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Search results for "Posted by Folke X"
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Folke X |
Hmm, it just occurred to me that one way of implemnting this in the interface might be to emulate MS Excel's autofiltering, whereby you click an arrow next to the column heading to see the filtering options for each data field. It would also be possible to omit these arrows and click straight onto the column heading itself, but in that case there would need to be a toggle switch somewhere to also let you sort the list, not always just filter it.
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Folke X |
The new quick filter (for Context and Tag in the Show menu) is very nice and very useful! Great!
Would it be a good idea to build further on this and include more or less the whole range of fields that the user has enabled? And a quick "reset" to take away all such selections? (For fields such as Due date I would suggest the same categories that are already defined for the defult grouping of tasks in the list outputs, in other words (for Due date): Overdue, Today, Tomorrow etc.) |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 27, 2011 in: High priority task visual information lost in new layout
Score: 1
Personally, I am only too happy that the bold typeface disappeared, because it gave a disturbing over-emphasis on that particular aspect (Priority) all the time, even when no such emphasis was wanted. And it made the screen look unjustifiably cluttered. The new way of displaying Priority, Status and Due date in bold within their respective columns is more balanced and tasteful in my opinion.
However, I realize that highlighting of the entire line might be useful from time to time. To resolve this without reintroducing the old problem, perhaps the following approach could be used: In the new Show menu (where the quick filters are located) there could be an additional heading called "Highlight" followed by boxes for Status, Priority and Due date. If one of these boxes is marked then the whole line would become highlighted for the "hottest" tasks in that particular respect (i.e. 3 Top and 2 High tasks if Priority is ticked; or Overdue, Today and Tomorrow tasks if Due date is ticked; or Next Action or Active tasks if Status is checked). I would suggest a color-matched, not-too-glaring alteration of the background color for these lines rather than making the text bold. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 26, 2011 in: Toodledo Redesign - July 2011
Score: 0
A very minor thing, actually, but since some users are concerned about the side bar, and since there is something I always mused over even in the old interface and which does eat up unnecessary space in the overall navigation:
Most of the standard views (Main, Folders, Tags, Contexts etc) are actually all the same. They basically all contain all tasks - just sorted/grouped differently (which also can be achieved by clicking the respective column). I only occasionally use any of these views, and as far as I am concerned they could all be hidden away under some suitable common tab - they do not need the prominence (or screen space) they have always had. The main thing for me (and I suppose for many other users) is the Saved Searches. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 26, 2011 in: Toodledo Redesign - July 2011
Score: 1
I have checked it out again, a bit more carefully this time, and as before:
- I really do like the colors - I really do like the new layout; the width and the side bar are not a problem at all for me - and I really do like the fact that the Priority no longer makes the whole line bold; instead only the "hottest" values of Priority, Status and Due date are bold within their respective columns, but not the whole line, which gave a disturbing over-emphasis on that particular aspect (Priority) all the time, even when no emphasis was wanted. The fact that a number of other users have voiced concern over the latter change worries me, because I would not like to see the old order reinstated. Therefore, I would like to suggest a compromise as follows: There could be an option heading, named "Highlight", located in the new Show menu, followed by boxes for Status, Priority and Due date. If one of these boxes is marked then the whole line would become highlighted for the "hottest" tasks in that particular respect (i.e. 3 Top and High 2 if Priority is ticked). (And I would suggest a well-matched, not-too-glaring alteration of the background color for these lines rather than making the text bold.) |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 26, 2011 in: Toodledo Redesign - July 2011
Score: 0
I only just logged in and noticed the change. It definitely looks much, much more modern and professional now.
