Ulysses
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Writing app Ulysses gets new document dashboard and advanced grammar and style check
Ulysses, a popular writing app for the Mac, iPhone and iPad, is receiving an update with some new features. The user interface has been slightly redesigned with a new right-hand column that acts as a dashboard. There’s also a new grammar and style check feature that goes beyond what’s provided on Apple’s platform by default.
Let’s start with the dashboard. The new column is all about consolidating existing elements in a more cohesive interface. Previously, you could click on a button to see document statistics, click on another button to see the outline of your document and click on a clip-shaped button to access attachments, notes, tags but also your writing goal.
It was a bit confusing as you couldn’t see your statistics next to your goal. Or you couldn’t keep your outline next to your document unless you knew that you can drag the popover menu so that it doesn’t automatically closes.
Now, everything is consolidated under three buttons — a share menu, a formatting menu and the dashboard. There are multiple tabs within the dashboard and you can customize the widgets that you want to view in most tabs.
For instance, it’s much more comfortable to keep your outline in the right column next to your document. You can click on headlines and sub-headlines to jump to the right part of your work. You can also view a list of all your footnotes, images and links in that view. The new dashboard is also available on the iPad and iPhone.
Image Credits: Ulysses
When it comes to spell checking, Ulysses has always taken advantage of the native features on Apple’s platforms — your words are underlined in red when there’s a typo.
But the new version of Ulysses goes one step further by integrating with LanguageTool Plus, a proofreading service that works in your browser and provides an API to third-party developers. The result is a new feature that lets you review your text before exporting it from Ulysses.
LanguageTool Plus is a freemium product with a paid subscription beyond 2,500 characters. You hit that limit pretty quickly as the article you’re reading is longer than 2,500 characters for instance. If you’re a Ulysses user, the grammar and style suggestions are included in your subscription.
It analyzes your text for typos, but also punctuation errors, redundancy, typography, style, etc. Compared to Grammarly, LanguageTool Plus supports more than 20 languages. You can approve or reject suggestions one by one or browse them by category in the dashboard.
Grammar and style suggestions are only available on the Mac version of Ulysses for now and will come to the iPhone and iPad later this year.
Image Credits: Ulysses
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Ulysses adds split view on the iPad and support for Ghost blogs
Writing app Ulysses has been updated with a few nifty feature additions. On the iPad, you can now split the editor into two side-by-side editors — this feature alone opens up a lot of possibilities. Ulysses also now supports the option to publish your writing directly to a Ghost blog.
Ulysses is currently available on macOS, the iPad and the iPhone. It’s a Markdown editor with a library of texts that automatically stays in sync across your devices. You can export one or multiple texts in many different formats, including Markdown, HTML, rich text, PDF, ePub, DOCX and a blog.
In addition to Medium and WordPress, Ulysses now supports blogs built using Ghost, an open source CMS platform. If your website is built on Ghost, this should be a nice addition.
But I’m more excited about the ability to open two editors at the same time on the iPad. While the iPad is a great device if you’re looking for a focused writing environment, iOS still thinks “one app = one document”. Sure, you can open two Safari tabs side by side, but most apps only let you open one document at a time.
Ulysses now lets you open two documents at once. You can drag a document from the sidebar and drop it on the right side of the screen to split the screen into two panels. This way, if you’re translating a document, if you need to look at some references, you can scroll through a second document while you write in the main document.
But Ulysses doesn’t stop there. You can also open a second editor from the editor settings to look at different parts of the same document. And if you long press on the export button, you can also open a live preview of the document you’re currently working on.
For instance, you can see what your text will look like before you publish on your blog — headers, images, links and footnotes included. If you edit your text, Ulysses automatically refreshes the preview after a second.
Opening and closing documents is a fluid experience and this split view feature is well implemented. There have been rumors that Apple has been working on improvements at the iOS level to let you open multiple documents using the same app. Today’s Ulysses update is a good example of such a feature and how it would make the iPad even better.
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