall and I want to know what to get, iWork or Office. I’m going to be writing light papers.”

So, I’m going to compare the two programs when writing a research paper to MLA standards. While there are a plethora of other options — I can see the “use LaTeX” comments in my head now — I’m focusing on Word and Pages. Word and Pages both support EndNote X2 and Math Type 6, but since I’ve never used Math Type, I’m not going to be able to comment on it.

The Price Myth

On the surface, any comparison of price comes out in iWork’s favor. iWork lists for $79. The Home and Student version of Office 2008 is $150, but that version is crippled for enterprise support, so if you want to connect to your school’s Exchange server, you’ll need the Standard version, which is $399. Wow, that’s a lotta leaves.

However, since we are talking about academic pricing, it’s important to note Microsoft is very generous with its educational pricing — through my school, I can get Office 2008 Standard for $80. With an educational price of $71, Apple is less generous, but the price gap between the two suites is now negligible.

Built-in Templates

Neither package had any templates I felt adhered to the MLA standard, but it’s short work to create your own. Usually, I end up needing to massage the styles every now and then since professors have different requirements.

Citation Management

It’s unlikely you’re going to get through a semester without hearing a teacher say, “Give me 10 pages on the Middle East; cite your sources.” If your major isn’t one that requires heavy citations usage, you can get away with just about any word processor out there. In my mind, however, any topic of academic writing tools lives and dies by citation management for one simple reason: I’m too lazy to build the bibliography myself.

While there are multiple choices for citation management, I’m going to focus on EndNote X2 and Microsoft’s built-in citation manger. I’m focusing on EndNote because it’s the sole manager with native support for both apps. I’ll get the sticker shock out of the way early: EndNote costs around $109 from an educator’s web site. However, my university has a volume site license and I can download it for free, legally, off my school’s intranet. So, before buying it, check with your school.

One of the nice features in EndNote is its ability to search any school’s library. I find this invaluable when starting a research paper. For the Middle East paper, I fired up EndNote, connected to Northeastern’s library, and typed in “Israel” as a keyword. I could look through books I felt might be useful, note if they are available, and print out their location in the stacks. For the rest of this article, I’m going to assume you’ve built your EndNote library.

Endnote's Online Search Screen

Citation Management: Pages

In Pages, go to the Insert menu and choose “EndNote Citation.” It’ll then bring you to the EndNote search screen; type in the author or title you want to add and click insert.

Pages Insert Citation

Pages Inserting Citation

As you add each citation, EndNote will automatically create the bibliography.

Citation Management: Pages Conclusion

Pages citation management requires EndNote X2. If your university doesn’t have a site license for EndNote, and you want to use Pages to write papers, you’re on the hook for the EndNote license, or do citation management by hand.

Citation Management: Word 2008 & EndNote

Word 2008 handles EndNote citations similar to Pages. Go to Tools → EndNote X2 → Find Citations. Then type in the search criteria and click Insert.

Word 2008: Fnd Citation

Word 2008: Insert Citation

Word 2008: Citation Inserted

As in Pages, EndNote in Word also auto-adds the citations to the bibliography.

Citation Management: Word 2008′s Built-in Manager

While Word’s Citation Manager offers no connectivity to library databases, or the ability to import from EndNote, once I’ve created a citation it’s very easy to add it. Granted, EndNote’s method isn’t exactly suffering, but in Word it’s simply a double-click. Also, each citation is added to a master citation database, so if you use the same source on multiple papers it’s easy to add them to your document.

You can access the Citation Manager from the Formatting Toolbar. To create a citation, click the “+” button and enter in the details.

To add a citation to your paper, simply select it from the list and double-click it. The citation will appear in-line. One nice thing about Word’s manager is if you select the citation you get a pull-down menu that lets you customize the citation. If you choose Edit this Citation, you can select the page range for the citation.