Thanks, and congratulations! |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 26, 2011 in: Save Sort Order with Saved Search
Score: 0
I was hesitating whether to write this or not, since Toodledo is already by far the best tool I have tried as regards saved searches and sorting, but after some deliberation I decided to share another thought with you - just in case you would like to implement some really strong "power user" features:
Let me first define what I mean when I say Toodledo is the best as regards saved searches and sorting. Most recently, before switching to Toodledo, I used Remember the Milk (RTM), and before that I used Todoist. Before and during all this I have tried a dozen others just to see whether they would suit me better. RTM has equally powerful task filtering (saved searches aka smart lists) as Toodledo. If it were only for this filtering I probably would not have switched. But what Toodledo has in addition to powerful filtering is the additional capability to: 1) sort the list by any one of all the available fields (not just by Priority, Due date or Task, but also by Status, Context etc - and Toodledo has a few more such fields available, too, which is also important.) 2) grouping of the tasks with section headings (not just getting the list sorted, but also getting it grouped into easy-to-see sections with headings) Grouping into sections is important in many ways. Not only does it make the list easier to overview. It also reduces the number of different saved searches (aka smart lists) that you need to have. As a simplistic example, with Toodledo today, simply by sorting a list by due date in itself gives you both a "Today" list, a "today or Tomorrow" list, a "Week ahead list" etc. You do not need to save all those variations as separate searches, because it is so easy to disregard (to "optically" filter out) the tasks that are further down than you want to be looking at the moment. Even for heavily filtered lists I prefer having fewer but longer lists with appropriate group headings rather than having a larger number of shorter lists. Although Toodledo is better than anyting else I have tried, the shortcoming is that the grouping of the lists is not as flexible as I would like. And the solution to this actually does not seem all that difficult - at least not overwhelmingly difficult: The ultimate sorting - user-defined grouping The auto-grouping feature that already exists in Toodledo should remain to be the default. It is certain a nice feature and it is often convenient for many purposes. In addition, when designing a saved search, it would be very useful if there were an option for a "power user" to: a) disable auto-grouping b) define any number of separate list sections, each section having its own user-defined heading, user-defined filtering criteria and user-defined sorting order. Example As an example, with such user-defined grouping functionality built in, it would be possible to define multi-purpose lists such as the following : (Section 1) User-defined heading: "Today" User-defined filtering: Anthing due today or overdue, plus anything that is a Next action Sorted by: Status, then Due date (Section 2) User-defined heading: "Upcoming" User-defined filtering: Anthing due in the next week, plus anything that is classified as Active, minus anything that repeats daily or weekly, minus anything that is already listed in section 1 (it would be convenient to be able to just check a box for "Exclude scetion X", "Exclude all previous sections" etc) Sorted by: Due date, then Status (Section 3) User-defined heading: "Errands" User-defined filtering: Anything that has a Context (or tag) of errand, regardless of wheteher it has alreday been listed in the previous sections or not (but maybe with an optional graphical highlighting or "lowlighting" available for tasks that have already been mentioned in previous sections - not a necessary feature, but nice) Sorted by: Location With this kind of flexibility built in I would be able to consolidate all my needs in just a precious few lists. The above type of list would be my normal general-pupose "Do" list. I probably would want to define additional special lists for project review etc. And the standard lists - Folder, Tag, Context etc - will remain to be useful for data maintenance and other occasional needs, just like today, whenever I do not want any of my self-made, possibly ill-defined, user settings to spook me ;) |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 24, 2011 in: Discreet at-a-glance visualization
Score: 0
One of the really strong features of TD is the grid format. It reduces the amount of work for the eyes and brain to locate the various kinds of information. Please never ever take away the grid format - and please never even consider reducing the number of columns it can contain (on the contrary, you could easily increase the number of columns almost infinitely as long as you retain the ablility for the user to enable/disble individual columns, like today).
