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Show HN: My Project Management and (eventual) Collaboration Tool (Server down)

thetaboard.com

23 pointsdclaysmith23 comments

Hey everyone. I've been working on and off on this for the last 9 months or so (god has it been that long). I wanted to learn backbone.js, improve my javascript skills, and build a tool that I felt had been missing. So I build ThetaBoard--a (very) simple tool for managing lists and projects.

Unfortunately, Trello came out in September and was fairly similar to my original vision. I thought about stopping development but my vision for ThetaBoard is a bit different than Trello so decided to atleast get an MVP out there and see what people thought. Would love to hear your suggestions and ideas. Especially any areas where tools like Trello aren't really scratching your itch.

Just had a play. Looks good. A few comments:

  - SUGGESTIONS
  - Switch the screenshot and demo button around (button on right)
  - Improve the quality of the screenshot
  - Pre-fill the blank slate with some demo items
  - Allow users to download data (json/xml etc.)
   
  - BUGS
  - When using the demo, press save, then [browser back]. I get a JSON representation
   
  - QUESTIONS
  - Does it allow multi-user access?

Keep it up.

Thanks a ton. I put the landing page together last night and I'm not much of a designer (tho was pretty happy with how it turned out). Definitely needs better screenshots (and it doesn't work on the ipad right now so should probably drop it!)

Data export coming! and yeah, I prepopulate the initial board with some default columns but should throw a couple stories in there.

It doesn't currently allow multi-user access but it's (fairly) useless without it long term. The free/personal plan isn't collaborative (that's my initial plan). When/if I add some premium plans it will obviously have to have multi-user and realtime updates.

Thanks.

I like this. I do have some comments:

  - When dragging from one board to another, unless I drag to the right location, I can't drop. It would be nice if I could drop anywhere in the board
  - Keyboard shortcuts?
  - A way to save a story without using the mouse
  - If I drag from the To Do board, I can drag (forever) to the right. This isn't a problem, per se, but is definitely unexpected behavior.

   * I think I just need to add some padding into the jquery.ui.sortable to make them more "accomodating"
   * Thanks. I had some simple keyboard shortcuts in place (ctrl+n, ctrl+s) but found a couple of bugs in the library so temporarily removed them.
   * Saving without a mouse: hitting tab currently should do it but keyboard shortcuts coming soon.
   * Yep, hadn't noticed that it flies off to the right. Thanks!

I like it. Solving Project Management pains is hard. There are way too many tools that don't work. I like your approach - having a very fast interface to add and move items makes a significant different.

That being said, how do you intend to be different from Trello?

Thanks! One of the things I'm trying to do design wise is eliminate/minimize pop up screens and multiple pages, etc. I want everything to accessible from one screen.

My plan is to add functionality--initially realtime collaboration--and then comments, tasks, assigned users, point/time tracking, etc. but make all of the features opt-in and customizable.

I consider this the real minimum viable product. Just a list of items. Priority represented by position in a list. Status respresented by WHICH list. An unobtrusive backlog. An accessible archive. I want people to be able to use it at this level of simplicity a year from now.

Those sound really good - but aren't they exactly what Trello is already doing?

Trello is a great product and, honestly, it was a bit deflating when they launched. Not to mention they are (currently) free and I hope to offer premium packages.

The one (only?) thing about Trello that I don't love is the number of pop up screens, etc. I want ThetaBoard to be a single interface where you can do what you need from the one page. If that makes any sense.

I really like your product, and I also like Trello, but unfortunately our corporate policy is to avoid hosting data on third party servers so I can't use either. These products would make a great tool for my small team.

This is not a suggestion just a comment/wish, I'd like to see some app like yours offer the ability to store/retrieve data from a web service that we can provide to you but written to your specification, not sure if something like that is possible, but it would be preferable to a packaged application my small team cannot afford. I haven't seen a SaaS app take this approach, but it is interesting to think how it might work. UI as a Service?

Really interesting idea. With Backbone.js and RESTful APIs (which ThetaBoard is using), it wouldn't be too difficult to implement on the UI side. The hardpart would be getting organizations like yours to build their own public api exposing their business data.

Looks nice! My suggestions;

Keyboard shortcuts (N for new to-do, Shift-S for saving item). An API, or a Mac/Win app or terminal tool.

Good ideas. Probably go API first...

Any way to change a title of a post after 2.5 hours? Wouldn't mind removing the "(Server Down)" part... If anyone (pg, moderator of some sort) wants to help, the original was:

Show HN: My Project Management and (eventual) Collaboration Tool :: Θ ThetaBoard

Using a column name as "<script>alert(1)</script>" I get an error.

I think I'm glad.

Ouch. Server swamped. Rookie mistake. Resizing it to a bigger instance. Check back soon!

Does not load here.

Yeah. I thought I had resized the server instance last night but it looks like it failed. So it's now running on a 256MB instance... on w/ support. Check back soon!

Works now. Interesting. Are there any hotkeys? I think it would be nice to move an item via Ctrl + left. Also some colors for priorities..?

Hey. I had a few basic hotkeys in place this morning but found a bug so dropped them out of the build (ctrl+n for new, ctrl+s for save). Want to get the hotkeys right so going to give them some more thought before I implement them.

Planning on implementing colored tags very soon...

same, no loady

very nice, intuitive and simple. I love to use it.

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