Unlike EndNote, the bibliography is not automatically created; you use the Document Elements tab. From there. you can choose the bibliography style.

Citation Management: Word Conclusion
While both EndNote and Word’s manager work well, I find myself using Word’s more than EndNote for lazy reasons: I like having everything in one program. If the paper I’m working on has a plethora of library sources, that’ll tip the scales towards EndNote as my manager of choice. If your university doesn’t have a site license for a citation manager, Word’s tool is very usable.

Additional Features

Citation management is all you’ll need for run-of-the-mill research papers. If you’re writing basic papers, and have a license to EndNote, feature-wise they are a wash. If your paper is more complicated than that, however, you can start widening the gap between Word and Pages.

One notable difference between the two programs is how they handle figure captions. In Pages, you can link a text box to a figure, and type in “Figure 2-1: A very nice screenshot.” Word, however, can auto-number the figure and use that to create a Table of Figures.

Word also has an impressive array of Smart Art graphics which will let you create quick graphics.

Playing Well With Others

Once you’re all done with the paper, now comes the crucial moment: handing it in. If you’re simply handing in a printed copy, there’s no difference between the two. However, in four years of night school I think I’ve only handed in one paper physically. Most of my classes are online and my classroom professors often just want the paper emailed to them.

Based on my experiences, you’d be hard-pressed to find a teacher that can take a Pages file; I’ve found exactly zero teachers who can take one. Fortunately, Pages can export as a Word document so it’s easy to get the teacher a Word file. Any form of file conversion makes me nervous, though. I subscribe to the theory that Murphy was an optimist, and the file you export from Pages to Word and email to a professor at deadline will be the one file that beats all odds and is an unreadable mess. Now, it’s never happened to me, and I’ve found for simple files like research papers Pages export function is quite good. However, it’s like juggling chainsaws. Sooner or later you’re gonna drop one in a bad area.

That said, Word is not always fine wines and nice cheeses. There’s one teacher I frequently have who cannot accept .docx files (the new default format Word saves in). Again, I can “save as” to an older format, but tend to sweat the dialogue box that comes up and says, “Some features specific to the .docx format may not transfer properly. Since this is your thesis paper, and your teacher is still in the stone ages of computing, I’m going to choose this paper to come out as Ancient Mandarin. Have a nice day.” OK, it’s not quite like that, but I tend to get a little nervous.

When it comes to sharing files with others, I trust Word over Pages. While I’ve never had any noticeable problems on research papers, I feel I’m eliminating a possible danger point by using Word.

The Moment of Truth: Which do I prefer?

I’ve flip-flopped for a while between the two programs. Pages won out for a while because of its quick launching speed, but Service Pack 2 for Office 2008 has significantly improved launch speeds. Small features like easily handling captions and lesser chances of file conversion weirdness make me prefer Word over Pages. If your writing needs are modest, and simple essays are the norm, Pages will do just fine. However, even my Technical Communications classes require some sort of source citation, so it’s wise to plan on needing one.

There’s one area I think iWork wins over Office 2008: Keynote. If your major is heavy on giving presentations, and you can use your Mac to give them, I think Keynote is much better than PowerPoint. The focus of this piece is Word and Pages, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Keynote as a strength of iWork.

Like most things, it can come down to price, but I think Word wins on this one. If the worst-case is your school offers no special educational pricing on Office or EndNote, buying the Home and Student version of Office 2008 is still cheaper when you factor in the extra $100 for EndNote. While a lot of people tend to complain that Word is bloated, I’ve found various school projects require me to use those features.

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Microsoft Word was one of my favorite and most-used applications back in the early days. I started Mac word processing first with Word 4 and upgraded to Word 5.1 in 1993. Amazingly, that old application still starts up and works fine in Classic Mode on my G4 PowerBook.

However, the disastrous Word 6 broke my Word habit, and Word 5.1 was the last Microsoft software I ever bought. I’ve turned to other software ever since for text crunching and word processing, and don’t really miss Word except when someone sends me a Word document, or when I need to send a file to someone who works in Word.

