diana,
Hello and welcome to Scriv’s fora. I’m sure the scallywags at L&L, will be more than appreciative of the warmth and positivity contained within your first post. Your kind of positivity and encouragement is like sprinkling fertiliser on the seedbed of creativity, which yields that enthusiasm without which all creative endeavour withers and dies. Your kind of infectious enthusiasm, will be inspirational to all those of us, reading your post.
Bienvenido a Scrivener, diana 
Take care
Vic
Agreed that it’s a boon for writers to be able to visit their projects on the fly. But I’d propose that for a tightly compressed, cost-effective, platform-agnostic, mobile rendition of the project, we look to the one we’re already making, an e-book.
Our ideal writer’s e-book would not be the one generated when we click “Compile”, reflecting our inclusions, exclusions, chapter headers and preferences, but rather a full binder view, document-oriented, auto-generated in the background, and posted periodically (or on Exit) to the cloud server or Bluetooth device of our choice.
I know there’s been much time and treasure invested in the iOS version, and I’m sure the results will be bang-up. But consider the risk we’re asking L&L to undertake, that of developing a superb and compatible writing tool for use on these less-than-optimal writing platforms. Concerns of the old silk purse. Thinking L&L would serve the mobile user better, sooner, by offering a background module that renders a project for universal mobile view, and charging something extra for it.
Rgds – Jerome
Except we didn’t ask them. It might have seens some suggestions of mobile versiosn — although I recall KB’s first reaction to my idea that Scrapple would have been better if implemented first (and only) on iPads — but the risk was entirely theirs when they took it upon themselves to write the app.
The full mobile app does have a constituency, represented on this thread. I was indeed using the polite, inclusive “we” to deliver a counterargument.
Rgds – Jerome
Why?
Most people who want a mobile version of Scrivener want to be able to edit the project. For those who only want an e-book, the capability already exists in the current version.
Katherine
Hi Katherine
Because I believe Diana’s post, which elevated the thread, is representative.
She’s looking for inquiries and light updates, not to create and maintain her project on an Android device. Full-featured mobile versions, with what they cost to develop and how much can be charged for them, are risk-on. People pay very little for Android apps, and any old notetaking app can be used to capture thoughts and changes for import.
To me, a browser-based implementation, remote or local, written once, universally compatible, with a style sheet to fit each device, is more likely to be a fruitful endeavor.
I can understand the desire of folks for a native Android version, but it’s for L&L to cast the dice and make that investment, bearing the cost alone. This will require realistic considerations of how many customers the app will attract, how long they’ll have to wait, how much they’ll be willing to pay, and how much they’ll really use it, given the limits of the platform. Don’t wish to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm, but this app will be a long time coming, and will depend on the success of the iOS. Keith has been up-front about the difficulties in getting that implementation into production. There’s a lot on L&L’s plate. So as a mobile user who misses his project when he’s away from it, I’m looking at how to meet the workflow with options in easier reach. And I believe one such is an author’s e-book, engineered and automated to represent and track the project in progress.
Rgds – Jerome
I think the difficulties in implementing a browser-based version have already been discussed in detail elsewhere. It’s a much more challenging project than you seem to think.
I think you also underestimate the complexity of a “Scrivener-lite” version. Interfacing with the Scrivener project format and maintaining a connection to the desktop-based original are not afterthoughts to be tossed together in a week once the main part of the program is complete, they are fundamental issues demanding significant development time by themselves. This too has been discussed in detail elsewhere.
Katherine
All is difficult to do, all is very complex, all, all, all, al… ways the same sing.
Negative, negative, negative, negative…
Your comment is very unfair.
I know comment is not very polite, but each time I read you, Scriviener developers, it seems having reading a Big-Corporate-Developers that change a comment in a line of code means 100 meetings, 12 persons involved in the change, 3000 paper sheets with the analysis and so on.
You must be an aggessive Company, not acCorportive one.
Don’t say it’s difficult, start a project!
Two words demonstrate the utter futility of a web-based Scrivener-lite for smartphones: London Underground.
There is no coverage in the tunnels. No WiFi, no 3G, no 4G down there. TfL have made a half-arsed attempt to provide WiFi at stations but seriously you want to be hanging around down there any longer than you have to to write a novel!!!
Even on above ground sections of the London Underground coverage is patchy. I love that near to the national footie stadium all semblance of 3G and 4G coverage dies.
While London Underground serves as an exemplar—I know not of what—there are many other places around the world where there is no coverage and similarly show that same utter futility.
How do you get four elephants into a Mini? Two in the front, two in the back. Problem solved. There you go you can transport your elephants in future.
