http://writingoutliner.com/writing-software/blog/the-rebirth-of-writing-outliner-rewritten-software-and-new-website/

... and turns into Writing Outliner again.

Here a very recent updated screenshot concerning its development. At today, no timetable for its beta version or final release.
http://writingoutliner.com/writing-software/blog/new-development-update-dec-2017/

Yes, to give the developer, Edwin, his due, he listened very carefully to the feedback about WordOutliner and to how the users are using WritingOutliner, and made sure he took it all on board for his new version (fortunately, of WritingOutliner, not WordOutliner). Development is slow, but it's great that he's still working at it!

Anthony wrote:
... and turns into Writing Outliner again.

Graham Rhind wrote:

Yes, to give the developer, Edwin, his due, he listened very carefully
to the feedback about WordOutliner and to how the users are using
WritingOutliner, and made sure he took it all on board for his new
version (fortunately, of WritingOutliner, not WordOutliner). Development
is slow, but it's great that he's still working at it!

>Anthony wrote:
>... and turns into Writing Outliner again.

I bought an early copy of Writing Outliner. In those early days it had many rough edges, but I don't regret the purchase. It's within my means to buy writing software of modest cost, and each sale means more writer's software will get developed.

From email dialog with Edwin Yip back in those days, he's a good guy and very interested in the usefulness of his product.

I'd go back to it if I still used Microsoft Word for anything.

Anthony wrote:
... and turns into Writing Outliner again.

It was not an ironic statement. Just a fact.
I also confirm Edwin's excellent attitude. He is responsive and eager to know user feedbacks.
Unfortunately, many Robinson Crosue developers face difficulties along the way, and some Friday's help does not always resemble the one that appears to the novel.
This may explain the delays. Merit to him of not giving up.

Crashed for me on startup.

From its start, way back when Office 2007 was a thing, this has had some serious issues and I recall losing a bunch of work when it misbehaved. Thought I'd try it again, 10 years later, but nope. No joy for me.

Sure it's a beta but I don't think I'd trust this guy to program anything and I sure wouldn't trust this program with anything important.

WritingOutliner isn't in beta. WordOutliner is, but if you were trying WritingOutliner then you may have been trying it in a version of Word it doesn't support.

My experience is very different from yours. I've been using it almost daily from its inception (10? 12? years ago) and I haven't lost a word of my work. On the rare occasion that it has crashed on me, and even when I've accidentally closed a project without saving it, nothing has been lost.

Listerene wrote:

Crashed for me on startup.

From its start, way back when Office 2007 was a thing, this has had some
serious issues and I recall losing a bunch of work when it misbehaved.
Thought I'd try it again, 10 years later, but nope. No joy for me.

Sure it's a beta but I don't think I'd trust this guy to program
anything and I sure wouldn't trust this program with anything important.

Update. ...and turns into DocxManager. It is named as the second writingoutliner re-birth. Actually it seems the third, given the title of this old post.

News here, but no download available yet, just a new website:
http://writingoutliner.com/writing-software/blog/docxmanager-the-second-rebirth-of-writing-outliner/

Seems to be primarily a tool to generate websites (in Bootstrap) from Word documents, and not really an outliner anymore. It'll be interesting to see how well it does what it's advertised to do.

tightbeam wrote:

Seems to be primarily a tool to generate websites (in Bootstrap) from
Word documents, and not really an outliner anymore. It'll be interesting
to see how well it does what it's advertised to do.

The screenshots remind me of Scrivener.
The website generator feature looks like a strange add-on to me. Who would use Word for building web pages?

I dunno, the idea of a simple static website generator is immensely appealing. There are a few around, but none that really work easily (with the possible exception of Publii, which is primarily for blogging). There are, of course, plenty of editors that interact nicely with WordPress or similar CMSs, but that's not really static.

The main shortcoming of most static website generators is the lack of a built-in search function. If you're going to generate a static website, it's because you want to publish something. Unless it's very short, you need to have some neat, convenient way for people to navigate around it. A sensible menu system is a good start - but nothing beats a good search engine.

This is something that one of the best of the Windows-based website design apps gets absolutely right: WebsiteX5, an Italian product that's been going for a few years and has become extremely polished and sophisticated (does responsive, does comments/contact forms, does blogging, does members-only areas - and does search. The top-of-the-range product even does web shops. All built-in). In recent years, they've started offering in-app extras, which is slightly annoying, but the various editions are not unreasonably priced, and you can create a pretty darn good website. Best of all, you don't need any back-end CMS; WebsiteX5 does everything for you, and you can host on pretty much any web server.

Unfortunately, it's not available for Mac. Which is why I use Nicepage. More on WebsiteX5 here: https://www.websitex5.com/en/ (yes, in principle you can design a website in 5 steps. In practice, if you want a really nice one, you spend a bit more time ;o))

Cheers,
Bill

Personally, I'm done with the clown who was developing this piece of junk. Clearly, the developer has no idea of what they are doing and I say that as not just a victim of their programming once but *multiple* times.

It was originally a very good idea and I kept giving it additional chances with each successive release, hoping that this would be the time that it didn't fail while (mostly) taking my work with it. I was wrong each (and every) time.

Stay far (far) away from this is my advice.

I tried a previous version of the software. It didn't work well, mangled the appearance of Word, and took some doing to eradicate.

Now that Scrivener is available for Windows, at a reasonable price, I don't see the market for this "Writing Outliner", or whatever it's now called, especially given its sketchy history. Maybe that's why the developer decided to bolt on the "Word-to-web" functionality. But I don't know of anyone, anywhere, who has ever stood up on a bus and said, "You know what, I'd really love to pay for something that would turn my Word document into a web site." Perhaps I ride the wrong buses.

If someone is interested, Docxmanager (evolution of writingoutliner) has a trial:

https://docxmanager.com/download.html
(no affiliation, just curiosity)