Word-Centric World

In a Word-centric world, odds are that you will encounter Microsoft Word-formatted (.doc) documents fairly frequently, in email attachments, files produced by Word-user colleagues, or informational data downloaded from the Internet.

Happily, this is not as much of a problem as it used to be for us non-Word users. Many, in fact most, word processors can open and save Word files these days with formatting rendered reasonably faithfully..

TextEdit Can Likely Handle It

If you’re using Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5, you don’t need any other Word-savvy software other than OS X’s bundled TextEdit program, which these days warrants categorization as a full-fledged, albeit lightweight, word processor. When you need to open or save Microsoft Word-formatted documents, TextEdit can usually handle the job, and the version in OS 10.5 Leopard is the best iteration of the program yet. Unless you need perfect formatting rendition, TextEdit is up to the task.

TextEdit can open .doc files with basic formatting, such as fonts, text formatting (bold, italic, etc.), colors, line spacing, alignment and justification sustained reasonably intact. More advanced formatting, such as borders, style sheets, graphics, footnotes, bulleted lists, and such don’t often don’t survive the conversion accurately or at all. Most tables seem to translate OK, although not necessarily appearing exactly as they would in Word.

When you save a TextEdit document as a Word file, some of that sort of advanced formatting stuff actually will make the transition in the other direction, notably buttons, numbering and tables, but not style sheets. Just select one of the three Word document format options (Word 2007, Word 97 or Word 2003) and you’ve got a Word document file.

Consequently, as with the famous cartoon depicting a dog surfing the web with a computer, captioned: “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” with Leopard TextEdit, no one has to know you don’t have Microsoft Word. Which in certain circles, might help with your credibility.

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A little while ago, QuickOffice ($19.99, iTunes link) brought Word document editing to the iPhone. This week, however, QuickOffice officially loses its corner on that market with the introduction of Documents to Go ($4.99, iTunes link) by Dataviz, a seasoned contender.

The iPhone may not be my device of choice when it comes to doing significant edits to text documents, but in times of duress, it might be the quickest, most convenient, or even the only option available, so I like to have the capability. Let’s see which of these two apps will earn a place of honor on my springboard.

User Interface

Full-featured word processing on an iPhone might not make for a very pretty experience no matter how you slice it, but there are definitely ways to make it more or less pleasurable, depending on your UI choices. It’s a challenging task, taking the ribbon and/or menu bar of a full-featured desktop app and trying to somehow incorporate the same features into a mobile app interface.

Both Documents to Go and QuickOffice try to tackle the problem in much the same way: Store features in a menu bar across the bottom using expandable icons that open up to reveal more functions. While both apps use this feature, they both do so in a very different way, and you will probably vastly prefer one over the other, depending on your personal taste.

Documents to Go editing interface

QuickOffice editing interface

As for me, I like the implementation found in Documents to Go. The main difference between the two is a multipage menu bar that you can scroll by swiping left or right. It means that more features are available to you in fewer steps. There are three pages worth of menu bar items for word editing, including document info, bulleting and numbering. QuickOffice offers far fewer functions from its own bottom menu bar, although both include a very necessary document search function.

Some might prefer QuickOffice’s full-text menu list items, but I like the icons used by Documents to Go. They may be a little harder to grasp at first, but the space they save is well worth the learning curve.

Features

In both cases, most of the features are spot on in terms of what you’d expect from a mobile word editor. You won’t get table editing/creation capabilities, but you will get font and paragraph formatting, list creation, and copy and paste. Interestingly, neither takes advantage of the newly built-in copy/paste functions of OS 3.0.