Advantages of the grid format: It is good to be able to have all the information on the screen, just like today, without having to click on a task to see the details. It is good to have everything in "clean" columns in fixed positions, just like today, and to have a uniform typeface for all items. For example, in other systems, the most common way to display tags is in a smaller typeface immediately before or after the task name, which means either the task name or the tags start in different horizontal positions for each task, making them less easy to locate and read. So, please keep TD as it is when it comes to the grid format as such. However, as always when there is much information on the screen, it is valuable to be able to immediately notice certain important things in your data at a glance, in the corner of your eye, without really needing to read the text. The suggestions I have here are intended to help the user in this regard by being able to use certain kinds of graphical markers rather than text in some circumstances. A word of caution, though. In some systems, unfortunately, the developers have to chosen to change the look of the entire task based on the value of some particular field. For example, in Todoist, the whole text of the task is colored according to the priority of the task. In Gqueues, the whole background of the task is colored according to the folder color. In TD, the typeface of the whole task is bolded for the higher priorities. All such devices, which affect the look of the whole task based on some particular task characteristic, is generally counterproductive. It renders a messy look, and it puts too much emphasis on just one litte aspect of the task, totally regardless of whether or not this aspect is even important this particular time or not. The solution, I believe, is to use very discreet graphical markers (rather than text) for certain important things. Here are some good ideas, I think, that I have borrowed from Remember the Milk (RTM) and Pocket Informant (PI), that I think could be implemented in TD to everyone's advantage: Priorities: Both RTM and PI use a small colored marker to represent the Priority of the task. In RTM it is a narrow vertical colored bar. In PI it is a roundish colored "blob". The default colors in PI are red, orange, green, blue and black, where red corresponds to Top priority anf black corresponds to -1. With such colored markers it is so much easier to see, in the corner of your eye, where in the list a particular priority ends (if the list is Priority sorted) or to find stray tasks with high priority (if the the list is sorted some other order) since you do not have to actually read the textual description of the priority (3 Top, 2 High etc). At the same time, these colored markers are discreet enough not to be a disturbance whenever you are not interested in the priority aspect of the tasks. Tags: In PI you can assign icons to tags, such that the icon appears in the list. There is a whole library of icons to choose from - everything from smileys and "funny pictures" (of clowns and feet etc) to more abstract symbols such as triangles and circles of different colors. By using and choosing such icons wisely (and a bit sparingly) for the various tags he has defined, the user can make sure that he can easily distinguish between the icons and remember what they stand for, and he can forever after very easily locate any tasks that stand out from the rest in significant ways. Other fields than Tags and Priority: In principle, the icon approach could be used for most of the other fields as well, such as Goal, Context and Location. The TD system as such would not need to have any particular limitation on this usage of icons. It could be left entirely up to the user to use icons to the extent that he or she finds useful, and to keep the default text-based display for those "field values" that are less frequent or less significant. Tag positioning: The beauty of tags is that the user can do virtually anything with them. The downside is, because the tags are displayed as a sequence, that a given tag does not always appear in the same (horizontal) position for all tasks, making it a little bit harder to see quickly whether some tasks have a particular tag or not. I would be nice to be able to put the tags in fixed positions. Unfortunately, I do not have any really super-simple ideas for this, but I would like to ask you to keep it in mind, in case you can think of a good solution one day. One solution, obviously, would be to have a bunch of spare ordinary fields, whose columns the user could choose to activate if he or she wishes. These additional fields could have names such as Importance, Urgency, Workload, Impact or whatever, ad there could be any number of them. Some of them could take on numerical values from say 0-100. Others could take on user-defined text values (in the same way Context works). By having such spare fields available in the system, the user could choose to use these instead of tags for certain critical aspects that he or she would like to be able to see clearly in a fixed column at a glance. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 24, 2011 in: Save Sort Order with Saved Search
Score: 0
Wonderful! Many thanks!
I just thought of an even simpler way to achieve it, though (simpler than the two ways I mentioned in my first post). The simplest and best way is probably to automatically use the last search order that was used for that particular saved search - no need for any active choices. In other words, keep it all as it is today, except that the last sorting order is remembered separately for each saved search rather than for the whole Search tab collectively. |
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Folke X |
Posted Jul 22, 2011 in: Save Sort Order with Saved Search
Score: 3
The Search feature is excellent. Being able to save such searches (filtering criteria) for repeated future use is also excellent.
The only little annoyance is you have to click the heading (or use the Sort bar) to reorder the filtered list, say from Due date sorting to Status sorting. This is a pity, because usually there is a particular sorting order that is most useful for each type of list, and it would be so much smoother if that particular sorting order came up automatically when you click that particular Search. I imagine, both from a programmer's and a user's point of view, that it would be very easy to have an additional drop-down field (with a choice of sorting orders) available next to where you click Save. Or even simpler, to just have a check-box for "Also save current sorting order". |