Last December we released the iA Writer for Windows 2.0 beta as part of the iA Winterfest giveaway. After further tweaks and testing we’re pleased to announce that the update has been released.

As the name implies, 2.0 isn’t merely a refresh—it’s an all-singing all-dancing overhaul of the codebase, a total UI refresh, along with many improvements. And It’s a free update for existing users.

In case you missed the beta announcement, here are the highlights:

1. Faster Startup Time and Responsiveness

We split the code base into a small, fast-loading core module that starts immediately, followed by secondary components that load in the background. The result: Writer for Windows 2.0 is now faster and more supple than… an oiled eel. But unlike eels, it’s more fun to work with. For example, check out the startup time comparison:

2. UI for Windows

An immediately visible change is that the 2.0 UI was redesigned to better fit the Windows 11 aesthetic. This amounted to loads of UI changes—too many and too small to count—but the overall effect is beautiful, a room with a view.

3. Tighter Tools

Aside from performance and appearance improvements, 2.0 also includes multiple updates to its tools that help bring it closer to the MacOS version:

Full Width Preview: A much-requested Windows feature. No more UI, no distractions in Preview. At last you get to see your formatted documents in all their glory:

Smarter Snippets: An exclusive to Writer for Windows. Snippets now support multi-line expansions, making it even easier to push out any text you reuse a lot:

Stats: Writer for Windows 2.0 sees an improved stats indicator and shows how far you’ve come at a glance:

Improved notes and commenting: Writer for Windows now mirrors the MacOS version. Use // comment for an internal, private comment, while the <!-- html comment --> is exported with your text:

View the full change log.

A big thank you to all beta testers for their feedback. Last but not least, thanks to our users for their patience. Getting out 2.0 took while—but it was well worth the wait.

The post Room with a View: iA Writer for Windows 2.0 appeared first on iA.

iA is partnering again with NYC Midnight as a title sponsor for the 2025 Screenwriting Challenge.

For over 20 years, NYC Midnight has organized the Inspiring Challenges for Storytellers. As a returning title sponsor, iA will award the top 10 finishers with their own copy of iA Writer for iPad, iPhone, macOS, or Windows.

In addition, the top three finishers will also get a copy of the critically acclaimed iA Notebook—the notebook for writers.

About the Challenge

Already in its 22nd year (wow!) the Screenwriting Challenge (SCC2025) offers international screenwriters a prime opportunity to compete with other writers, get professional feedback on their work, and win great prizes—like iA’s writing tools.¹

How it works

Writers are randomly assigned into groups and in each round are given a genre, subject, and character to work with. Judges select the top writers from each group to move on to the next stage:

1. Round one: Writers receive their first assignment for an original short screenplay of a maximum of 12 pages, to finish in eight days. The top five writers from each group advance.
2. Round two: Writers have three days to write another screenplay, this time with a limit of eight pages. The top three writers in each group advance.
3. Round three: In the third and final round, writers have 24 hours to write a screenplay up to five pages long.

The 2025 challenge starts on February 21 and ends on August 6 with the results of the final round.²

Why participate?

Establishing a regular writing habit is just one of many reasons to participate in a writing contest. NYC Midnight’s challenge is especially good because aspiring screenwriters can:

• Get feedback from the judges for every submission
• Gain access to the NYC Midnight writing community
• Keep the rights to the stories they write and submit
• Have their story published on the NYC Website
• Win great prizes, from thousands of dollars to industry-leading writing tools, like iA Writer

How iA Writer helps

In 2023 we added support for Fountain files. Seasoned screenwriters are likely already familiar with Fountain, a plain text syntax that leverages the strength of Markdown and is tailored for screenwriters.

You can learn more about Writer’s dedicated Fountain template and how you can maximize screenwriting productivity in Writer here. Since its launch, we’ve continued to improve the Fountain template based on user feedback.

iA Writer is beloved by both amateur and professional writers because it is made for distraction-free writing and nothing else. Some features that enhance your writing experience include:

Focus Mode

iA Writer’s signature feature allows you to focus on one sentence or paragraph at a time. How does it work?

Style Check

Easily spot fillers, redundancies, or clichés that might be creeping into your text. Cut it down to the essentials. You can also create custom patterns to highlight expressions that you want to avoid.

