Distraction-free editors are all the rage these days, and I’m fully aboard the train as a raving fan. I love the fact that these editors block out everything else on the computer so that you can write in peace. There’s a lot that could be said regarding our culture, that we need distraction-free programs in order to concentrate, but that’s for another article entirely.

In terms of software programs, there are a bunch of different distraction-free editors you can pick from. A big one is Scrivener, which was originally for Mac but recently released for Windows and Linux. But while most of the ones available are desktop-based, we now have a few that are browser-based - like Write Space.

Introducing Write Space [No Longer Available], a customizable full-screen text-editor that lives in Chrome as an extension. It’s been designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing, all while being easy to access and easy to use. If you spend most of your staring at a web browser already, then Write Space won’t interrupt your flow at all.

What does Write Space look like? Pretty much a blank tab with a space in the middle where you can type. It does what its name says - provides you with a space to write, regardless of what the content might be. It takes up the whole tab, too, so you can think of it as a Notepad-type extension.

Once it’s installed, launching Write Space is easy. You can either type "write space" into the URL input box and Chrome will automatically launch it for you. Or you can open up a new, blank tab and Write Space will be one of the apps you can select.

Write Space is meant to be a simple place where you can take down quick notes or write whatever it is you need to write, then you transfer that text to some editor when you’re done with it. However, the extension will automatically save whatever you’ve typed on every keypress and display it the next time you launch Write Space. It also works offline.

There are a few options you can play with. You can change the actual size of the editing field, widening the margins or scrunching it down into a small box - whatever is up to your preference. You can also change the font and background colors in case gray-on-black isn’t your cup of tea. Font face, font size, and line-spacing aren’t set in stone either.

But that’s as far as it goes in terms of options. Then again, as a distraction-free editor, it doesn’t really need many more options.

Write Space has one more settings option, which is basically an import feature. You can select a particular plain text file (.TXT) and the extension will fill up the writing space with the text in that file. Be careful, though, as if you already have text typed up, it will replace it completely.

Basically, Write Space not meant to be a full-featured browser text editor. If you’re looking for something like Microsoft Word in your browser, this is not the extension you want. However, if you just need a place to quickly type down notes while you browse, and if you plan on transferring that text to another file when you’re done with it, then Write Space is exactly what you need.

What do you think? Please share your comments with us. If you’ve used Write Space before, let us know what you thought of it. If you haven’t, why not?