QuickOffice loses out to Documents to Go by not allowing you to create numbered lists, only bulleted. But it does offer some macro-level features that definitely trump Dataviz’s offering. For one, it has MobileMe iDisk integration baked in, so that all you have to do is enter your credentials and you’re off. Another incredibly useful feature is the ability to email documents you create to anyone from right within the app. Documents to Go doesn’t even have an export to mail function.

Documents to Go does have the ability to sync with a desktop client they offer for free, and to save directly to the desktop should you so desire, as long as you have a network connection. I tend to prefer not having to install any client software on my Mac, though.

Usability

In terms of actual editing mechanics for individual documents, Documents to Go beats QuickOffice on usability. The interface is nicer, you have more control at your finger tips, and the keyboard button is more conveniently located. It’s also just much more pleasant to look at, in my opinion, which can be a big plus if you’re stuck staring at a small screen for any length of time.

With overall usability, though, QuickOffice takes the cake. Being able to share docs so easily via email and iDisk is a huge bonus, and loads easier than using Documents to Go’s desktop client sync.

Verdict

I actually had a hard time picking a winner in this rumble. For the purposes of this comparison, I was only looking at document editing, so I didn’t take into consideration the fact that Documents to Go can’t yet handle Excel file editing. That’s supposed to be on its way in a future update, though.

What I did look at was price. There’s a big difference between the two apps in that regard. QuickOffice is $19.99, and even QuickWord is $12.99. Documents to Go, on the other hand, is only $4.99 ($9.99 for a version with exchange support), and will eventually include Excel editing for no extra charge. That’s a quarter of the price of QuickOffice.

Given that the primary reason I’d even want to have a Word document editor on my iPhone in the first place is for quick edits at the request of a client or employer, and that I don’t use Microsoft Exchange-based email, I decided that the ability to share via email trumps any advantage Documents to Go has with pricing and usability. If future updates introduce Mail integration, consider my verdict officially reversed, but for now, I have to give this one to QuickOffice.

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What’s that, you say? You’re looking for iPhone app recommendations alongside a smattering of the week’s Apple news? Read, on my friend, I have just the article for you…

Before I present you with my four recommendations, hand-picked from the freshest apps to launch for the iPhone, it’s time to take stock and review this week’s Apple news.

As if Monday couldn’t get any grimmer, the big news to start the week was all about Microsoft. Specs and other info about its new Zune, apparently code-named “xYz,” have been doing the rounds. Perhaps presenting a genuine challenge to the iPhone and iPod touch handheld gaming throne, the device may even play XBox Live Arcade content. Very exciting indeed, considering the breadth and quality of games on offer via Microsoft’s online service.

Speaking of which, the big surprise of the week was news that Braid, the top-rated, critically acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade title, has been released on Mac. The game is a side-scrolling platformer, incorporating a host of headache-inducing time-twisting puzzles. Good fun indeed, and a worthy workout for cerebral gamers on the hunt for a challenge.

Coming to the U.S. in the very near future is Spotify, the legal music service that’s essentially like having access to the entire iTunes Store for free. The service has already been on offer in Europe since late 2008. Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, believes it’ll be officially available stateside by the start of 2010 at the latest.

While the Spotify iPhone app is still under wraps, Digg.com founder Kevin Rose has been impressed by the desktop version, “… playing w/Spotify, hot damn it’s responsive – plays pretty much any song on earth in <1 second.” Being stationed in Helsinki, Finland, I’ve had the pleasure of using Spotify for several months now — it really is as fast as Rose describes.

My favorite news of the week concerns the latest update to the iPhone. More rumors abound, as a fresh list of specs has been released. Notable possible enhancements to the iPhone include 32GB of storage in the high-end model, built-in FM transmitter, OLED screen, rubber tread backing and discontinuation of the metal band surrounding the edge of the device.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Mover, Burger King Now, Lexulous and Flashback.