Syntax Highlight

Pinpoint awkward verbs, repetitive nouns, or excessive use of certain parts of speech. How does it help?

Live Preview

Watch your screenplay render in real-time as you work. Or you can choose to work fully focused in the Editor while Preview remains on call.

By using Markdown as you write, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and quickly format your work without fiddling with menus. You can further speed up your formatting using shortcuts. Word count will come in handy too.

No AI!

NYC Midnight’s official rules ban using Artificial Intelligence to enhance your writing. Luckily, iA Writer for iPad, iPhone, and Mac comes with its Authorship tool—a simple but amazingly effective way to track what content comes from external sources like AI—and what belongs to you.³

Registration for the 2025 Screenwriting Challenge is open until February 20, 2025. For full details, please see the NYC Midnight website.

Download your free iA Writer trial for SCC2025

Mac

Windows

The post NYC Midnight: Screenwriting Challenge 2025 appeared first on iA.

iA Presenter puts joy back into telling a story. Here’s how.

Most presentation apps expect us to pour our souls into designing slides. It’s a fiddlefest. Instead of letting you think about what to say and how to say it, it nags. Position this. Resize that. Shrink this. Poke that.

In practice, picking fonts, colors and shapes is less fun than it seems. If you’re not a designer, you shouldn’t have to worry about it. We all have more fun when we focus on what we are good at.

A New Guide About Letting Go

The new How To Guide for iA Presenter is 23 minutes long, which seems short for a set of seven tutorials. It is short, because it was made to teach you one thing: A good presentation isn’t about the slides, but about the story you tell. Let go of the rest.

The How To Guide helps you let go of worrying about layouts. You will let go of wondering if your slides will look good online, or on a certain display. Most of all, you will let go of being afraid:

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” —Yoda, Revenge of the Sith

What Yoda means is that iA Presenter isn’t about sweating over slides. It focuses on what really matters: Your voice, your expert knowledge, your story. When you learn to let go of the rest, you’ll be in full control and your audience will actually listen to you.

iA on YouTube

There’s a lot more to say on the topic of creating great presentations, so be sure to check out our other resources—both in our Support section, and on iA’s official YouTube channel.

And in case you missed it, we created a How To Guide about iA Writer too.

As for the rest, just let it go.

The post How to Master iA Presenter: Learn to Let Go appeared first on iA.

You wrote. We read. And we were moved. Here are the winners of the iA Awards.

This was our first award, and we weren’t sure what to expect or how to judge the submissions. As we read through hundreds of texts and presentations, our criteria became clear. We focused on what matters most when reading: Emotion, Logic, and Impact.¹

These subjective criteria reflect the personal nature of communication, emphasizing the connection between writer and reader.

Choosing the winners wasn’t about finding the objectively best texts or presentations. Instead, we selected the ones that moved us, resonated with us, and left a lasting impression. We discussed. Then we voted.

The Winners

Writing Award: João Sevilhano, On the Beauty of Distraction

João Sevilhano’s essay, On the Beauty of Distraction, explores how we view attention.² “In English, we pay attention. In French, we make it. In German, we gift it.” These terms suggest attention is a limited resource. Sevilhano argues that while technology often gets the blame, distraction is a natural human trait. He believes that embracing both focus and distraction can enrich our lives. 

This essay resonated with our team because it challenged a shared belief, that motivates us as a team, that distractions are purely negative. João made the point that not all distractions are equal. When chosen deliberately as a moment of breathing and not as a fast escape, distraction can give us energy and inspire us to solve our issues. Positive distractions can enhance creativity, memory, and focus.

“When performing our lives trumps the actual living of them, attention becomes a commodity. The market vies for our time and focus, knowing there’s a direct correlation between what we pay attention to and what we, quite literally, pay for. This commodification feeds into a larger societal pressure to constantly do more, achieve more, and be more. We live in an era of relentless ambition, where success is often measured by how much we produce and how little we rest. The hustle culture further fragments our attention, as we’re constantly pushed to divide our focus among numerous goals and tasks.”

This essay moved us and this is why we think that it deserves a wider audience. You can read the full text on this website.

