Office Word Touch

[goodintentions]

A month ago or so, I searched for a metro word processor for my 8 inch tablet. I found a couple very lacking word apps. So, I decided to write my own.

What does this one have that the others don't in the winstore? Spell checker, word count, autosave, open documents from explorer, open multiple documents at the same time, page orientation control, read-only mode, my unconditional love, etc. If you just need a reader, then just install the trial because trial has no time limit. Only buy if you want to edit the text.

Office Word Touch app for Windows in the Windows Store

Also, any suggestion on new features and UI design would be greatly appreciated.

 

[anon(7900571)]

Good luck with your app

 

[goodintentions]

Good luck with your app

Thank you for your kind words.

I just wish I'd get more feedbacks. Plenty of people are downloading, and some are buying. But only 1 review and 3 ratings so far. People don't give any feedback in this thread also. Kinda a downer.

If you go around the other word processing apps, you'd notice that they all look very much alike with the basic save and print buttons. That's because they all use the same richtextbox template. They don't even associate the right file types (i.e. doc, docx, etc.) so you can double click the file in a file explorer and open it in their app. It's called lazy programming. Those devs just crank out the app as fast as they could and then never look at it again.

So, when I set out to make this app last month, my aim was to go beyond just using the richtextbox template. Sure, I started out with the same template. But I wanted to make it a quality app, not just another crap-app that apple fans often refer to what's in the winstore.

For instance. You wonder why none of the other word processor app has something as basic as a spell checker? It's because the only spell checker api available for devs is in C++. Most winrt apps are written in C#. In order for me to make the spell checker work, I had to wrap the C++ code around C#. Took more effort than regular programming.

What about document stats like word count, sentence count, etc.? It's a simple case of extracting the text from the document and parse it into words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, then spit back the counting int. It's simple. Took me about 20 minutes to write out the code for it. And yet, none of the other word processing app has it. That pretty much confirms my suspicion before I started this project that the other devs just simply don't care.

Auto-save. Again, it's a simple case of starting a background thread counting in repeating cycles based on how many minutes the user chooses. This portion of the code took me about 30 minutes to write out from scratch. So, why does none of the other word processing app have auto-save? Probably because they don't care.

Why don't they care? I'm pretty sure because of the lack of feedback from the users.

The android apps that I published got way more feedbacks than the windows apps. I'm not talking about numbers. I'm talking about the ratio of the people who downloaded and the people who gave feedback. Android apps tend to have a lot more people giving feedback per unit downloads than windows apps.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I can see why the winstore is so far behind in the number of quality apps. The enthusiasm just isn't there.

 

[goodintentions]

Update.

The tabs are movable.

Multi language support for the spell checker. 121 languages to be exact.

Major added feature is speech recognition, aka speech to text. 6 languages included: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese.

 

[kingenu]

The price is a problem tbh, can you have a 24 for free day plzz

 

[goodintentions]

The price is a problem tbh, can you have a 24 for free day plzz

You spend more than what I charge in a coffee shop.

The windows store right now is full of apps with the bare minimum quality. As an enthusiast, I want to change that. If you look around for word/document processing apps, you will find that they all look like each other. They all use the same template and called it a day.

My app is the only one that strives for more. I have many many more features on my to-do list. I aim to make this as close to MS word touch edition as I can. By upping the quality the way I'm doing, I'm hoping to encourage other devs to up the quality of their apps as well.

Also, notice the size of my app. It is at 2.0-2.1mb right now. Other doc processor apps are around 6-7mb. One I found is a whopping 10mb in size. These other devs just copy and paste large amounts of codes together and hope they compile. And they don't even have anything more than save, print, and open. I try to write my code with certain programming techniques to optimize efficiency and minimize the size. Also takes up less RAM to run. Again, it's called quality, something that most windows store devs don't seem to care about. And I'm not even a real dev. I'm a structural engineer working about 55 hrs/week.

I first published this app at 1.99. For weeks, lots of downloads but no buyers. I upped it to 4.99 and started getting buyers on a regular basis. Upped it to 6.99 and now I have even more daily buyers than before. The more features I add and the higher quality I make it, the more it will cost. I'm not in it for the money. It still gives me peanuts compared to my day job. But being a windows touch enthusiast, the last thing I want to see is the worth of the system going down the toilet.

But as I said before, you spend more in a coffee shop.

Just keep in mind. For every added feature I list in the description, there are a dozen added things I don't list. I'm really determined to make this MS office touch edition.

 

[kingenu]

Yeah I understand that but on the trial version I can't edit hence can't try it properly, I have office on my Toshiba encore but certain features made me look at your app, maybe do a yearly subscriptions at 1.99?

 

[goodintentions]

Next update will give you 3 days of full features before going into read only mode.

 

[kingenu]

Thank you

 

[goodintentions]

Yeah I understand that but on the trial version I can't edit hence can't try it properly, I have office on my Toshiba encore but certain features made me look at your app, maybe do a yearly subscriptions at 1.99?

The update is now in the store. Go into store settings -->app updates --> check for updates. Then install once word touch shows up.

 

[goodintentions]

So, someone just emailed me telling me the update that I sent out on Sunday and is now available in the store today broke half the buttons LOL. So, I did an emergency fix. Sending out another update tonight to get those buttons working again.

I personally hate sending out an update just for the sake of fixing bugs. So, in this update, I've included a feature that I wasn't going to include in this app at all. I originally was going to create a separate app for it. But what the hell, might as well include it here to make it super-powerful.

This feature will allow the user to export the document to .docm, .dot, .dotm, .dotx, .html, and .txt. I particularly like the HTML part, since the user can edit a website with this document processor and then just export it out to HTML with all the images, tables, text formats, etc. included. Very powerful stuff here.



