Ask HN: Critique my free app | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Critique my free app

8 pointswidgetycrank19 comments

Hi HN,

I used Ta-da Lists for a long time. I really liked its simplicity, but there were always a few thing I wish it did:

* Double-click to edit a task.

* To sort tasks, no need to swtich mode.

* Drag an entire task to sort it, so I don't have to search for the little drag handler.

* Sort the lists (as in collections of tasks).

* If I mark a task "complete"by mistake, the task doesn't move into the "completed" section right away, so I can un-mark it in its original place.

* When I enter a list, focus the add-task form, so I can type away.

So I decided to roll my own. It's nothing fancy, but I hope you find it useful:

http://www.tinkertask.com

Thank you for any feedback!

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I thought it was really neat!

First thoughts: Would be helpful to have shadowed "username / password" in the first fields. I wasn't sure if those were for registering, or for logging in, or what. So that would be helpful.

Second thoughts: Love the simplicity, wish I could do more. Maybe that's not what you're going for - in which case, awesome! - but I'd love a way to go beyond the simple functions and have a simple but subtly powerful ability to do more. Fine though, can move on from there.

Third Notes: Your feedback logo is missing from the first page, just has the link. Intentional? Also, when I want to delete something, I would want something better than a "pop up" asking me if I wanted to delete it - a bit obtrusive. Better to have a fade out or something clever.

Final thoughts: Does something very very simple very well, I just wish it were less simple for my own needs. I also wish there were some quickly user-configurable style sheets to change the colors, since the shades of grey kind of mask the tasks etc and don't quite pop out in a way that makes it skimmable.

But I really like it and it seems to definitely meet the need you wanted to address!

"Love the simplicity, wish I could do more. Maybe that's not what you're going for - in which case, awesome!"

Thanks! That the idea, at least for now. It used to have GTD-style context and various other features, but I almost never used them personally, so I gradually removed them. I'm open to more advanced features though, as long as I have real-world use cases to back them up.

"Third Notes: Your feedback logo is missing from the first page, just has the link. Intentional?" Yes, I admit there's not much rational reason for it, I just don't feel like duplicates.

"Also, when I want to delete something, I would want something better than a "pop up" asking me if I wanted to delete it - a bit obtrusive. Better to have a fade out or something clever."

It was like that once, but on some occasions I accidentally removed tasks when I was dragging and fiddling around. Then I realized deletion is a fairly rare operation, most of the time I just mark tasks as complete, so I thought a prompt strikes a good balance. I guess I could make it more ajaxy. :)

"the shades of grey kind of mask the tasks etc and don't quite pop out in a way that makes it skimmable."

I'm trying to figure out a good colour as well. The tasks used to be a darker grey with white text, which had much more contrast. Maybe I should go back to that. I kinda chose the easier colour transitions for aesthetic reasons.

RE: First thoughts

I agree. Or if you populate username/password and click signup. The details you've entered are already there.

That's a good idea, for now I made the signup link a bit more distinct.

Done! :)

"Also, when I want to delete something, I would want something better than a "pop up" asking me if I wanted to delete it - a bit obtrusive. Better to have a fade out or something clever."

Now sprinkled with ajaxy goodness. :)

Neat app. Good work.

Things I would change:

(1) The top navigation at the first sight looked like some problem with your markup - <home You may want to change it to something prettier.

(2) There should be some way to directly navigate to other lists from the the list detail page.

(3) The design looks good, but I would play around with the colours a bit more. (Too gray-ish now)

edit: (4) Ability for adding sub-tasks is important.

Thanks for the feedback.

I change < to an arrow image. Thanks for pointing it out. :)

I haven't had a need to jump from one list to another in one click, but I'll definitely keep that in mind in case it becomes a problem.

I debated with myself about the colours as well. I went through several iterations, eventually I decided to focus on the tasks, while keeping the rest of the app as less distracting as possible. As a result the text for the tasks are a bit sharper and darker than the rest. The idea is to make the frequent things clear and visible, while the rarer elements hide into background.

It wouldn't let me enter a user-name with capitals (One at the beginning, one in the middle). Not sure if this is a design or a validation problem, but if it's all lower-case by design, just do that once you've gotten my username - don't force me to sit there scratching my head. The validation hint said it must contain only 'letters, numbers, and -'. Nothing there about capitals.

Oops, it's a bug. I was using some signup code from a another app. I removed the format requirement altogether now. :)

I love the simplicity of the app. I think an iphone client would be an excellent addition as there are not many free/cheap cloud based to-do apps. Great Job, App is very easy to use, I would recommend fb connect or twitter oAuth for less sign up friction.

Might be a nice 'to-have,' but it was so easy to sign up I wouldn't really mind either way. It would take almost exactly as long to use connect / oauth as to put in info, since no email authentication or anything is needed. Especially since that way, no one else's servers can mess up your login scheme...

Clickable: http://www.tinkertask.com

Good idea, but lacked 'pizazz' for me.

Not enough instruction on the landing page. The two login fields are unlabeled, and when I tried to 'register' with my email and a password, it failed. Username cannot be an email, and it should.

Why collect usernames anyway? As if you'd address them as such... It's a worthless bit of info you don't need for user authorization.

Also, any way to display the full sub-lists on the main list page?

The username format thing is a bug, it's fixed now.

You have a point. The thing with email though is some people may be reluctant to give them out. I left it in as an optional field for password recovery, which I have yet to implement. I guess I should leave it out for now.

"The two login fields are unlabeled"

Fixed :)

Nice. Now go to http://www.culturedcode.com, get a demo of "Things" and piggy back their award-winning design layout and make a web-based version of it. A good start is to one-up them and make sub-tasks within tasks or task notes, something they refuse to do for some reason.

But good.

Thanks! :)

I used Things and OmniFocus for a while.

I was pretty psyched about OmniFocus' hierarchical tasks when it came out, but what I ended up doing was organizing complex projects with OmniOutliner, which can aggregate numbers better. I simply pick out the more immediate tasks and add them to my task manager in a flat structure.

I love Things, it really strikes the right balance of features and simplicity. The thing is almost all of my tasks were at my computer, so GTD-style context was not used much. In the end I just needed a todo list. I'm sure other folks need to juggle contexts more often than I do, but personally I haven't had a need justify the overhead at the moment.

I think a major appeal for the current GTD apps are the offline mobile versions. They let users take their apps to actual different contexts, away from the computer.

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