Presentation Award: Fabian Hemmert, Artificial Intelligence: A Car for the Mind?

Fabian captivated us with its engaging delivery and thought-provoking content.³ He skillfully examined the rapid advancements in AI, questioning whether we’ve transitioned from viewing computers as “bicycles for the mind,” as Steve Jobs once suggested, to “cars for the mind.”

Referencing Darth Vader and King Louis as extremes, Hemmert highlighted the potential pitfalls of over-reliance on technology and the loss of human essence. He closes with a strong idea:

“[All of this] raises the question of balancing nature and technology. One might also consider that technology is an inherent part of human nature; we simply cannot do otherwise.”⁴

He suggests the concept of an “inner compass” to guide individuals in discovering new technologies in order to find the balance between embracing artificial augmentation and maintaining a happy human life.

Hemmert’s slides were exemplary—focused and supportive, enhancing his narrative without causing distraction. They effectively guided the attention to his words, allowing the audience to focus on his compelling message.

You can find the video of this presentation also on his website.

Honorable Mentions

Both winners will receive their iA Notebook. Two entries were so close that, while they didn’t win first place, we found that they deserved a notebook as well. After all, the best text isn’t always the most popular, even among our team.

Blake Watson with HTML is for people

Blake Watson’s web book, “HTML is for People,” is a free guide that teaches HTML to beginners.⁵ It uses simple language to help readers build their own websites. A motivating, inspiring project, well written.

“HTML isn’t only for people working in the tech field. It’s for anybody, the way documents are for anybody. HTML is just another type of document. A very special one—the one the web is built on.”

Learn more about HTML for the people.

Chenyu Huang with Sunset

Chenyu Huang’s blog entry, “Sunset,” offers a touching look at visiting his grandparents after ten months apart.⁶ He lovingly describes their aging and the passage of time.

“While grandpa passionately talked about the conflicts in the Middle East and mocked the ‘absurdity’ of American elections, I sat in silence peeling and slicing an apple for him, knowing nothing in my mind was likely to be inducible to a happy conversation.”

Read Chenyu Huang’s text on his blog.

After the award is before the award

It took us two months to review all the submissions. Each was created, at least in part, using our apps. Reading them made us happy.

Thank you for sending in your work. Reading and celebrating it was an honor. This was our first award, and we learned a lot. We plan to continue. So, keep writing, presenting, and sharing your stories—not just for next year’s iA Awards, but to inspire and connect with others.

The post iA Awards: The Winners appeared first on iA.

We’re happy to announce our sponsorship of NYC Midnight’s 2025 Short Story Challenge. Our participation in this prestigious literary event has proven fruitful year after year. We’re excited about what 2025 will bring too.

Since 2002, NYC Midnight has organized Inspiring Challenges for Storytellers. Writers receive prompts and must complete stories within specific time limits, ranging from 24 hours to eight days, and word count restrictions. NYC Midnight’s challenges start and finish at 11:59 PM New York time.

As a sponsor, iA will award the top 10 finishers a copy of iA Writer for iOS, macOS, or Windows. This year, the top three finishers will also receive their very own iA Notebook.

About the Challenge

Now in its 19th year, the Short Story Challenge (SSC2025) offers writers across the world an opportunity to compete with peers, receive professional feedback, and win great prizes.¹

How it works

Writers are randomly assigned into groups and given a genre, subject, and character to work with. At the end of each round, judges select the top five writers from each group to advance to the next stage. Here’s a quick overview of the contest:

1. In the first round, writers receive a first assignment for a story of a maximum of 2,500 words to finish in eight days.
2. In the second round, advancing writers receive a new assignment for a short story of 2,000 words, written in three days.
3. The third round comes with new assignments and a two-day deadline to write a short story of 1,500 words. Judges then select the finalists.
4. Final assignment: A story no longer than 1,250 words, written in just 24 hours.

The 2025 Challenge kicks off on January 24 and ends on September 10, 2025 with the results of the final round.²

Why enter and write?

