We began development of Yeah Write for Windows believing we could create a better word processor. We understood some of the difficulties in trying to compete with the popular word processing programs, but we also recognized a few weaknesses in these products. The popular word processors are, in general, big and slow, and, while feature rich, they are difficult to learn and use. Also, the tiny black characters and the stark white backgrounds used by these programs make documents hard to read on the screen.

Yeah Write doesn’t look anything like a standard word processor. Instead of creating a document from a blank screen, Yeah Write uses a fill-in-the-blanks approach. Documents have attractive, colorful backgrounds. Screen fonts are set independently from printed fonts, so a writer can edit with large characters and print with normal size characters. The program interface is simple enough that using most features is fairly obvious, even to users with a minimal amount of Windows experience.  To see all of our screen shots, click here

Documents
Document management is transparent, which is a another way of saying that the writer doesn’t have to worry about filenames. The program automatically stores documents in folders and drawers, and automatically lists them in a folder's index. Finding documents later is a snap.

Folders have names which match the type of document contained in the folders. The free versions of Yeah Write have folders for a diary, a journal, general purpose documents, personal letters, business letters, memos, and notes. Registered and retail versions also have folders for an address book, e-mail messages (send only), faxes (send only), business letters with return addresses, envelopes, phone messages, text, and to do lists. With each folder, a writer can create a document by clicking on <New> in the index and filling in the blanks in the document window. YW saves a document automatically when the writer exits the program or stops typing for a few seconds.

When the writer prints a document, Yeah Write displays a preview of the printed document. By clicking on the various printed styles to the right of the preview, the author can quickly change the look of a document. In many cases, the document prints perfectly the first time.

Character Styles
In addition to normal text, Yeah Write supports bold, italics, and underline, and combinations of the three.

Paragraph Styles
In addition to standard paragraphs, YW supports bullets, check boxes, indented paragraphs, hanging indented paragraphs, paragraphs indented left and right, numbered lists, outlines, headings, and titles. Outlines are only available in the registered version. The free versions generally have fewer available style levels. The registered and retail versions support additional options for displaying bullets and numbered lists.

Standard Features
Yeah Write has many of the features you would expect to find in a word processor. It is very much a Windows product and uses standard Windows keystrokes and dialogs. Text selection, cut/copy/paste, and document navigation are straightforward and comfortable. Writers can use the keyboard, with many keystroke shortcuts available, or the mouse, depending on their interface preferences. Find, Find and Replace, and a Speller are included in all versions. A writer can password protect a drawer. The program displays and prints special ANSI characters, like �, �, and �.

Special Features
Besides these standard features, Yeah Write has many features not generally expected in an inexpensive word processor. Dates are filled in automatically (they can, of course, be changed). Yeah Write supports em dashes and smart quotes. Cut/copy/paste supports a smart paste and a dumb paste, making copying text from other programs a little easier (especially from an Internet browser). Where appropriate, carry over fields automatically copy text from a previous document into a new document (for example, if the writer ended the last letter with “Sincerely,” then the next letter is ended in the same way). Get and Move make moving and copying text from one document to another surprisingly easy. A writer can turn off automatic save to preserve laptop battery life.

To make printing easier, each folder can have its own printer setup. In other words, for the envelopes tab, the writer can select the right setup to print envelopes, and, for the letters tab, the writer can select the right setup to print on letterhead. From then on, even if the Windows printer defaults change, YW remembers to use the correct setup for each type of document.

With the registered and retail versions, an author with an SMTP server address and an Internet connection can send YW documents as e-mail messages. Also with the registered version, an author with an FTP server address and a valid name and password can save and retrieve documents and backup files to and from an FTP site.

Yeah Write comes in a 32-bit version for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, & 7.   Yeah Write is designed to handle any date from January 1, 1850 until December 31, 2200.

$2.99 Version Benefits
Those who purchase the full product ($2.99 USD downloaded over the Internet) receive these additional documents types: address book, e-mail, fax, envelopes, phones messages, text, to do, and another business letter with room for a return address. They can use outlining, more levels with styles, and can change the numbering options for outlines and numbered lists. They can send e-mail messages (assuming they have an Internet connection and an SMTP address), and the can save and retrieve to and from an FTP site (assuming they have an Internet connection and an FTP server address and password). The full version includes a backup and restore feature, full justification, support for international date formats (32 bit only), and support for printing labels from the address book. The user can download up to 12 dictionaries, and can use up to two dictionaries at a time for any one document. Also available are document types especially for kids and international users.   The thesaurus, available from the download page in a separate download, also requires the full version.

Product Limitations
Yeah Write supports only one font per document, although it does support various font sizes for headings and titles. The program does not support graphics, tables, columns, hyphenation, endnotes, footnotes, a table of contents or an index. A document can have only one margin setting. Page numbers, headers and footers are included with some of the printed styles, but a writer cannot define them. YW does not import Word documents (only text, WP51, and a limited RTF). Finally, writers cannot define their own document types (someday we hope to make this possible).