Inspiration
Many famous authors don't use word processors—they use typewriters. Why? Because it's easier to create content with them. All of us have written essays. When you're on Google Docs, what are you doing? Typing, ostensibly; however, I often find myself wasting vast amounts of time second-guessing the wording of a few paragraphs instead of actually writing the content I sat down to create. Typewriters work because they let you do one thing: write. Not edit, not deliberate, just simply create content. However, word processors are handy because whatever you put out isn't set in stone—you can edit and tweak wording, fix spelling, and the like.
With modern technology, we can create an optimal compromise: a simple word processor that allows short-term editing but not large-scale revision. A digital typewriter captures the best of both worlds: you can edit indefinitely—up to three words back. Once you're three words away, it's finalized; your words are set in stone, allowing your brain to give up its live critique and move on to more productive writing.
What it does
It's a bare-bones, dead-simple content writing interface. You can type, you can read what you've written, and you can edit—but only up to three words back, to limit constantly distracting deliberation. What you can edit is shown in a slightly different color from the nonnegotiable—this simple but amazingly intuitive UI design is optimized for usability.
There are also different thematic color options, which you can switch between in two simple clicks!
Everything saves between sessions, so you don't have to worry about accidentally refreshing the page or closing your browser. If you come back within 30 days—everything's still there, just as you left it... colors, text, and all.
How I built it
It started out as a one-file HTML website, but branched into a classic HTML / CSS / vanilla JS website, with a JSON that stores theme options. No frills or distractions—just function.
Challenges I ran into
It was incredibly hard to effectively transfer text from one (in which I type) to another (in which uneditable text is stored). This was necessary for the differential highlighting of editable and malleable sections—but likely 1/3 of my total project development time was spent wrangling this transfer. HTML does not like to work cleanly with various kinds of whitespace, removing and inserting spaces at seemingly random. However, I prevailed in the end, getting the website to bend to my design!
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I'm very proud of how my pop-up settings menu turned out! I had no idea whatsoever how to make and toggle such overlays, but with a bit of tinkering the design I used became clear to me right away—it's clean, simple, and programmatically beautiful to boot!
What I learned
It's often the simplest things that are the most frustrating. "I'll finish the frontend up in 5 hours, then move stuff to the cloud," I came in saying. Nope! The entire time was spent polishing the frontend—hours well spent, in the end, because the backend I had conceived of turned out not to be necessary after all!
What's next for Online Typewriter
I want to add more settings so that users can completely customize the look and feel of their text editing experience. I'll also add export options—so that you can move your text smoothly to TXT, PDF, DOCX, PAGES, or PDF files, copy it, print it, any number of things. Usability is my absolute priority here—why add unnecessary features when you can just make the product better?
Once I'm proud of the website and can't think to add anything more, I'll publish it online and turn it into a small company and/or passive income source for myself. I plan to run ads in the Settings page, with the option for users to pay $1 for permanently disabled ads and a superset of cosmetic features. That's why I'm putting this down for the Entrepreneurship track—while simple, it has massive potential to improve the lives of students, authors, and writers everywhere. Since starting to use a prototype a week ago, my writing output has nearly tripled; what other product can do that? I hope to spread the benefits of this software as far as possible, and have it help support me in the process.
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