Developing and maintaining a regular writing habit is just one of the many reasons to participate in NYC Midnight’s SSC2025. Writers can also:

• Get feedback from the judges for every submission
• Gain access to the NYC Midnight writing community
• Keep the rights to the stories they write and submit
• Have their story published on the NYC Website
• Win great prizes, from thousands of dollars to industry-leading writing tools, like iA Writer

Registration for this year is open until January 23, 2025. For full details please check out the NYC Midnight website.

How iA Writer helps

In a contest with tight deadlines, it’s important to manage time and be focused. Writer is made for writing and nothing else. Here is how it can help you:

Focus Mode

iA Writer’s signature feature allows you to focus on one sentence or paragraph at a time. How does it work?

Style Check

Easily spot fillers, redundancies, or clichés that creep into your text. Cut it down to the essentials. You can also create your own custom patterns to highlight expressions that you want to avoid.

Syntax Highlight

Pinpoint awkward verbs, repetitive nouns, or excessive use of certain parts of speech. How does this help?

Using Markdown allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard and quickly format your work as you go. You can even speed up formatting using shortcuts. Word count will come in handy, too.

No AI!

SSC2025 rules ban use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for submitted content. With iA Writer, you can keep track of what you wrote and what you pasted from external sources. iA’s Authorship tool is available on Writer for Mac, iPhone and iPad. With Writer, you have a reliable ally that tracks the origins of your text, helping make sure that you submit only your own words.³

Ready to jump into the SSC2025? Head on over to the NYC Midnight website and register today. Good luck!

Download your free iA Writer trial for SSC2025

Mac

Windows

The post NYC Midnight: Short Story Challenge 2025 appeared first on iA.

2024 was a year of dualities. Analog or digital. Real or fake. Robot or human. Looking back, moving forward.

This year saw the launch of the highly anticipated iA Notebook, while both iA Writer and iA Presenter gained extra shine with new features and updates. Meanwhile, the rest of the world tried to come to terms with the continuing AI stampede. We’ll get to that, but let’s first show you how our year went:

1. iA Notebook

The iA Notebook started shipping in July, after ten years of design and iteration. To our amazement, the first batch sold out within 24 hours. We’re well into the second batch now and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

New to the Notebook? Start with this delightful snippet, transcribed below:

Fffrrrppppp. “Have a listen to that.” Fffrrrppppp. “Oooh.” Fffrrrppppp. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of 81 GSM premium Araveal white pages being flicked in this beautiful Information Architects Notebook.”

Next, take a look at iA’s redesigned Notebook page, where you’ll find more pics, technical specs, and answers to common questions. For a look behind the scenes, check out this post with pics from the Notebook photoshoot that took place in the beautiful coastal town of Kamakura, south of Tokyo.

The Notebook is an homage to iA Writer’s roots, which is why we launched the first iA Awards to celebrate the joy of writing. The winners will be announced in early 2025 and receive their very own Notebooks. If you missed out, don’t worry: We’re planning to run another contest next year, so keep your latest presentation polished and your fountain pen topped up.

2. iA Presenter

Presenter saw more improvements over the course of the year. One highlight is that you can now quickly insert high-quality Unsplash images into your slides without leaving the app. This is a welcome addition, because we all dislike trawling the sea of hyper-polluted stock imagery out there.

More recently, we released Web Sharing: Use it to upload your presentation (with speaker notes) and share the link with anybody. Getting the layouts just right took a year of design and testing, but it was worth the effort.

Try it. After you do, the very idea of emailing slide decks will seem repellent. The notion of sharing a janky PDF will hurl you back through time, into a coal-powered backwater where everybody looks sad and wears soup-stained plaid. Web Sharing for Presenter was the future. Now it’s right here.

3. iA Writer

This year’s Winterfest saw the welcome arrival of iA Writer for Windows 2.0, now in beta. The most visible change is that we redesigned the app to fit the Windows 11 aesthetic—and we love the result. You know you’re living in the future when even Windows starts looking good! Strange days indeed.

Aside from applying the Windows polish, much of the work focused on performance improvements—including a turbo boosted startup time. You can find the full list of changes in the version history.

In November we launched the first How-To Guide for Writer, which shows you everything you need to know in seven steps, or 33 minutes (yes, we counted). The How-To Guide for Presenter will follow in the new year.

Finally, both Writer and Presenter icons got a refresh. Check out our post that describes their evolution in detail.

