ForumsNewsNew Mobile Website with Offline and Android Support


New Mobile Website with Offline and Android Support
Author Message
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 4 Reference
For the past 6 months we have been working on a secret project that we are very excited about. Today we are taking the wraps off this project and releasing it for public beta testing.

m.toodledo.com is our new mobile website. It was written from the ground up, taking advantage of new technologies and adding many common feature requests.

Offline Support
The new mobile website uses HTML5 technology to cache data in your web browser and work offline when necessary. If you allow it, the mobile website will download all of your tasks and permanently store them in your web browser. When you disconnect from the internet, you can continue to read and edit your information. All of the changes will be saved inside the web browser and it will automatically sync the differences when you come back online. There are three big advantages to this.

1) This will make it much faster to access your information when online, since you don't need to repeatedly download the same data from our servers.
2) Using only your web browser (no apps) you can take your Toodledo to-do list with you on the airplane or elsewhere and access it just like a native app without an internet connection.
3) If the Toodledo website should ever go offline (a rare occurrence), you wouldn't notice because the offline mobile website would shelter you from this.

Wide Browser Support (Android!)
Our old mobile website did not have good support for Android. As a matter of fact, it wasn't very good in any mobile web browser. That has changed. We have amassed a small collection of mobile devices and have extensively tested them with the new website. The new mobile website has been fully tested on the following devices and browsers.

1) iPhone (iOS 4.0 Safari and iOS 5.0 Safari)
3) iPad (iOS 5.0 Safari)
4) Kindle Fire
5) HTC Incredible (Android 2.2)
6) Samsung Tab 10.1 (Android 3.2)
7) Samsung Focus (Windows Phone 7.5 Internet Explorer)
8) Windows PC (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer)
9) Mac Desktop (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera)

We will continue to test the site on these and more devices as we determine which ones are most popular and where the problems are. Blackberry is a notable omission to our test setup. It will probably work, but we are looking into acquiring a BB device to test on for official support before we leave beta.

Sorting, Searching, Filters and more
The old mobile website had a very limited feature set (no filters, no search, no folder management, etc). The new mobile website has a much richer feature set, including:

1) The full three levels of sorting (forwards and reverse) that our main website has.
2) All of the filters (priority, future, completed, context, tag, etc) that our main website.
3) Support for quickly searching the title or notes of tasks in your list.
4) Ability to add, edit or delete folders, contexts, goals and locations.
5) Support for the timer
6) Totally redesigned and enhanced UI for more efficiently accessing your data

Multi-Language Support
The new mobile website was designed with multi-language support built in. During the beta period, we will be collecting translations and testing them to ensure accuracy. To assist with the project, please go to Toodledo.com/translate and help us improve our translations.

Known Issues
1) If you have more than 500 tasks, the mobile website may be sluggish, especially on slower phones.
2) Transitions between pages may be jerky or blinky on certain phones.
3) If you have more than 2000 tasks, certain functions are disabled for performance reasons, such as badges and tag counts.
4) When offline, only lists that were downloaded while online will be available and lists will not update until you go back online.

Roadmap
In addition to adding language support, fixing bugs and optimizing for speed, we intend to add Notebook support before we take this product out of beta. Saved searches, collaboration and file attachments are also planned, but will come as an update after we are done with the initial tasks and notebooks release.

Beta Notice
We are releasing this as a public beta. This is somewhat unusual for us. We generally like to fully test and validate a solution before releasing it. In this case, we think that we can gain valuable feedback that will be critical in guiding us towards the final release. We have already done extensive testing and are confident that using the new mobile website will not cause you to lose data or have problems using the main website. However, it is beta quality software so caution should be taken. We advise anyone who wants to test it to make periodic backups of their data just in case. Please send any feedback that you may have to us via support tickets or these forums.


This message was edited Jan 24, 2012.
sprouty76

Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
Just given it a go on my HTC Desire running android 2.2... and it's going to need some more work before it's usable - it's incredibly sluggish and unresponsive at the moment.

(I'd actually like a proper, official app instead, but it's clear we're never going to get one)
dannyw0011

Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Will give the beta a try and let you know how it works.
mikekoelzer

Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Would this be better than using the iphone app?
Jake

Toodledo Founder
Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
@sprouty76: Just because we release a mobile website with Android support does not mean that we have no plans to release a Android app.

