Scrivener through the years... A retrospective

Not sure where the best place to put this is so admin types, feel free to move it where it goes.

Please, please, please…. Consider a blog post showing archival screenshots that demonstrate the various ways Scrivener has changed, and how it’s stayed the same. It might even be a really good time to go digging through the archives to do it too since by some hints that have been dropped the new hotness is almost here.

I mention this because I remember switching to mac in 2012 (Lion was such a blessing over the vista machine I had at the time – from the era of the five minute bootup) and I migrated from yWriter to Scrivener. Version 1 felt clean, neat, and tidy. It fit in with a light ‘seasoning of art styling’ that was OSX rather than the institutional blocky-ness of Windoze. I remember it being quick and responsive, and so much more than I needed at the time.

I just cannot remember what it looked like. I mean the UX for the iPadOS/iOS version feels right at home too…

I think Scrivener and I see 3.1xx. That should be a compliment to your UX designers, but I kinda want to compare the actual articles and relive that old nostalgia from when I was learning that not everything required tithing to Redmond.

Anyway, I’d love to see some article with screenshots then and now….

3 Likes

In the dusty recesses of my brain I remember something called Scrivener Gold, before even Scrivener 1.0 was born? I remember not what any of them looked like, and would love a “potted history” of Scrivener’s interface. There is a blog post on some history of Scrivener IIRC…

3 Likes

A small glimpse into the past (with screenshots):

6 Likes

I don’t remember Old-Timey Scrivener looking more than cosmetically different from today’s version. I’d been transforming from a newspaper-columnist/book reviewer to a book editor to a national magazine editor to a first-time book author, working in MS-Word since version 1.0, and had augmented a Dell Windows tower with one of those Chiclet iBooks about the time OS-X replaced its heir, and MS-Word was drifting away from its creative beginnings into the lingua-franca of corporate drones.

I remember trying something called Jer’s Novel Writer, and Macjournal, and another whose name escapes me, but Scrivener clicked with the way I work and think as did the message-board community, which called itself pirates and revolved around characters like Vick-K and Fluff and Jason and that Popcorn guy and Pigfender, and Keith, of course, who had not yet moved house west of the Tamar, if memory serves, and was more a regular board-presence than an occasional drop-in.

So I ditched the Dell, bought one of those Luxo-Lamp iMacs, and never looked elsewhere. If for no better reason that it worked, and with each update I never had to re-learn where everything goes and what everything does. Scrivener remained Familiar, in the several meanings of that word.

5 Likes

This, this right here is the sort of thing I’m talking about.

This story resonates with mine, and in effect is exactly the sort of experiences I want to share and relive.

thank you.