Watching the bull run

Aside from new arrivals and updates to the growing iA family, we watched as more AI tools jostled for our attention. Like we’ve said before, AI isn’t intrinsically a bad thing. It’s new tech like any other. The trouble is that many AI tools are still being sold with the false promise that we can achieve something for nothing. We’re encouraged to recycle and generate output that we don’t own or even understand.

The year was riddled with AI-related palavers. For example, Figma shared things it really shouldn’t have. Apple’s Writing Tools don’t properly track who wrote what—not yet. Amazon is being flooded with AI-generated books. The web is awash with slop and it will probably stay that way. Perhaps all that junk will sink out of sight and into irrelevance, like marine snow. For those of us skimming the surface, help is at hand: iA’s goal will always help you think more and be more creative (even with AI).

Keep creating

In many ways this was a tough year for human creativity, so we tried to do something about it, be it by sharing Maker’s Knowledge about screenwriting, world building, writing your first novel, or showing you how to deliver a great presentation. Good work comes from hard work, and we want to lend a helping hand in a way that matters. We’ll do more of that in 2025.

But that’s it for now. It has been another busy year for iA, but now it’s time for a break. We’ll be away from December 28 and back on January 6 to give our Support team a much-needed rest.

Until then, thanks for your feedback and continued support. Stay safe. Stay creative. See you in the Year of the Snake.

The post New Year Recap 2024 appeared first on iA.

Our final iA Winterfest 2024 gift brings even more eye candy to your devices with the iA Presenter screen saver.

Built using the same cocktail recipe as the wallpaper we released at the start of the month, but with a pleasant animation of Presenter’s beacon. Like the wallpaper, we’ve been using this screen saver internally for ages and we’re excited to share it with you.

This wraps up iA Winterfest 2024, so head over there to get all five gifts. We hope you enjoyed the presents laid under the tree.

The post iA Presenter Screen Saver appeared first on iA.

Sharing a presentation should be quick. But it’s slow. Viewing a presentation should be easy. But it’s hard. Until now.

With Presenter you can share your presentation using just a link—that works in any browser on any device. No downloads, no apps, no plugins, no spying, no ads and no torture devices.

No

You’ve been there. You got a killer slide deck, feeling bold, feeling ready. Then comes the awkward part: sharing it.

• PDF? Doesn’t play movies.
• Email attachments? 25 MB.
• Google slides? Doesn’t have your font but look at these $25 rubber boots! How about buying a torture device for your sleep apnea?
• Dropbox? Warning, warning, danger, danger!
• Figma? Install the app, it’s easy, and on a mobile phone, you can go and…

No.

Just use Web Sharing in iA Presenter. A click, a link, a link, a click. No discussions, no spying, no apps, no explanations needed. If you have a typo you correct it and update. No new version emails. No more “wait, it’s uploading…” Here is what you do instead:

Just upload, copy the URL and send

That makes sharing presenter items ideal for meetings and perfect for classrooms. A click, a link, a link, a click. And your presentation just works anywhere—on a phone, a tablet, a desktop screen, in Madison Square Garden, because that’s how you roll, on your TV and on the super cool IOT fridge of your father-in-law.

NO.

No downloads, no tutorials, no installers, no tears, no Microsoft buts and Google sniffs, and no iCloud hiccups, you don’t need to tell your friends to download the newest version of Figma, oh no, I forgot to add you to right audience, no “just click this, just click that…”

Yes

Your shared presentations will always look great.

Because slides dynamically adapt to any screen. Big or tall, small or flat. No more pinching to see small text.

Your deck scales to every screen size. No zooming in and out. No funky formatting. No shifting text boxes to make them fit.

Click the link, and send the link. Easy for you. Easy for your audience. It’s so simple, that you’ll feel insulted if you have to go back to the old ways.

When you open a shared presentation, the slides are shown at the top.

At the bottom of the screen you can see the presentation in a handout format. Your slides aren’t just images—they’re part of a story. The carousel lets viewers follow the flow, step by step.

Tap a slide to start the slide show. Turn speaker notes on and off by tapping a slide.