For what it’s worth, I am not a Scrivener developer or employee. Just a happy customer. As a result, I’m not a nice person like the fine folks at L&L.
The raging entitlement around “oh, do Scrivener for MY platform with MY features” is JUST OVERWHELMING. And it seems it didn’t start until the iOS project. I don’t know what it is with mobile users, but geez, folks, get a clue – you really CANNOT have it all. Insulting the people you are asking to move heaven and earth is just going to land you in hell.
Just. Effin. Cope. Already.
I think you are epically unhelpful for Scrivener’s developers and stakeholders. Criticism made by customers are leads for improvements or unsolved needings; if plain praises doesn’t contain any clue for improvements, defending from criticism is even worse: activelly, such defenders try to protect “their” product for any improvement when denying criticism.
L&L has an objective problem with deadlines. For instance, iOS is delayed since… when? and iOS is the OS of a small minority of devices in the entire PLANET. There are several examples of apps in Android which cost more than 10$ and that have obtain certain success given their niches.
Therefore, denying all such criticism is all but helpful for Scrivener’s stakeholders. Users who express such criticisms are claiming for improvements and possibly they would pay for that. You are fighting against such income
Congratulations or something like that.
Not according to market analysis; iOS is used on 42% of mobile devices. Android—which version though—52%. Hardly makes iOS a minority; except in the minds of androids.
Utter nonsense. In the past week I’ve written hundreds of lines of code - the beauty of being a one-man team on Mac leading the way is that I can forge ahead with the code. There’s a lot of deep discussion on how features will work and how they will best integrate with other features, but no corporate culture at all given that we are a tiny team working out of home offices, doing this for the joy of it (joy which is sapped away by comments such as yours).On the journey to and from my Lake District holiday the other week, I coded a whole feature suggested by a user a few days before that I liked a lot and fitted with the program. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve coded ePub3 and enhanced Kindle support.
Etc, etc. But I do not need to justify the way we run our company. We sell products - if you like them, buy them and use them; if you do not, don’t. It’s really quite simple. We make it abundantly clear on our website that you shouldn’t buy Scrivener for what you hope it will be, but only for what it is right now. If we fail because we are not providing what people want, so be it; we’ll continue to provide software we love ourselves.
We are a small company that face certain limitations, and don’t have the expertise or manpower - or interest, frankly - in building a web version. I’m not sorry for that - it’s a fact of life that you don’t seem to understand. If a web version is vital to you, you need to find other software.
And yes, the iOS version has been a cluster****. Our mistake was mentioning we were working on it at all, as we had no idea just how many problems it was going to cause us. Or maybe our mistake was even trying to develop it in the first place; perhaps we should have stuck to developing the software we love rather than being led by users on that. The more I think about it, the more I wish we’d never started it and had just stuck to our guns as desktop-only software. At any rate, it’s been a painful learning experience and we’ll definitely keep things much more to ourselves in future.
And a reminder: the one forum rule is to be polite. If you cannot manage that, you will be banned. We are under no obligation to provide a public forum - indeed, many of our competitors and other software providers have removed their forums and provide support purely via email and forms these days - so please treat other users, including L&L representatives, with respect. Constructive criticism is fine; being rude is not.
I really doubt that such percentage is valid for USA; for the rest of the world, it is a joke. 200$ for a tablet or an smartphone is the top that a lot of customers are willing to pay not only in underdeveloped countries, but in developed countries too.
Anyhow, as KB admits, even iOS was a mistake for his company’s objectives. I, for one, wanted to use Scrivener anywhere, anytime. My solution finally was to adquire an 8" windows tablet (lenovo yoga tablet 2), install scrivener and use it without restrictions.
Although Android + Dropbox + Scrivener would have certain advantages, Windows + Atom + Dropbox + Scrivener is more than good, using the proper zoom and font sizes for menus. It’s easier to carry always with you a 8" tablet rather than an 11" ultrabook
As I said android.
Browser-based software is not necessarily web-based. It runs atop an AMP stack. To me, Scrivener is ultimately content management software, like WordPress, Drupal, MediaWiki, or the program we’re conversing in now, phpBB. At the application layer, these programs have no knowledge or concern about whether they’re running locally on Windows, Mac, or iOS, or via a Linux server half a world away. So if a software firm’s energies are being fragmented by the need to create implementations on multiple platforms, this is the machine-neutral option that levers the development investment.
Rgds – Jerome
No more than anyone else not tasked with creating one. Appreciation for that extreme complexity is why I’m calling attention to the most doable, useful, reusable, and platform-agnostic implementations: e-books and browser/server-based.
Rgds – Jerome