Mover (free)
With Air Sharing (among others) firmly covering file-sending over the Net using the iPhone, there’s still no convincing solution for sharing with other users in your immediate vicinity. Those that are available are severely lacking in ease-of-use and appealing looks. Mover addresses both of these issues directly and, as such, is quite different from the solutions I’ve seen previously. Allowing you to share either contacts or images with other users on the same Wi-Fi network, you simply select the name or photo you’d like to send, then literally drag it across to your friend’s device. As developer Infinite Labs state, seeing is believing, so, before you pick up the app for free, check out the demo video of the app in action.

Burger King Now: Phone Ordering (free)
Back in my student days, I lived off a hearty combination of Domino’s Pizza and McDonald’s. In fact, I accrued a sizable debt due to my adoration for fast food and apparent inability to cook. These days, I love to cook and, what’s more, meat isn’t really a part of my usual diet, saved instead for special occasions — like the meatballs at Ikea. Deep down, my junk food lust hasn’t left me: Upon discovering Burger King’s new app, my mouth watered and my heart sank to think of all the glorious grease I’d be missing out on. This may not be as oddly compelling as BK’s Subservient Chicken, but it’s a time-saving app that uses your iPhone to order a tasty trans-fat treat.

Lexulous ($3.99)
Up until yesterday, I was under the impression that Scrabble-clone Scrabulous had dissolved under the threat of legal action from Hasbro. It seems, however, that the popular Facebook app has been reborn under the apparently less-libelous moniker of Lexulous. What’s more, the crossword gaming ante has been upped by the release of the Lexulous iPhone app. One of the joys of playing Lexulous via Facebook is challenging friends across the globe, something that both the official Scrabble iPhone and Facebook app don’t allow. With a solid iPhone app, Facebook integration and global challenges, Lexulous is a must-have for crossword game fans.

Flashback ($4.99)
Originally released for Amiga back in 1992, Flashback will bring memories flooding back for retro-gamers. The game featured Prince of Persia-esque rotoscoped animation, a sprawling alien jungle and a plot reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s writings. The iPhone version is pretty tough, especially given that the controls have been ported to the touchscreen. But I’m not entirely sure of the legitimacy of the iPhone iteration; the app may get pulled from the store. If you’re interested in trying out this classic platform adventure, download now.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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I’ve been waiting for the ability to edit Word documents on the iPhone since the day I got one. Why? Because I’m a dreamer, and my dream is someday not having to lug around a laptop of any size while I’m traveling, or just out and about in the city.

My iPhone has become a big part of that dream, and the ability to edit any kind of document using it is another. The release of Quickoffice ($19.99, iTunes link) marks a big first for those editing capabilities, with full support for .doc files.

Now, Word support doesn’t mean as much to me as it once did, since I work primarily online these days, but it’s still great to have, and helpful for my own personal fiction writing. Thanks to Quickoffice, I can now edit stories and start new ones on the go, without having to first convert them to .txt or .rtf documents. Conversion doesn’t work well because a lot of the small print publishers still want .doc files, so I have to then convert back before sending.

Quickoffice does some big things right, but it also misses the mark with other features. First, uploading docs from your computer couldn’t be easier, and there’s no server app to install. You do it right in your browser by directing it to a private IP address on your local network, so it doesn’t matter if you’re using Windows or a Mac. Uploading a doc using the web interface worked flawlessly. Definitely a big plus.

Landscape editing is supported, and it does away with the interface bars to give you as much viewing space as possible. Well-thought out and customized for the platform. Editing in landscape makes working on the iPhone much less painful, and the menus aren’t really all that handy unless you’re setting up a brand new doc.

Copy and paste is supported, but since I’m using the new iPhone 3.0, Quickoffice’s implementation seems a little weak, since it actually sidesteps the built-in one. I’m sure this will be fixed by the time 3.0 is officially released, though, and for now their implementation is just fine, though it only works within Quickoffice itself and not between apps.

