Focused
Have you ever been distracted by your desktop? Notifications, post-its, reminders, folders with weird names, background pictures? All this stuff can easily distract you and prevent getting focused.
If you are a writer and you need to be concentrated on the current draft, Focused is very helpful. We you run Focused you are in front of a full screen application, which shows you just a text box. This prevents you from having a look to other windows or tools that are potential distractors.
The only thing you’ll see is just your text. Try it!
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Direct link
Because “The first key to writing is… to write” (Finding Forrester).
Here is a showcase of Focused.
Focused – Demo from funkyboy on Vimeo.
Focused is an Adobe Air application, which runs on Mac, Linux and Windows. To run it you need to install the Adobe Air runtime.
Focused is an open source project, released under the new BSD license.
If you want to contribute drop a comment below or refer to the source home.
Comments
Hello,
I really like the idea of this, as it’s true that you can get distracted easily with all the agents and other stuff popping up on a windows desktop , which mostly do nothing to aid concentration.
I am a technical architect by profession, so frequently have to work on large documents, but a crucial feature of most technical writing is the ability to see multiple documents on the screen at once. It’s also useful to be able to make certain docs smaller or minimize them and/or change the size of their windows/viewports on the screen.
I suppose you could just open lots of notepad windows, but i like the idea of an otherwise blank worktop, but with the ability to hide the other nonsense…
Maybe the future of this app, esp if you want to make it commercial, is a way to lock multiple apps in certain positions on the screen and be able to hide everything else ? Maybe you could merge that into the ‘virtual desktop’ idea, so that with a hotkey, it is possible to switch back to email/chat/IM/web browsing/google, etc.
I really like the idea, but for me to use this actively, I’d need to be able to look at :
- an outline view, maybe somewhere in the same document, but it’s handy to have it in a corner of the screen, for reference
- other document windows
- a CMS window, e.g. sharepoint or stellent
- the main document should be able to dominate the screen, and the app should ideally work across mutliple screens, etc.
The idea of staying ‘focused’ though is great.
Good luck and keep up the good work !
Regards
January 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pmJo
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
Reminds me of the WriteRoom app for Mac, but running on AIR means it’ll work for PC too ;)
January 13th, 2009 at 6:50 pm@Jo Sorry, I forgot to approve your comment. Thanks for the feedback and for the followup discussion that we had via email.
January 14th, 2009 at 1:27 pm@Tony Thanks! The inspiration came exactly from WriteRoom. To be honest I remembered I found a great app on Mac to write with no distraction, I forgot the name and then I decided to build one similar :)
January 14th, 2009 at 1:28 pmThanks a ton, funkyboy. I just posted my review: http://www.flex888.com/1012/stay-focused-without-entering-the-writeroom.html
January 27th, 2009 at 4:55 pmAdd a spellchecker! It’s a ‘must have’ in order to use this app. successfully no matter who you are, and what you’re using it for.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:17 pmI used to use Darkroom for the PC, which is about the same thing (just a wall of black, with green text, and nothing else). Having a cross-platform and less…Apple II-esque version is better, though. Thanks!
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:27 pm@Robert Myers thanks for the feedback. Spell checking is one of the first items in the todo list: http://code.google.com/p/focused/wiki/TODO
@Ben thanks!
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 pmIt would be nice if it blacked out multiple monitors – one of mine is still distracting me :-)
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:05 pmI like the look of this very much. I wonder if you’ve seen Khoi Vinh’s Blockwriter concept? I’d love a version of your app that includes his concepts, such as disabling delete and/or cursor movement, forcing the user to keep moving forwards.
http://blockwriter.com/
Also, a clock and live word count would be awesome, but I understand the need to keep these things simple!
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:06 pmI was excited to try this, only to realize there is very limited support for RTL input. I was actually surprised when CTRL+Shift didn’t align the text to the right, but even more when the order of words typed in Hebrew was reversed: reversed was Hebrew in typed…
Works great for English, though, and very nicely designed. Great job.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:54 pm@/ good suggestion. didn’t think of that. added to the todo list. thanks for the feedback!
