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Wow, I’m thrilled that you bought WriteRoom, and I’m glad that you’re finding it useful and well done… but I’m feeling a little guilty after reading your post…

The thing is that my license scheme is almost really good, and when it works it works well. But there are a number of little details that I really need to make better. Here are a few problems for others to watch out for:

1. Emails with file attachments are more likely to get flagged as spam, and that causes problems some of the time.

2. The license file is a plain text xml file, and some email systems tend to garble things.

3. The association with writeroom is made by the file extension, but the file extension name is pretty long and again some email systems truncate it. In that case you can still register with drag and drop, but the icon won’t show up and double click doesn’t work.

So it’s close to a really nice design, but still needs a little work. Anyway you do great work here, thanks for the mention.

Definitely interesting (and probably good) registration process.

...but just to play devil’s advocate, let’s assume that I searched Google for “Write Room”, went to the site linked above, and downloaded Write Room.

I pay may registration and get that email: What’s “Hog Bay Software”? What on earth is my “Hog Bay Software application”? Where is my “Finder” and how do I put stuff in it? Where is the “license file”? (is it “WriteRoom_L…ense(0.9KB)” Once I go back to my email to get that file, I can’t see my “WriteRoom.app” anymore…

But assuming that most of Write Room’s users have some sort of clue, it does seem like a much easier registration process. For “clueless” users, I’m still inclined to think that it’s easer to: (1) open the app (2) the app automatically asks for a serial number (3) (optional) print email with serial number (4) type serial number

For anyone interested, there is a Windows clone called Dark Room (no registration needed—it’s donationware). :)

Greatest app ever….next to Writeboard of course!

I use the Edit in Writeroom feature in Safari to edit my Writeboards. Until Writeboards offer an autosave feature, this is the next best thing.

[OT] Why did this blog delete my line breaks in the second half of my post (#2, above)

Is it because I used asterisks to bullet?

Sorry for unreadable post. It looked normal in this textarea.

Now that is really nifty. Way to think outside the box. Who really wants to be copying and pasting long strings of text these days anyway? Very intuitive.

A “me too” to go with Luis.

Writeboard, edit with WriteRoom and save back into Writeboard is hugely powerful. All automated with a few keystrokes. Go on Jason – write a plug-in for Writeroom with Jesse that makes it all seamless – open your writeboards straight from Write Room. Immersion from Write Room, collaboration and version tracking from Writeboard…. go on, go on, go on….

Or borrow his idea of course and make writeboard immersive… but that’s a bit rude – I’d love to be able to able to use it as a web application though

If you look at NewsFire’s horrible “registration” – an online check of the email address used during registration, which may or may not work – this is a really comfortable and user friendly way to register an app.

The first time i saw this method used was in Overflow…

Am I the only one that thinks that going to a “Register” menu inside a program and pasting in a code is easier than taking an email file attachment, saving it to the hard drive, finding the application, and then dropping the file onto the app? I doubt it.

In fact, the whole dropping an email file attachment onto an app seems to be the most laborious way of registering an app I can think of.

Unique? Yes. Easier? Not IMO .

And green text on a black background?? I’m getting a headache just thinking about that. ;)

When it first found WriteRoom, I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. After all, it appeared like it was the kind of app someone codes when they’re first learning Cocoa. I was very, very wrong.

WriteRoom is pretty darned cool and does its job well … keeps me from getting distracted while I’m writing.

@Jamie: You can change the text color, of course. ;)

Interesting thing … on the developer’s site a few days back, he talked about how he coded the licensing system as a plugin. Someone figured out how to circumvent the licensing plugin and wrote him about it. Rather than be upset and change the code, he wrote a blog entry that detailed how to ‘crack’ his own licensing scheme. He’d love for some people to write plugins that extend his product and, as a result, he’s making minor tweaks to the licensing scheme so that people will delve into the plugin code and see how it works … hopefully sparking some development in plugins. This is the coolest stance I’ve seen on having your licensing scheme broken. Don’t hide it … exploit it for the betterment of the product. Sweet.

When it first found WriteRoom, I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. After all, it appeared like it was the kind of app someone codes when they’re first learning Cocoa. I was very, very wrong.

WriteRoom is pretty darned cool and does its job well … keeps me from getting distracted while I’m writing.

@Jamie: You can change the text color, of course. ;)

Interesting thing … on the developer’s site a few days back, he talked about how he coded the licensing system as a plugin. Someone figured out how to circumvent the licensing plugin and wrote him about it. Rather than be upset and change the code, he wrote a blog entry that detailed how to ‘crack’ his own licensing scheme. He’d love for some people to write plugins that extend his product and, as a result, he’s making minor tweaks to the licensing scheme so that people will delve into the plugin code and see how it works … hopefully sparking some development in plugins. This is the coolest stance I’ve seen on having your licensing scheme broken. Don’t hide it … exploit it for the betterment of the product. Sweet.

Headdress, a great app for developing PHP on a mac, uses the same registration.

I would agree this is an easy registration process. Generally when something is so easy you have to check to make sure it works, you know it was easy.

@Chris

Thats a nice point you make, and its pretty cool that the developer has that stance regarding his own licensing scheme being hacked. Coming from a “mischievous” past, I have a similar stance on that: If someone is too cheap to pay for software, they will inevitably find a way around the protection. Its a waste of time and money to make an extremely secure registration system, just make one that can’t easily be guessed. If people really enjoy/appreciate your product they will pay for it anyways.

I heard if you maximize the terminal and type vi it unlocks a free full screen text editing tool

I do feel like that first sentence, “First reveal your Hog Bay Software Application in Finder,” would be intimidating for most non-experienced users. How about “First, go to your Application folder and find the icon for Writeroom. Then drop the license file below on top of the application’s icon.”