With Quickoffice you can also edit Excel files, though PowerPoint presentations are not yet supported. Microsoft’s newer .docx and .xlsx files are also not editable, though static versions can be viewed in Quickoffice. Honestly, that’s not really that big of a deal since most people have stuck with the older .doc standard anyway. Bottom line: if you want to edit Word documents on your iPhone, this is the way to do it for the time being, and things could be much, much worse.

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With Quickoffice, users can view and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files and share them over a wireless connection. Quickoffice is actually a collection of three individual apps, two of which are already available for the iPhone now. These are Quicksheet ($12.99, iTunes link), for editing Excel spreadsheets, and Quickoffice Files ($3.99, iTunes link), for viewing a variety of files, and transferring them to and from your device. The third application in the series is Quickword, which brings the crucial addition of Word document editing.

When (and if) it’s approved, it’ll also retail for $12.99 separately, or you can get the whole Quickoffice package together in one app for a price that’s yet to be revealed. I’d guess you might save a few bucks by getting the bundle, so look for it to be priced around $19.99.

News of the app’s submission comes closely on the heels of Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop dropping hints at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this week that document editing was indeed on its way to the iPhone. I’ve thought, until now, that the reason we hadn’t seen it yet was that Microsoft and Apple together were blocking it, but maybe Elop was referring to third-party apps like Quickoffice with his subtle suggestions. Then again, maybe they want to release their own branded solution and Quickoffice will be swiftly denied. We’ll find out next week.

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Open Office comprises of several applications: a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation package (Impress), drawing app (Draw), and database tools (Base).

Some of the features heralded in the new release include:

• A new splash screen upon launch (see above)
• The ability to import Microsoft Office (.doc, .ppt, .xls) and Office 2007/Office 2008 for Mac (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) files (though it still isn’t possible to save to these formats)
• Support for sharing Excel workbooks
• Support for Excel sheets with up to 1024 columns
• A solver component for solving optimization problems
• Better polished crop and drawing tools
• The display of multiple Writer pages while editing
• Inclusion of Office commenting / change tracking in the document margin
• Some support for Visual Basic macros (a feature dropped by the Microsoft Office team)
• Enhanced support for PDF exporting, including password protection
• Support for Open Office extensions, allowing further features to be created by developers (similar to Firefox)
• No more reliance on X11

Open Office 3.0 is completely free to download and try out. If you are struggling with the Open Office site being overwhelmed with requests for the new software, it’s worth trying this mirror. Installation is far simpler than in previous versions and you can be up and running in a few minutes.

Let us know whether you’ll be switching from Microsoft Office!

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Microsoft has stated that you should have installed the 12.1.1 Update prior to installing 12.1.2.

In similar fashion, Office 2004 has been updated to 11.5.1 which also has security, stability and performance fixes for Office 2004 Standard Edition, Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition, Office 2004 Professional Edition, Word 2004, Excel 2004, PowerPoint 2004 and Entourage 2004. The 15MB download (English direct) is available via similar channels as the Office 2008 update.

Microsoft has stated that you should have installed the 11.5.0 Update prior to installing 11.5.1.

For what it’s worth: no problems on my end for Office 12.1.2, but I have not had an opportunity to do extensive testing. Since these updates do include security fixes (have I mentioned just how annoying it is when vendors mix security patches with other fixes?) you should install this immediately (after testing, if you’re in a more formal/larger production/working environment).

AutoUpdate should engage at some point today (it has not been populated as of this writing) and the direct links to the info-pages have not percolated to all of Microsoft’s web farm yet.

Let TAB readers know your post-update praises or woes in the comments!

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Scrivener is billed as the only word processor that will help you do everything from the very first idea you have to the final draft. I find it easier to think of it as word processing on steroids. But it isn’t really a word processor, and Keith, the developer is the first to point out often that you will need a different word processor if you want to have a final printable draft of your work. You can do so much more (and so much easier) with Scrivener than Pages or Word. You can be pretty confident that the product is good when the developer links to alternate programs on his website. That shows that the intent is to provide a good user experience, and not only to sell a product. A little of that goes a long way.