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 pm@andrew Never heard of blockwriter before. That is really in the Forrester’s style! I think live word count, though useful, can be distracting. I’ll put it as a command in the edit menu.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm@Tal formatting is not supported at the moment and I think it won’t. I understand the need of some formatting, but an extreme perspective (like mine) also format commands are distracting. I am thinking of implementing two modalities: writing and formatting. In the former you can just type text, like now. The second modality will allow formatting (and modification) of already typed text. what do you guys think?
ps: will check the issue related to the Hebrew language.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 pmAn almost perfect app! A cross-platform, ultra-minimal full-screen ascii editor; exactly what I’ve been looking for. I just can’t work out a way to do ’save as…’, is it not implemented yet? Ctrl+Shift+S does a kind of double-exclamation point. I’m on a Vista machine right now, is that an error?
Thanks for making this, I appreciate it.
PS: Please don’t add formatting! If this app breaks away from pure .txt format docs, I won’t be able to use it any more.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:50 am@josephalford Save as shortcut is not implemented yet. It will be added in the next release. Thanks for the feedback!
February 24th, 2009 at 8:14 amPLEASE DON’T ADD ANYTHING!. I see a lot of request from people wanting more bells and whistles. I think they are missing the point–this tool is for distraction-free composing. Do all your formatting and spell checking in your final, formatting application. Let FOCUSED be what it is–an elegant looking version of NOTEPAD (my favorite text editor, until now.)
February 24th, 2009 at 2:16 pmI really like this application, since I have to do a lot of writing, at it really comes in handy to have a lightweight, customizable app. I agree with the comments that it needs a spellcheck, but that’s all. Lightweight is great.
One thing, though. On my mac, the menubar is still visible on the top. It’s not horribly distracting, but still, it’s a bit that makes you a bit less… focused.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:56 am@Ryan thanks for your feedback! Spell checking is already included in the current (private) beta. I didn’t find a way (yet) to hide the menubar on macosx.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:18 amOn Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard…
The app is great to write in, but it can’t see or open its own saved files, which open up fine in TextEdit. Is this an oversight or bug?
February 25th, 2009 at 5:21 pm@Dan that feature is not supported yet. thanks for the suggestion!
February 25th, 2009 at 5:30 pm@Jo; I think the thing you’re interested in is what’s called a Tiling Window Manager
February 26th, 2009 at 10:13 pmOdd, I’m using Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex just like in the video intro, but it doesn’t cover up the system tray or the menubar on my screen(which are the most distracting parts!). A Compiz issue, maybe?
February 26th, 2009 at 10:25 pm@Andrew I have tested focused only on “standard” Ubuntu 8.10. Compiz was off. Did you update to Air 1.5.1? Probably that could solve the issue. If it does not, please let me know. Thanks.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:38 amNice clean app!
I’ve updated it locally to support real full screen. FULL_SCREEN_INTERACTIVE supports complete keyboard input for AIR apps. My change also lets you drag the window to any screen and then make it fullscreen.
Drop me a line and I’ll happily submit my change.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:12 amFont smoothing!!
And I don’t know if its 100% black, but it actually hurts a bit.. anyway to do a nice 82%?
March 27th, 2009 at 6:51 am@Michael Thanks for the feedback.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:03 amYou can choose the font you like from the settings. Some are better rendered
according to the OS you are running. For example I find “Charcoal CY” very
smooth and easy to read om MacOsx.
As for color, there will be an option to choose it in the next version.
I stumbled across focused today. It is the first Air application that I have ever liked! Very nice.
I do have one issue though. In Mac if I press the esc key I exit full screen and focused becomes a small window. This is as it should be. The problem is that I cannot find a way to get it back to full screen without restarting the app. Is there currently a way to get back to full screen? If not, could you add it?
Thanks for making a very nifty piece of software.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:32 pmI verified the bug. I will include a go to full screen button in the next version. Or prevent resizing when esc in pressed. The modification will be included in the next version. Thanks for reporting!
April 30th, 2009 at 5:23 pm