Yeah, or running Scrivener out of a Dropbox folder.
The best cloud-based solution I’ve seen is to put the data in the cloud, but the application locally. That way the data is accessible anywhere, but the application can take full advantage of whatever the local system can do. (Or can offer a subset on less capable platforms.) This is the approach taken by SimpleNote, DropBox, and others, and it seems to be a lot more flexible and powerful than things like Google Docs.
Katherine
Katherine, that is exactly what I’m talking about. Of course the big problem here is what the others have brought up in regards to 'net cafes, school labs, and libraries, where it is not legal to install the applications you own so that you can operate that data semi-remotely. I think that latter bit is important to. Any solid cloud technology must fully mirror the data on your computer. MobileMe’s iDisk is a classic example of how dangerous it can be to avoid that step. It can work mostly well 95% of the time, but its that 5% that can lose people a year of work.
Personally I think the flash drive solution is the best. Nearly every public computer terminal gives you a USB port to use. It makes all kinds of sense to just store your programs on a portable drive of some sort. Has anyone actually tried this? There shouldn’t be anything terrible about doing this, except for a little speed hit during initial launch? Save your prefs to the flash drive and then wherever you go, you can run Scrivener without installing it, and have instant access to your preferences.
Hmm, so really I need the Windows and Mac versions to become fully compatible, and then have copies of each on a Flash drive … 
They will be at release time. There are still wrinkles to iron out between the two right now, but that would be an idea solution eventually. The question is whether or not Lee will have time to code a portable alternative. I’d be inclined to say it wouldn’t be too hard. During the alpha testing phase we never used installers, just unzipped the thing wherever we wanted to and ran it from there. So theoretically speaking, it might not be too hard—depends on whether or not the continued development and expansion ends up taking the application in a direction that binds it to registry stuff or not.
That would be pretty neat though.
Mmm, yes, potentially attractive! (Though, equally, I can see how such functionality might not be at the top of every user’s list!)
I very rarely use devices that I don’t personally own, so application portability is less of a concern for me than data sync. It might be worth --in your copious spare time 
– digging a bit more into the use case. Are people using public systems as their primary platforms, or as auxiliaries for special circumstances? For instance, I might take my laptop with me if I planned to do extensive work while in a library, but might use the library’s own systems (or an iDevice) if all I wanted to do was grab some research papers and zap them up to the cloud.
Yes, every copy of the data absolutely needs to be a complete copy, that can be mirrored to a completely new system with no loss of information. Having it be otherwise defeats the cloud’s remote backup functionality.
Katherine
Yes, I’d be curious to know that as well. There have definitely been times in the past ten years where I haven’t had my own computer, or if I did it was a desktop and I had no Internet access, so I would use the library or 'net cafes for access. Generally, during these periods of time I was also doing most of my writing on a typewriter, though. Magic Clouds and such were the furthest thing from my mind. Quality of paper and finding replacement ribbons in a world where replacement ribbons are as rare as black and white film was the limit of my technical frustrations. 
One thing I’ve learned though, I seem to have way more tolerance for a lack of convenience than most people. I even, it might be said, have a suspicion of convenience in general. It’s never bothered me to carry around a flash drive, or even to manually transcribe stuff I’ve written from one computer to another, or one pen and paper notebook to a computer.
For what it’s worth, I need to keep my mouth shut sometimes. I just tested the Windows beta 1.3 on flash drive and indeed it does work. I had to install it from a computer that already had Scrivener, ignore the warning message that I’d be overwriting if I left the settings to default (especially since I didn’t, of course), and change the shortcut back to the locally stored version (apparently it can’t handle two shortcuts and it didn’t give me the option not to make one), but it works. I now have Scrivener (for Windows) running on my Univeristy computer with no problems so far. Also, I tested the desktop I installed it on when the thumb drive wasn’t in to make sure the original install still works as intended, and it does.
I already have my project files in my dropbox (which somehow installed to the University computer system with no issues, which is awesome) so this works just fine for me. Just hope it doesn’t manage to lose the functionality in the final build. Anyone with access to a Mac want to check if it works with the final build there?
I imagine I could run the app out of my Dropbox as well, were I to install it there. The only problem with this (I’ve run into this when attempting with other programs) is that Dropbox gets stored on each computer in its “My Documents” directory or similar, which means that even if you put the project files within the application’s own directory, it uses absolute paths (rather than relative) and loses the location each time you switch machines. (On one machine my user is Setup, on another, Rasori, and on University PCs, it’s my full name, but I’m not even sure which drive-letter it’s associated with.)
As far as usage is concerned, I tend to use the University computers only when I happen to be in Uni trying to waste some time. Usually I have my laptop on me, but not always, and even if I have it I won’t take it out when I’m in the computer lab for other tasks, due to lack of space and outlets.
Well, I slapped Scrivener 2.0 onto my USB and plugged it into my creaky old G4 iBook (which still had Scrivener 1.x on it, but not 2.0); and the result was that Scrivener 2.0 seems to run very happily from the USB drive. I haven’t really played with it a lot, yet, but so far so good.
So if the final Windows version a) used project files that were compatible with Scrivener for Mac, and b) also could be convinced to run happily from a USB drive, then I could just buy the final Windows version as well, and run whichever I needed from the USB drive, plugged in to whatever Mac or Windows machine was available to me. That would be pretty cool. 8)
Well, a) is certainly a design intent, and I’d imagine if the final Mac version works, there’s no reason the Windows version won’t (though that logic doesn’t always work). So I don’t think you’d be disappointed if you get your hopes up for this possibility.
I wanted to throw my vote in for an “online version”. Though I don’t mean that all of the Scrivener features need to be accessible online, but rather some way that I could access a stripped down online version of my files so that I can type while I am away from my computer without having to download Scrivener or download any other file (e.g., through the Dropbox method) onto the computer I’m using.
There are absolutely no plans for anything like this at the moment, or even any whispers of thinking about potential pipelines for speculating on such plans. In fact, the mere thought hasn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing our minds.
The anti-matter of ideas. So not an idea, that as soon as it brushes up against the matter of normal thought, vanishes in a puff and wipes out the thought it brushed into as well, making the complete absence of all traces of its existence all the more complete.
So that’s a “yes” then.
Or a maybe?
Quantum mechanics tells us that many different realities are possible, though the probability of some is quite small. So you might put an online version at the same level of probability as, say, all of the oxygen atoms in your office simultaneously colliding with the floor.
Katherine
Ooo… I like this game. Can I play?
How about a rapid increase in the magnetic field pulling all hemoglobin based bipedal life forms out of the atmosphere and into space where they rapidly align to create a … well a human shield … to protect the earth from a combination solar flare and astroid impact?
Possible, right?
An online version of the iOS functionality might be an easier ask…
I want to throw in my vote for this as well (sorry that the tread is a bit old). Especially for a version that reads files from google drive.
A version of Scrivener that opens in a web browser would have to be a cut-down version feature wise of course. Though it would have the advantages of being platform independent and could be easily shared with others for editing / revising / multiple authorship, since everything has a web browser (from public PC’s to Kindle Fire tablets). As long the online version saved to cloud storage (or maybe USB), the files could be later opened in the full PC/Mac versions of Scrivener for features the online version would lack.
Though I know Scrivener bills itself as a writing program, not a revising program. I also like the idea of an online version because then I could write from anywhere using my chromebook or my fiance’s iphone or whatever thing happens to be available at the time.
Also I’m a web designer, so if this does actually happen I would love to help create it