Instead of burying speaker notes in endless clicks, we made them prominent. They’re there when you need them, gone when you don’t. Slides and notes are both separated and clearly related. It’s so obvious, that you’ll feel like you’re cheating. And again, you may get angry if someone sends you one of those old, claustrophobic slide decks that make zero sense.

Or, use the handout option to view the presentation like a document.

iA Presenter Web Sharing isn’t sharing a static deck. This isn’t what anyone does. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. It’s what sharing presentations should have always been. We haven’t tweaked Web Sharing, we have rebuilt how presentations work online from the ground up.

Your shareable link opens a webpage with a carousel preview of your slides at the top, and all your speaker notes below it. This layout is easier to consume than a traditional handout. The carousel helps bring your slides together as a sequential story, rather than displaying them as isolated ideas. Meanwhile, your notes at the bottom are prominent and easy to scan.

Sharing and viewing presentations used to be difficult.

With Presenter, it’s as easy as sending a text. And it doesn’t exist anywhere else. Yet. Now, it’s not just functional—it’s delightful. If all of this is new to you then read the full details¹ on web sharing, and find out how it compares² to similar apps.

But

You’re a skeptic

It’s good to be a critical thinker in times of artificial intelligence, fake news and alternative facts. Words are cheap. So try it. And experience the full power of this fully operational battle station:

We found that this works best for people who want to revisit your slides or catch up on what they missed during the live presentation. Teachers with students who tend to come late to the presentation party will find it especially useful.

It must be expensive!

Worse even. It’s free for the first year. Once you’re hooked, we will grab you by your ankles and shake you down.

• iA Presenter subscriptions include 1 GB of Sharing storage for as long as the subscription is active.
• On a promotional basis, Mac licenses will also include 1 GB of Sharing storage for 1 year.
• Next year, you’ll be able to upgrade to a Sharing+ subscription for $9.99 a year to get more storage and additional features.
• Once the promotional period ends, Sharing+ will be required for Mac licenses.

Okay?

Your Turn. You’ve got ideas? Stories? A big pitch? Lessons? Hit “share” and let them shine. We’re dying to see what you created. Send us your deck for the iA Awards. If you win, you’ll get eternal glory—and a shiny new iA Notebook.

This is just one out of four big reveals for iA Winterfest 2024. What’s next? Let’s just say it’s worth sticking around for the last present. In the meantime, enjoy Web Sharing.

Try iA Presenter

iA Presenter subscription or a Mac license is required to use Sharing right now. We plan to offer trials in the future. Meanwhile, you can try iA Presenter itself.

The post Share Your Presentation in a Single Click appeared first on iA.

As a bonus Winterfest 2024 surprise gift, we’re releasing a Chess template to celebrate the World Chess Championship. Congratulations to Gukesh Dommaraju on becoming the youngest-ever world champion at 18 years old!

Plain text is malleable. You can stretch it, pull it into any shape. It’s possible to encode anything in plain text—including a game of chess. Sure, you won’t see the concentration on a player’s face, or how they sit in their chair. Nor the tension when the player agonizes over a move.

But the moves themselves can be simply documented, and that ability has always held a particular fascination for us plain text aficionados. It is possible to relive legendary games from grand masters long since passed—thanks to simple text records. This fascination of describing chess games in plain text is why we created this template.

Algebraic notation

The recording method has changed over the years, and we now have an easy way to do it. If you’ve ever played Battleship before, you’ll understand the concept. The chessboard is assigned rows and columns or, as per the nomenclature, ranks and files. 1-8 for ranks, a-h for files.

Now we have a Cartesian grid, it is just a matter of assigning piece names:

• N = Knight
• B = Bishop
• R = Rook
• Q = Queen
• K = King

And so we can simply write “Bb5” to indicate a move where a bishop moved to the square on the fifth rank of the b file.

The observant among you would gather two points straight away: Where are the pawns? and How does N accord with the Knight?

To both questions, the answer is status. Knights are below Kings and since K was already taken, the phonetic N must suffice. Pawns are so disposable and constrained in their movement that they don’t even grant a prefix. “e4” always means a movement of a pawn to the coordinate e4.

Okay, but where is my gift?