Stay tuned for future updates. I've got a whole page's worth of things to do in my to-do list.

 

[goodintentions]

In the last few days, I've been in contact with several people regarding a bug that permanently puts some devices into read-only mode. The toughest thing was trying to figure out why this bug affects some but not others.

Last night, I finally figured it out and has sent out an update to fix this bug. The version that fixes this is 3.0.1.4. You can check out the version by clicking on the settings button at the bottom right hand corner. Please be patient to let this version get through to the system and made available to your device.

 

[goodintentions]

Several people who have bought my app have suggested UI changes to make the look and feel better. I've taken suggestions and have redesigned the UI. Ladies and gents, I introduce to you the new look and feel of Office Word Touch. Coming soon to an update in the near future.

 

[goodintentions]

I've added color schemes and themes based on suggestions from users. More personalized themes coming. Also, a future update will include hand-written note taking ability either with your finger, capacitive stylus, or active electronic stylus.

 

[goodintentions]

Ladies and gents, I've just sent out an update. This new update will:

(1) Again, give another 3 days full features to everyone on trial even if it expired last time.
(2) Fix some bugs.
(3) Add a hand draw/write feature!


A little background behind this newest feature. When I was in grad school, I was hired by a professor to take notes in class and post them online for the students. I didn't have very good handwriting (still don't. So, I typed everything out. It was really annoying every time the professor drew out something on the board. I had to always draw something out on a piece of paper and then scan it into my word document later.

So, what can you do with this new feature? Sign a word document. Just sign with either your finger or stylus. The app also recognizes an active stylus like the one that comes with the surface pro 3. Can someone with a surface pro 3 please test this out for me? I don't have a tablet with an active stylus.

You can draw something out quickly. I give you plenty of colors for you to work with. Also plenty of stroke sizes.

What's special about this drawing tool is you can select individual strokes to insert into the document. So, say I just want to insert the tree but ignore the cat, all I have to do is select the tree and press insert. If you don't select anything, pressing insert will insert everything.

Edit.

Oh yeah, and I just shamelessly stole someone's suggestion on here and changed the name to Touch Type. Why?

I just consulted a semi-expert on trademarks. Even though technically the name of my app wasn't violating any trademark, it was close enough for MS to yank it. MS is a multi-billion dollar industry. I'm one guy with a keyboard and an old computer. They can afford to stomp on me with a vengeance.

So, I'd rather be safe than sorry. It is now known as Touch Type.

 

[goodintentions]

Just sent out the update. Here are the things that you will see changed.

First of all, real-time spell checker. You have no idea how many times I banged my head against a brick wall to make this happen. I almost gave up several times, too. What kept me going was the fact that a word processor ain't a real world processor if it couldn't even do a real-time spell check.



Speaking of real word processor, what's a word processor without the find and replace functionality? Again, I've been banging my head against a brick wall the last 2 weeks to make this happen.


The user can now save the document directly to doc, docx, rtf, html, or txt. No need for a special export function.

Tables are now resizable. Furthermore, the user now has control over the background colors of table cells. Cells can be combined and divided. Just play around with the controls to see what I mean. I spent a lot of time tweaking the formatting engine to make it work.

Some users have asked for more font style choices. So, rather than pick and choose which fonts to include and which not to include, I decided to include all 255 font styles available.


Oh yeah, I've completely redesigned the radial menu. For starter, I've made it slightly bigger. Some users have complained that the old one was too small. If I make it too big, it would take over too much real estate. So, I kept playing around with the layout of the radial menu to until I got it just right. I've also made the radial menu threads more intuitive. And the color of the radial menu will now reflect the color of the theme the user has chosen. Just play around with it to see what I mean.


Some users have requested I make it possible to hide the menu buttons and top title bar. So, with the newest update, the user can swipe down from the top to hide the title bar and the menu buttons. Do it again to bring back the title bar and menu buttons. The user can also achieve this with a mouse by moving the cursor all the way up to the top edge and right click. On keyboard, it's the windows key + z.


From now on, every time the user closes a file, the app will ask to save or not.

I've included an instruction file in the global menu. For now, it's not much of an instruction. I put it together in about 15 minutes. I'll try to write a more comprehensive one later for the next update.

Over all, much hard work has been put into this latest update. I'm proud of my work. I hope you will like it.

Remember, if you find a bug, please tell me. I won't know unless you tell me.

Also keep in mind that I'm one guy with an old laptop. I'm trying to make this app as close to MS word as I can, but given that MS has billions of dollars and tens of thousands of software engineers... just give me a break where you can.

Don't forget to give me suggestions

 

[goodintentions]

I just sent out a major update to my Modern Word. Should be available to download in a couple hours.




Here are some things included in this update.

1. Paragraph alignments and line/paragraph spacings are now retained in saved files doc, docx, and rtf. Before, these elements were lost every time the user saved to these formats. As I said before, my formatting engine is written entirely in html. It's the language I'm most familiar with and also the only one I know how to do a real-time spell check function with.
2. Added more short-cut keys. The list for these keys are in the instruction file. Just go into global settings and press on the Instruction button on top.
3. I've refined some code logics to add stability and improve the speeds of the function.
4. Upon user request, the app can now open and save to txt file format.
5. Save to pdf! Been working on this function for 3 months. 3 different approaches. Finally, on the 3rd approach I didn't run into a brick wall like the other 2 attempts. The resulting pdf file is fully searchable. This means the texts are selectable and searchable.

Please note that Modern Word is the only app in the store currently that can do this without using an online web server. That's right. The function to convert the document to pdf is fully contained in the app itself!