Requirement
I brought a new small PC, Surface Go, for quick writings. My idea is to write some articles at this PC and mobile phone. So, the software requirements are:
- It must support Windows. I don’t want to install native Linux on a Surface Go device because most of the hardware we cannot use, like touch screen, surface pen, etc.
- It must support Android and Mac OS. My main computer is still a MacBook Pro and my main mobile phone is still an Android phone. So, the app must support these three platform. That would be greate if it supports iOS.
- It must be private because I want to write primitive or naive ideas and I don’t want others to see them.
- It should support rich text format, like HTML editor, or Word. I may need to format the text as a header, bullet item, etc.
- It should be small and easy to open
- It would be nice to support mark-down
Unfortunately, I didn’t find a good writing software. So, I keep use Google Keep as the writing software. At lease, it support 4 of 6 items. If you know one, please tell me through my email.
Web App
It’s long time that I don’t use a Windows box, about 11 years ago. I totally forgot how to use it. After some googling and configuration, I found a ancient feature that runs a web as an app. This was a cool feature call active desktop. It was invented at Windows 95 and IE 4.0. I didn’t use it before but just heard of it. IIRC, it didn’t have a lot of users. Fortunately, All chromium-based browsers support a similar feature, create shortcut, which runs a web as an app. We can find it at the Option menu / More tools / Create shortcut:
After a shortcut is created, we can find the web is running in the chromeless mode:
Fullscreen
At Android app, we can use a fullscreen editor to write a short story which gives us focus. But at the browser version, it has a small editor dialog. That’s too bad:
I go to Chrome Web Store to find a tool to make it fullscreen. Ha ha.. There is one extension which can make the editor in fullscreen, called Google Keep - Full Screen Edit. After installed it, the Google Keep web app can support fullscreen editing. That’s awesome!!