The first thing Windows Scrivener users are going to have to get a grasp on is the new look. In Scrivener 1.9.9.0, everything is so round. The chapter folders are round, the scenes are round. It’s actually a very comfortable working environment.
Scrivener 3.0 is sharp and more angular. The icons are smaller, and the task bars take up less screen real estate. It’s very white and plain in appearance. I personally like a slightly more colorful environment. You can get most of the Scrivener 1.9 look in the new Scrivener, it just takes some tweaking. If you knew how to tweak Scrivener 1.9, this will be easy. If you don’t – it’s still going to be easy.
- The cork board disappears in Scrivener 3.0 – it’s still there, just not displayed as a cork board. File>Options>Appearance>Cork board lets you put it back. My choices on the display are corners>square, label indicator>corner mark, cork board background>cork board pattern. “Show text lines” I have checked, as well as “show shadows”. That will give you the old familiar cork board back. Play with it, and see what you like.
- If you’ve altered colors of first draft, etc, I’d recommend you leave that as it is – some editors are using Scrivener now (like me). It’s important to show what is rough draft, first revision, etc. If you just prefer to edit and have your editor look at the “compare snapshots”, go ahead and change everything the way you had it.
- go immediately to the view command in the task bar and “use label color in”. I choose by default “binder”, “icons” and “index cards”. Scrivener 3.0 has different names for the options, “show as background color in binder.” Because it creates more of a wash effect, I don’t choose to color the icons any more. I just choose binder and index cards. Play with this – if you don’t like it, you can always put it back.
- Load one of your old Scrivener projects. Select the text, then go to format>Make Formatting Default. You can also “Copy formatting” and “paste formatting” if you have a specific format you want your text in for only a few chapters. You’ll understand this more once you get it and are playing with it.
- You’re going to lose most of the colorfulness of the collections area. Sadly, there is no workaround for it. Yet.
- Make sure you go to Project>Keywords and enter in the major characters of your novel! Once you’ve done that, you can click on the right facing arrow in the outliner (the top of the scroll bar, right hand side) and choose meta-tags to show. You’ll be really happy you did! This is one of the power user tricks most Scriveners don’t use or else don’t know about.
Conclusion
All in all, I’m excited about the public release of Scrivener 3.0. I do miss the rounded edges of Scrivener 1.9.9, but the square shapes allow for more view of the binder. The Collections area is fairly blah now, as the new interface allows for less customization in there. If you don’t use as many colors as I do in the interface, it shouldn’t bother you as much.
Except for a few random complaints (all about appearance, and I’ve given you the fixes for most of them), I think Scrivener die-hards will enjoy the update. Make sure you poke around with settings. My poking around got me pretty much where I’m happy-ish with Scrivener’s appearance. The more one becomes a Scrivener power user, the easier it will be to unlock the power of this program.