Even better would be if the e-mail showed you a picture of the Writeroom icon so you know what it looks like.

I’d love to see some integration between WriteRoom and Writeboards …

I downloaded the ‘Blocks’ plugin framework that the WriteRoom developer is using but, sadly, there are no WriteRoom examples … just for Mori and ClockWorx.

Would be awesome to have a Textile converter in there, too … edit within WriteRoom using normal rich text and it’s converted into Textile code when exported back into Writeboard.

Whew, that would rock because I use WR mostly for Writeboard stuff.

Transmit (from Panic) is about as close to an in-app process as it gets: 1) Buy on panic.com. 2) On the confirmation screen, you click a link that says “Click here to launch Transmit and register”. 3) Done.

The link that you click is in the form: transmitreg://XXXX-XXXX—and it’s also emailed for safekeeping.

Bleah. I strongly dislike file based registrations. Give me a string I can copy and paste somewhere, and store easily for when I need it again.

couldn’t you just build a feature like this into writeboard?

Have they been 37signals-dotted?

Can’t seem to load the page….

does anyone else feel like web 2.0 is dead, and 37signals is losing the wind that blows its sails?

Like Jamie a while back, I’d like to chime in and say that I actually find this more awkward to use than just pasting a registration code. Ofcourse I realise that the average user will just use Apple Mail, but on my setup where I use a console mailclient on a remote server… this is just irritating. It would mean that I have to save the attachment, copy it over to my workstation, drop it onto Writeroom and then delete it on both machines.

What works best for me is when you can just copy/paste an entire block of lines with name/serial and the application detects what is what.

This is a common way of registering apps that have been appearing lately since the start of macZot.. and yeah, it’s pretty cool!

I purchased Writeboard about 6 months ago after trying it for a few days. This app is great! I was able to sit in my chair and write a 5 page report in 1 hour (the time limit I had set myself). No distractions, no IM, no email, no bouncing icons, just my ideas and the screen. If you are like I normally am (not that motivated), then buy this app and get to work.

Is this way of doing things open to piracy? Could Jason send that file to everyone else in 37s and they would then have a licensed version (not that he would but as an example)?

How cool is it that Jesse from Hogbay responds to this post by openly admitting some flaws in the Writeboard registration scheme, and thus helping everyone by moving the discussion forward? Very cool.

One difference about sending this sort of license file around vrs a serial number is that the license file has the purchasers name and email embedded in it. (it’s just a normal xml file, you can open it in Text Edit if you want).

Linking an email to a license can be done with normal serial codes as well, but that can make them pretty long and a pain to deal with.

I like how we’re developing software that pretty much emulates a terminal screen circa 1983.

In the era of Vista and iPhones, it’s nice to see that a simple monochrome text interface still has some appeal and practicality to it.

I’d say that by far the easiest way is the custom URI scheme used by some apps. You register online, and it gives you a link with your credentials embedded (starting with something like someapplication://). It works because the application registers the scheme with OS X when you run it in trial mode.

All done. The smoothest way to register a product is by paying for the upgrade inside the product. Aside from that method, which Writeroom and most products don’t offer, [...]

Most products don’t offer it because the user then has to trust the application with it’s credit card information, trust it is being securely sent over the network, etc.

I agree with ns and Alex Reid that custom URIs are as close to in-app registering as most applications are going to get. With Transmit, you just enter your info, hit buy, then click a “Register” link that opens Transmit and automatically registers it with your activation code.

Essentially the same registration system has been in use for something like two years for the exceptional audio plugin developer Sonalksis. Somehow it felt even weirder because you drop the attachment on top of a floating plugin window inside the plugin host application of your choice, and the plugin automagically gets registered…

pukka has a similar registration process i believe

I’m coming out of my super-comfortable lurking posture to shout the praises of WriteRoom.

The registration process looks great, but this application is so much more. It is the single-most effective way to make my workdays, narrowly edging out soy lattes.

Another example (of which SVN provides many) how how simple is always better. Keep it up!

It is the single-most effective way to make my workdays more productive, narrowly edging out soy lattes.

many windows apps already have something like copy and paste or drop a file into the program. gene6ftp server have something similar.

“The smoothest way to register a product is by paying for the upgrade inside the product”

I might agree, but just if they make it clear that is the way. It took me some time to find the way to register Inbox (the GTD application from midnight beep), but I have to say that I was looking like a madman for the register button in the website so obstinately I missed all the instructions (that were there in tiny 7px font size).

At least until we all assume that becomes mainstream enough to assume it [sic].

Funny enough, and very contrasting, just try to donate on the very same site: it is such an obfuscated path I just couldn’t donate at all! (the developer told me he was not very web-savvy, so I guess his every effort goes into the applications he develops, as they’re very good ones).

Up there i meant the very same site for Writeroom, not for Inbox.

Writeroom has been a revelation for me. I use it mainly to read long articles (not compose, because generally i don’t compose long pieces of writing, and if i do i like the browser to be at hand for research). I tend to paste direct from web pages into writeroom. In terms of focusing attention it’s superb.

I wish that Pages would take on some of the forced-focus properties of Writeroom, because the full screen option increases my attention for the task at hand like no other program out there.

Interesting, I’ve just started writing in Darkroom, the Windows equivalent of Writeroom, and I find myself typing away. Great, I feel really concentrated. One thing though, I now write way too much and have to rewrite, rewrite and rewrite again to make my text fit some given page limit. In the end, the rewrites make the text better but it takes a lot of time!