@mikekoelzer: Most native apps will have better performance than a website, so if you have our iPhone app you should keep using it, since it has more features and is faster. Our new mobile website is for people who don't have an app.
paul.freeman

Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Looks good but I've tried to use the filters to turn off Deferred, Future and Recently completed tasks in the Contexts view and it doesn't show any tasks
PeterW 

Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
Well done Jake... this is impressive and a big improvement over the previous site.

Do you want feedback in this thread or in the Questions forum?
mvdl

Posted: Jan 24, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
I am running it on the Blackberry Playbook. It is fully functional and looks very nice and stores it on the device. The font could probably be one size bigger but it is still usable. The X to close a couple of the windows is definitely to small.

It is very choppy still and slow but a small trade off right now that I can use it on the device. Very good for a beta so far.
andrew.couch99

Posted: Jan 25, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
Looks promising, but very sluggish on my Samsung Galaxy Note. Can't really see the point of a mobile website when we have fantastic clients like DGT GTD. I would prefer to see the development resource go into the full website.
Purveyor

Posted: Jan 25, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Toodledo:
5) Support for the timer.
Interesting ...
JPR

Posted: Jan 25, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by PeterW:
Do you want feedback in this thread or in the Questions forum?


Posted by Toodledo:
Please send any feedback that you may have to us via support tickets or these forums.
clango

Posted: Jan 25, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
I think, first of all, this is an excellent initiative.

I'll send a feedback soon.

Thanks for now to update and develop a great tool like toodledo!
PeterW 

Posted: Jan 26, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
@JPR - I saw that and was going to use the forums but it wasn't clear if I should post in this announcement thread or in the questions forum. I didn't hear back and got busy with other stuff, so just decided "whatever".
jeremiah.moss

Posted: Jan 26, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
INITIAL FEEDBACK (iPhone 4, iOS 5):

-Email field when logging in should be identified as an email field to the mobile device. Currently, it does not.

-Icon in iOS ends up being generic when added to the home screen.

-When added to the home screen, it acts as an app: It doesn't use a tab in Safari and doesn't show the browser chrome. This is great! Thanks!

-Doesn't show notifications, but I dunno if that is possible for a web app.

-Syncing is full screen currently?

-"Toodledo" graphic at top and many of the icons are a bit low-res. On the Retina display of the iPhone, that makes it look a bit blurry.

I'm gonna try to test both the app and the mobile website, to see what the differences are.


This message was edited Jan 26, 2012.
valentino.aluigi

Posted: Jan 26, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
great! I was waiting for something like that!
I'm curious about the technical implementation.. I've noticed you choose jQuery mobile. why not Sencha Touch?
Salgud

Posted: Jan 26, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed that this is what you've been working on these last few months. It seems to me that there are a lot of features that people are clamoring for more than this. It's hard for me to imagine that you have that many customers who can't afford $5 or less for a mobile app, whether it's TD's or someone elses.

I'm hoping that some kind of saved views, which will store Search and Filter criteria along with sort order, or even dependencies, will be along soon. How about universal Search & Replace? Even sub-subtasks, which I don't see much need for, but which a lot of users do, would be a good choice. Or Saved Searches in the native app? Just my suggestions for some crowd pleasers.


This message was edited Jan 26, 2012.
Patrick

Posted: Jan 26, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
You're testing with the Opera desktop clients, but not Opera Mobile?

This message was edited Jan 26, 2012.
PeterW 

Posted: Jan 26, 2012
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Salgud:
I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed that this is what you've been working on these last few months. It seems to me that there are a lot of features that people are clamoring for more than this.

Join the club, Salgud! It has ever been thus around here.
Torbjörn Hedberg

Posted: Jan 27, 2012
Score: 2 Reference
I'm sure you've done a great job in implementing HTML5. But I don't understand who it's for:
- PC users should use the regular website
- Smartphone users should use apps from you or some 3rd party

Who is left as a user for the mobile site? Are you quite sure you are dedicating the (always scarce) resources in the right areas?
Purveyor

Posted: Jan 27, 2012
Score: 1 Reference
It's great that Jake has taken the initiative to implement HTML5, and perhaps his decision with provide Toodledo with the next leap in popularity and profitability. But it's not clear that this is the case. :(

Interesting that Apple, despite earning $13 billion last quarter, can't make a mobile task manager that allows sorting, and Google, with $38 billion in revenue last year, can't make an online task manager that has repeating tasks.
I guess some things just don't matter.

In any case, the value of this most recent Toodledo update (and the time and effort that went into developing it) is still a bit of a mystery to me.


This message was edited Jan 28, 2012.
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