Archive for August, 2009

Mega Update: GTDInbox 3.0 Alpha 17

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

It would be wrong to start this post without a brief bout of personal recrimination – this release is hugely overdue, blowing our weekly releases out of the water. It started simply enough, but this snowballed into a complete rewrite of our Popup (which  itself represents a major part of GTDInbox) and, well, nearly three weeks later here we are!

So what has the Popup rewrite yielded? For starters, its faster – it should appear quicker, change tabs more seamlessly and scroll more smoothly. There is now ‘Group By’ buttons to group threads by Project, Context, Contact and List. And perhaps most importantly of all (not to mention one of the most requested features), you can now resize the Popup. It sounds minor, but so far it’s had a big impact on usability. (Less interestingly, the whole thing is now much more expandable for the future).

The Sidebar box has changed too. It’s a lot tidier, thanks to Pete’s handy work, the Statuses have been replaced with ‘Views’ (e.g. Tasks To Do, Waiting On, Some Day), and Label Categories have a better visual indication of what needs your attention. Following the discussion in the last blog post (http://blog.gtdinbox.com/2009/08/07/design-discussion-labels-on-sidebar/), it’s also more stable – it needs a click to appear, and it stays there until you click it off.

Finally – and this is just a little nod to a big irritation of mine – the new Gmail ‘Recent Labels’ (the one that pushes everything in the sidebar down), can now be hidden; to save lots of space.

As this is a big change, I’m playing it a little cautious – it will be on the blog for a day or two before I push it to Mozilla. We’re also about ready to enter Beta status – if this release goes okay, we’ll move up to the next level.

http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm

** Update Thur 27th August **

Okay, it would appear that there are problems for lots of you :( As far as I can work out, the major ones appear to be interference with/from Java QuickStarter (jqs@sun.com), a failure to load until you change view (e.g. click a label), and the X selecting everything… plus some smaller usability issues (which should be a quick fix).

If anyone can help – either by screenshare, or just talking me through what they’re seeing, please drop me an email (andy@gtdinbox.com) and let’s get this fixed.

Posted in Releases | 33 Comments »

Design Discussion – Labels on Sidebar?

Friday, August 7th, 2009
Thanks to Paul Thompson (aka Captbunzo), I’ve started to question the effectiveness of our Labels in the sidebar – the ones that popout to show you the label hierarchy when you move your mouse over them (Projects, Contexts, etc.).
The proposal is two-fold,
1) The new Gmail ‘recent labels’ UI is a pain in the backside for GTD-based labels, as it pushes everything down. Therefore we should include an option to make these be hideable.
2) The labels popout is too fiddly to be useful. Instead, we should restore how labels used to be handled, where they are permanently fixed to the sidebar (but can be hidden by category).
The benefits, on top of being less jumpy (and therefore easier to click), is that they give you a constant ‘at a glance’ overview of the state of your inbox/actions; serving as a gentle nudge.
I think this will be an improvement, but I can see a downside that it potentially consumes more space (although I’ll say again, you will be able to hide each category). I think we will go ahead and try this, but we can always refine it (or restore the current method) – but let me know your thoughts before I change anything?

Thanks to Paul Thompson (aka Captbunzo), we’ve started to have a closer look at the effectiveness of our Labels in the Sidebar – the Projects/Contexts/etc. that popout to show the label hierarchy.

The reasons for the change, and thus the proposed changes, are two-fold:

1) The new Gmail ‘recent labels’ UI is a pain in the backside for GTD-based labels, as it pushes everything down and needs constant scrolling. Therefore we should include an option to make these hideable.

2) The labels box that pops out is too fiddly to be useful. Instead, we should restore how labels used to be handled: where they are permanently fixed inside the sidebar (but can be hidden by category).

The benefits, beyond being less jumpy (and therefore easier to click), is that they give you a constant ‘at a glance’ overview of the state of your inbox/actions; serving as a gentle nudge.

I think this will be an improvement, but I can see a downside that it potentially consumes more space (although I’ll say again, you will be able to hide each category). Let me know your thoughts before I change anything?

Posted in News | 13 Comments »

GTDInbox 3.0 Alpha 16

Friday, August 7th, 2009
Believe it or not, Alpha 16 represents a week of truly intense work – but has virtually nothing to show for it!
The reason being it’s one of those interminably dull efforts that focused rigouresly on stability and efficiency. The most observable of which is that if you do have problems, GTDInbox should now be far more vocal about telling you so – so at least diagnosis will be easier!
All improvements are based on the feedback we’ve received, notably from Michael Lebor, Alain Aubert, Anthony Apparailly, Bart Tuts, Binny Bansal, Susan Penter and including a first rate scolding from Ivan Lacasa for mispelling Gina Trapani’s name on the website ;)
There are a few visual tweaks courtesy of Pete. Our tireless mission to reduce the size of the Labelling Box continues, and we have new Status buttons. I’m not yet 100% convinced about the change (they’re much flatter) so let me know your thoughts.
There’s a blog post to follow on a design decision we have to make; and then we’re into some rapid development on new features I’m very excited about (including our first go at including some simple Stats) next week.
PS Thanks entirely to Dr Mike Crowe, we’re making our first efforts to get GTDInbox working on Prism. For those unfamiliar with it, it means you’ll be able to install Gmail+GTDInbox as a standalone application on your system; so you can run it alongside any browser you choose. It’s going to take a while to perfect, but work is underway.

Believe it or not, Alpha 16 represents a week of truly intense work – but has virtually nothing to show for it!

The reason being it’s one of those interminably dull efforts for stability and efficiency. The most observable of which is that if you do have problems, GTDInbox should now be far more vocal about telling you so – so at least diagnosis will be easier!

All improvements are based on the feedback we’ve received, notably from Michael Lebor, Alain Aubert, Anthony Apparailly, Bart Tuts, Binny Bansal, Susan Penter and including a first rate scolding from Ivan Lacasa for misspelling Gina Trapani’s name on the website ;)

There are a few visual tweaks courtesy of Pete. Our tireless mission to reduce the size of the Labelling Box continues, and we have new Status buttons. I’m not yet 100% convinced about the change (they’re much flatter) so let me know your thoughts.

There’s a blog post to follow on a design decision we have to make; and then we’re into some rapid development on new features I’m very excited about (including our first go at including some simple Stats) next week.

It’s available from http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm.

PS Thanks entirely to Dr Mike Crowe, we’re making our first efforts to get GTDInbox working on Prism. For those unfamiliar with it, it means you’ll be able to install Gmail+GTDInbox as a standalone application on your system; so you can run it alongside any browser you choose. It’s going to take a while to perfect, but work is underway.

Posted in News | 13 Comments »