Use the template to play out chess games in iA Writer. It could even be your own game. Chess.com, lichess.org, and every other legitimate chess platform will let you download a record of your game in .pgn (portable game notation) format. That’s the key. This template works exclusively with .pgn files, so we can’t be held liable when a monster eats your hat if you load up a .txt with it.

When you load up a .pgn file, switch to Preview and choose the Chess template. You’ll see a chessboard that lets you click/tap through the whole game. If you have a game that includes commentary, it will appear on each move where present.

Given the recent 2024 World Championship, we’ve included .pgn files with full Grandmaster commentary of the series. We’ve also bundled in a collection of classic Grandmaster games with GM commentary.

Did we mention, that the chess template is an invitation to you: Try and play a bit with the templates. It is a showcase of what is possible. And it is little pre-taste of more advanced writing templates that we are working on right now.

Let us know what you think!

We plan to bring future updates to this new template and we’d love to know how you find using it. Please drop us a line at [email protected] with your thoughts.

Oh, and we still have two additional surprises coming in iA Winterfest 2024 so head over there to sign for the beta waitlist and get hints of what else is waiting under the tree.

The post A Chess Template for iA Writer appeared first on iA.

One done, three to go. The next Winterfest 2024 gift is here: A freshly squeezed iA Writer for Windows 2.0, now in public beta.

Rebuilt from the ground up in the Windows 11 design: A full 2.0 with a new foundation, a complete UI overhaul, the same dynamic type engine as our apps on Apple platforms with liquid font weight, width and line spacing adjustments, a much-needed performance boost, and a big Santa sock full of careful improvements.

Listen to it purr

We put a lot of thought into the new foundation. Our main goal was to improve iA Writer’s general responsiveness. It now boots in a whizz, and it is snappy as jazz when you type.

How did we do that? If you really need to know, we split the code base into two.¹ The first part is a minimal, fast-loading core module that starts immediately, followed by a group of secondary components that load in the background.²

Why was this so difficult? Clearly there was some code wizardry involved that not everyone may care too much about.³ But chances are high that you will like the result. Look how much faster 2.0 (left) loads, compared to version 1:

We deferred loading non-essential modules, which led to faster startup times without any noticeable effect on feature availability.⁴ The same approach worked for in-app operations too.

For time-consuming tasks, we split processes into two stages: The first sends immediate feedback, while the second handles heavier workloads. We also rewrote several subsystems. They perform faster, which becomes noticeable, especially when you work on complex documents.

This is how Writer for Windows has become much faster, snappier, responsive, and fun to work with. Above everything else, we care about how Writer feels when you type. Speed, snap, and response make writing feel seamless.⁵

So, no new features?

We’re T2 monsters in the land of liquid typography, but we have a heart. In 2024, we will bring Apple and Windows platform closer, and closer, and closer. And, hey, it’s Christmas, so we brought you some new treats, already. We finally have Full Width Preview. This has been our most popular request for years, and it’s finally here and here to stay.

Writer for Windows 2.0 also comes with improved support for comments and notes:

It’s easy to ignore stats—but they’re a great way to motivate yourself and measure your progress. Writer for Windows 2.0 improved the design of the stats indicator and now lets you see how far you’ve come at a glance:

The Snippets tool (exclusive to Writer for Windows) now supports multi-line expansions. With Snippets, you can quickly add pre-written text with custom-typed shortcuts. They make it easier to push out recurring text blocks—like salutations, sign-offs, or, indeed, any text you reuse a lot.

The presents are being opened early, but we’re not done giving. For all additions and improvements, check out the full Writer for Windows 2.0 changelog. And since we’re talking about what to expect in your stocking… We have one more surprise coming that will fit Writer 2.0 for Windows like an Parisian glove, crafted in Tokyo, so smooth and elegant, that some might think Claude Garamond⁶ had a say when we boxed it in Zurich. So, see you again, next and over next week, as the Winterfest 2024 continues.

Can’t wait to try it? Apply for the beta

Writer for Windows 2.0 is in beta. Feel free to apply for the beta and make use of it over the holidays. Existing license holders will have priority in the queue, but everyone is welcome to apply.

Oh, and we have two additional surprises coming in iA Winterfest 2024 so head over there to sign for the beta waitlist and get hints of what else is waiting under the tree.

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