RefreshingApps.com

Focused is a Adobe AIR application for your desktop that simply allows you to get completely focused on writing. By filling your screen with just a plain text entry box and monochrome palette the idea is that you won’t get distracted by other things happening on your desktop.

It’s a AIR version of a popular OS X application called WriteRoom although Focused is free. It is built by the same guys that did Posty which got a great reviewed here on RefreshingApps.com back in August 2008.

Have you ever been distracted by your desktop? Notifications, post-its, reminders, folders with weird names, background pictures?
All this stuff can easily distract you and prevent getting focused.
If you are a writer and you need to be concentrated on the current draft, Focused is very helpful. We you run Focused you are in front of a full screen application, which shows you just a text box. This prevents you from having a look to other windows or tools that are potential distractors. The only thing you’ll see is just your text. Try it!

Focused demo Screencast (by funkyboy of http://spreadingfunkyness.com)

Focused - Demo from funkyboy on Vimeo.

Design eye

Very minimal design going on here. The text entry field does not support any kind of text formatting so those who need that are out of luck here in this version.

You can change the text colour but not the black background, this is a big oversight as many people would like to work with say black on white. The setting menu follows the same white on black colour palette and this makes the setting very hard to read.

Technical eye

It is built using Adobe Flex and the source code is available under the new BSD license from “:http://code.google.com/p/focused/Google code.

In Summary

Not a application for heavy textual use but as it is open source maybe worth a play with the code to turn it into something that suites your needs.