I have been learning the heck out of the Electron shell lately because I have a project I want to build. Today I finally hacked out a rough prototype of this project and I thought I would share it.

The Problem

I am currently using the standard WordPress editor to write my blog posts. One of the issues I run into with writing my blog posts is formatting and changing code. I once started a blog post with some C code in it and the angle brackets in #include <stdio.h> kept disappearing. What is worse is that the Tab key in the WordPress take you outside the editor which is a hassle when you are trying to adjust formatting in code. I need to find something better.

Now I know LiveWriter is probably a worthwhile alternative, but I would really like a clean minimalist interface to boot. Live writer is certainly not that. Also, screw WYSIWYG. I use to maintain wiki posts at work and I always preferred the plain text mode.

What is Neutron

Neutron is an editor I am building to solve these problems. Here are the core features I plan to implement with Neutron:

  1. Inline code editing for snippets, this is the core feature I am looking for
  2. Distraction free writing, clean minimal interface
  3. Editing will be done with GitHub flavor markdown with syntax highlighting
  4. Preview mode to view styled output, potentially pulling in theme from WordPress
  5. Integrate with WordPress and allow you to publish directly from the editor to your blog

Neutron is being built on Electron allowing it to be cross-platform. The initial release will be Windows. I am not sure what the pricing model will look like. To be honest, I am not sure anyone else will want such a thing. Luckily this project scratches my own itch so even if I take a long time developing it I will benefit from it in the end.

A Look At The Prototype

I recorded a screen cast of Neutron demonstrating a prototype of the core feature that I want, inline code editing. I have a long ways to go before Neutron will be ready, but after getting to this point I am excited to continue work on it...

[embed]https://youtu.be/j7ww1MX9enc[/embed]

I know it doesn't look like much, but I am pretty excited about where I can take this thing.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like to get access to Neutron at some point.