A Look at Frost 3.0
By: Tim King
Tags: Web, Productivity, Music, Workflow, Writing

A Look at Frost 3.0

A new challenger appears

For the longest time I’ve sought to streamline my writing environment, and I’ve of articles to that fact. One of the first needs of any software I use to write is its ability to strip away all other distractions.

I can appreciate the tools a full-blown word processor contains, but most feel like the strange amalgamation of desktop publishing and presentation software.

The best writing applications provide a single full-screen writing environment where you can’t waste time playing with font choice, weight, or exessive punctuation options.

A new contender to the distraction-free writing arena, Frost 3.0 brings this same appeal but also deviates from the pack. It’s not just about a place to write, but centres on atmospheric musical soundscapes to inspire while you type your masterpiece, and it’s freely available in-browser right now.

Frost provides you with a field of environments to write in which cover quite a wide emotional range, from gentle music, relaxing summer tunes, and a quiet corner by the fireplace, to dark and eeire places that probe deeper thought.

Some of the soundscape options avaialble in Frost 3.0

Perhaps what’s most impressive about Frost, other than the experience, is the tenacity and persistence of Mansidak Singh, it’s creator. In the span of a single year he has designed and developed Frost from its initial release in early 2019 to now version 3.0 released a few days ago.

In a recent LinkedIn post Mansidak discussed some of the challenges he’s encountered while continuing to develop Frost over the last year.

Sleepless nights, endless bugs, constant messing with scripts and thousands of lines of code, not to mention the process of obtaining necessary music licenses from producers. Mansidak Singh via Linkedin

After visiting many of the soundscape offerings I decided on the appropriatedly titled Mild Dark environment to test out the tool. With Frost ready to go I wrote a quick scene opener with a particularly gloomy feel.

The calm yet sinister soundtrack provided an almost experimental musical accompaniment and a black canvas to explore. At times the music thrummed with an almost Stranger Things-esque vibe including menacing tones and choral 80’s synth piped in as I tapped away at the keyboard.

While each piece of music is quite short, they fit together nicely and combine to continute the atmosphere of your chosen soundscape.

A few paragraphs I wrote while trialing Frost 3.0

Currently a web-only offering, what surprised me the most about Frost is that it’s built entirely in HTML / CSS / and Javascript atop the well-known and robust web publishing platform Squarespace giving a high level of stability and reliabilty to the writing tool.

Add to this features like automatic text saving, track skipping, instant word count, plain text download, and an evergrowing set of writing environment themes, Frost is shaping up to be a real contender.

While the idea of a writing tool that supplies music isn’t new with older offerings like Ommwriter playing in the same space, Frost 3.0 continues to further refine the concept with a smooth interface, pronounced imagery, compelling music tracks, solid features, and a price that just can’t be beat.

I’ll be surely keeping an eye on Frost and can’t wait to see what its future holds.

Originally published at hellotimking.com on July 2, 2020.