Blast from the past: Writer's Blocks

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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 6, 2017 at 03:22 PM

For those of you not familiar with the Windows program Writer’s Blocks, it is basically a way to write anything with virtual index cards. It was innovative about 15 years ago, but has long since been passed by Scrivener. There was some recent talk about writing programs for Windows, and I was wondering if Writer’s Blocks was still available, but I never got around to investigating. Lo and behold, I got an email today from Ashley Software announcing Writer’s Blocks 5.

According to the email, here are some of the new feature highlights:

- Organize your blocks in Columns (newspaper style) or Rows (timeline style)
- Transpose your blocks from columns to rows with a single click to get a whole new perspective on your blocks.
- Want tall blocks, thin blocks, or square blocks? Choose your block aspect ratio along with minimum and maximum sizes for AutoSized blocks.
- Hide the ribbon menus for a sleek distraction free interface, maximizing your workspace in full screen mode.
- ReNumber and ReSize only selected blocks.
- Shrink all text to fit in you blocks on screen, in printed blocks, or printed on index cards.
- Print out your blocks directly to a PDF file for printing or sharing by email.
- Span multiple displays with a single click for a giant overview of your story or blocks on one screen and manuscript on the other.

There is a free trial for anyone interested. Find it here: https://www.writersblocks.com/

Steve Z.

Posted by Listerene
Nov 6, 2017 at 03:55 PM

15 year-old software pricing for a circa 15 year-old software program. Uh, no thanks.

Posted by Lothar Scholz
Nov 6, 2017 at 11:59 PM

I installed it once two years ago and played half an hour to find out what features they offer.

What was shocking too me was the bad technical quality of this program.

It flickers like crazy when you resize the window or move/resize the cards. This alone is a showstopper.
And the feature set was pretty low, except the editor component which seems to be the well known and good TextControl that is also used in many other apps.

I would maybe buy it for 1/10 of the price they are asking at the moment.

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