I would love to have a mac. It’s odd how the interface in Mac is so sterile, so blah – and people line up to buy them.
One of the benefits to having a mac is of course you can have Scrivener in all its glory. Windows versions always seem to be missing the cool features that the Mac version has.
Mac users are in their second year of Scrivener 3.0, and of course Windows users are still waiting. I’ve been using the beta versions to get used it, and so far I’ve been giving feedback on the beta version. I’m loving the way it’s going.
The thing I noticed about Scrivener 3.0 is… the angles. 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. Hopefully, you learned how to modify your working environment in Scrivener! I personally like a slightly more colorful environment. I 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.
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. Personally, since almost every Scrivener user is going to put it back, I think they should leave it as a default and let people choose. 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.
The biggest change is of course the deadline features PC users have asked. We want the same deadline abilities that Mac users have. I want to be able to choose my word count, the deadline it has to be done by, show me how many words per day. You couldn’t do that in 1.9.9.0, but you can in 3.0.
A VERY handy feature is the ability to copy formatting. Scrivener changes its formatting in 3.0, but if you don’t want to spend time customizing your formatting, once you import one of your old Scrivener projects, it will allow you to copy the formatting and set as 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.
What don’t we get? The parts of speech identifiers. Scrivener for the Mac has identifiers that show you how many adverbs you have, or adjectives. The other parts of speech gray out, leaving only the chosen words. This would be especially great, as now you can concentrate on going through and finding all the verbs in one of your edit stages, and editing them.
It would be nice, but I’m in what probably is the final Beta of 3.0, and no sign of it yet. So I’m assuming PC users will have to wait three or four years to get it in version 4.0
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 in the binder, 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.
Trust me when I say, if you switched from Scrivener to LaTex or some other program, you just didn’t learn the power of Scrivener. This might be a time for you to come back and REALLY learn how to use the program!
