What is TypeMetal?
See “What’s TypeMetal?” if you’d prefer a 4-minute video overview. We also invite you to subscribe to “Inside TypeMetal” — a focused, weekly email series that will bring you behind-the-scenes insights and expert user tips.
TypeMetal is a unique, Web-oriented writing tool that’s designed to help you produce well-structured, top-quality content for WordPress sites and other online publishing destinations. It knows how to work with both “block mode” WordPress content and the <body> content of arbitrary, general .html files.
TypeMetal provides a complete, Mac-native authoring experience for your connected WordPress sites. Search, review, write, and edit your fully styled post and page content, using WordPress’ latest “block mode” content capabilities. Work offline, then sync drafts and published work to your sites with ease.
TypeMetal also works directly with arbitrary, general HTML files, providing advanced tools for writing, editing, and inspecting structured content. TypeMetal’s focus on producing lean, standards-compliant HTML helps you author professional-grade markup that a perfectionist can be proud of.
Some ways you can use TypeMetal
- Craft WordPress posts and pages.
Why rely entirely on a remote server to preserve what may be years of precious work? TypeMetal gives you a whole new way to own your content, by syncing all your posts and pages to your Mac. Keep your valuable writing close at hand, while enjoying the Mac-native HTML writing and editing experience that TypeMetal provides. -
Draft articles for other sites.
Even if you aren’t using WordPress, you can use TypeMetal to draft articles, posts, and pages for the sites you write content for, as standalone .html files. When you’re ready to publish or submit your latest masterpiece, you can easily copy and paste its nicely formatted HTML into that Web form, or email it to your editor. -
Collect web clippings.
TypeMetal cleans and streamlines HTML that you paste or drag-and-drop into its document windows, making it a perfect companion when you need to grab links and notable quotables for use in your writing. Just open a new TypeMetal window and drag or paste selections from your Web browser. Polish the results to your liking using TypeMetal’s powerful inspection and editing capabilities, then incorporate the perfected clippings into your writing. TypeMetal can keep any number of persistent “Untitled” windows open for your collecting convenience. Their contents can connect to stylesheets, images, TypeMetal snippet sets, and other referenced files, just as any permanently-saved HTML file can. -
Take notes in HTML format.
Why settle for plain text? With HTML, you gain linking and powerful, flexible, potentially semantic styling, without sacrificing openness or longevity. -
Write semantically.
TypeMetal’s snippet sets help you define your own HTML styling constructs and produce modern, flexibly-styled “semantic” markup with ease — taking full advantage of the extensible design of modern HTML to produce beautifully structured, meaningful documents. You can share your brilliant snippet sets with others, in a simple, documented file format, to help your team stick to common conventions. Collaborative website development just got easier. -
Encapsulate your style guide.
Run a website? Make your submission guidelines more likely to be followed, by providing a snippet set for prospective authors to use. Snippet sets can constrain contributors to the HTML elements your site allows, making life easier for authors and saving you needless editorial cleanup. -
Find and fix problems in HTML files.
TypeMetal shows you at-a-glance validation status for every HTML file you open, and repairs serious problems as it loads a page. Green light? You’re good to go! Not-so-green light? TypeMetal guides you to problem locations so you can fix what ails your file, then re-validates as you edit. It also guides your use of HTML elements and snippets as you write, to avoid creating invalid markup in the first place.
A New Way of Working
With TypeMetal, you work with your content as it will be seen, while maintaining full control over the professional-grade markup your writing generates. Let go and be amazed, as you create beautifully formatted, industry-standard HTML files with ease.
TypeMetal was designed to help you be productive, and is fully keyboard-navigable. Inserting an HTML element or snippet is just a few quickly-reached keystrokes away. Keep your fingertips on the keyboard, and your mind on what you’re writing, not on the tedious minutiae of HTML syntax.
Getting Started
See the Quick Start page for eleven essential things it will help you to know about TypeMetal.