Drawbacks

Let’s get the negatives out of the way so we can end on a more positive note.

There are no page layout views. Granted, there aren’t supposed to be any, but, it is still a drawback when you don’t have that and need to export it to Word to get it to layout correctly.

The first thing you will notice is that it is very different from most text editors because there is a lot more to do, which means a larger learning curve, though there is a great detailed (and long) tutorial, that will help get you on your feet.

When you are in full-screen mode, you can’t switch between documents. You must exit full-screen mode, choose another document, then open full-screen mode again.

Even though it is pretty much only teachers and professors who require a page count, and not a word count, Scrivener is not conducive to letting you know how many pages you have typed. Of course, it is not meant to. For students, it may be a drawback that when the window size changes, the text moves to fill the white space. That makes it difficult to know how many pages you have typed. This is, however a great feature for those who are not bound by pages, but rather by word count, or who just want to write–just bad for students.

Images inserted are treated as part of the text, which means no text-wrapping, and that can be kind of a bummer. It can be a little difficult if you want to include images.

Great Features

You can go to the Scrivener Web site and read all the information about what the features are that make this product what it is. I hope that here you will find how these features worked for me, and what were more worthwhile than others.

Whenever you open Scrivener, it brings you right back to where you left off. This is a great feature because it helps you pick up from your last ending point. It doesn’t make you miss a beat. It opens fast, doesn’t bog down the computer like Word does. Now, I do not know much about developing for Mac, but I will say that it is very nice when programs do not slow you down. This program gets out of your way and lets you write. And, it autosaves anytime you pause after a change for two seconds. You never have to worry about losing your work from a crash, because it saves so fast.

You can also set a character or count target. So, if you have to write 250 words, or are limited to 1000 characters, this would be a good way let yourself know when you have reached your target. Then you can occasionally look down at the footer and see how far you have to go, to reach your target. When you reach your target, the blue bars fills up and the target turns from red to green.

Links to the web and other Scrivener documents can be entered anywhere in the program. That way, you can reference different pages, websites or research files as you are typing. Also, you can have more than one document open for editing at a time. For example, I have the drawbacks document open while I am typing so that I can drop down or over and make some notes about anything that bugs me.

For this article, I had different documents open for each section. If I want to view everything all together, I can do that by selecting all of them (just like selecting multiple playlists in iTunes) and clicking “Edit Scrivenings.” It pulls them all up together and gives a background color for each different document.

The Corkboard feature allows you to put your ideas on a corkboard and move them around. This is so useful for organizing your writing. It looks and acts like a real corkboard, only you don’t prick your fingers when with the push-pins. As you move the notecards around, it rearranges them in the sidebar.

You can import nearly all files (RTF, RTFD, DOC, XHTML, HTML, Images), attach PDFs, and even import any QuickTime audio or video file. Export options include RTF, RTFD, Word Document, TXT, and HTML.

Application

Writers who write anything that is long would love Scrivener–novelists, researchers, screenwriters, and even this humble blog writer, can find uses that make it worthwhile.

There is a scriptwriting mode that removes the formatting pains that go with the territory, complete with keyboard shortcuts (TAB and Return are all you need) that are context aware. Scrivener knows what you need to do next, so if you have been wanting to write that screenplay, Scrivener is there for you. This is really slick. If you are interested, you should really give this a try.

Teachers who create their own worksheets and materials could use Scrivener to design learning units and handouts. You can specify what you want to export or print, so the notes, resources, and ideas can be kept so that only the materials the students need would be printed.

I have never written a long novel, but I can see how Scrivener would make it much easier to do. As I was telling my wife about this program, she said, “You should buy this for me for my birthday so that I can write a novel. Scrivener would be much easier than any other word processor.”

Scrivener costs $40, and is available at Literature and Latte.

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