You can download GTDInbox 3.0 A22 now. (Or if you can wait, it will be automatically distributed by Firefox over the next week).
Usability / Prettiness Updates
We concentrated on the labels boxes – both the sidebar popouts (e.g. Projects/Contexts) and the dropdown selectors when viewing conversations. The aim was to make it easier to apply labels and browse the nested hierarchy – which we did by making it more ’solid’ in feel, easier on the eyes, and fixes several irritating glitches (like the dropdown hiding before you finished labeling) .
Following the first of the good blog discussions, we’ve changed the Popup Browser to use real statuses in the tabs (instead of inflexible predefined tabs, like To Do/Waiting On/Some Day).
Bug Fixing
We got through a lot!
With particular thanks to Vassili Novikov, Dieter Pfieffer, Jason Wohlstadter, Luciano and everyone else who pinged us about issues they were having… well, we’ve cleaned up so much it would be very boring if I listed them all! Some of the bigger things included a few remaining internationalisation issues, several disruptive loading bugs and many glitches that affected overall email enjoyment.
Saving mention of Michael Bond until last – he deserves particularly high praise for helping us overcome a serious problem! There’s a big change in Gmail (one of the ones that majorily disrupts GTDInbox), and it was starting to affect users – but it hadn’t yet reached any of my accounts…. so there was no way for me to fix it. Michael took a big leap of trust and granted me temporary access to his account, so the bugs could be cleared up, and as a consequence hopefully no one else will suffer any downtime now. Thanks Michael!
The Website
There is a new Support page up, as well as a big overhaul to the website at large. It will continue to be refined as we better define where GTDInbox is headed.
Coming Next
We seriously need to start work on the Pro version as we’re very keen to expand the team and accelerate development. More on that next week.
I’ve also started looking at Google Chrome… and here’s the great news – it looks like a port will be possible. (For a while, because of a few technical difficulties, it was seriously in doubt – this is a huge relief).
Finally, we’ll just be pressing on and refining the features to make them more useable/functional. There are things we would have liked to put into A22, but just couldn’t fit in before the deadline. They’ll be coming shortly!
Hi Andy and others who contribute to GTD Inbox, a huge thanks to you!
Am so relieved and happy to see the Status tabs in the Popup. It’s made GTD Inbox again very usable for me. GTDI is my only task manager, and seeing my custom statuses being assumed as tasks was cluttering the popup before.
Thank you very much once again.
A snooze / reminder feature will complete the package
That’s great to hear! (About the Status tabs).
And snooze/reminder is on the cards, but I’m not sure how best to fit that in – will blog very soon.
Hi,
many thanks again for your efforts!
About porting to Chrome, just one thought:I really like Chrome interface, but I found that it couldn’t replace Firefox for me (I use a lot of FF extensions that I don’t wont to abandon). So I searched a bit and found that Chrome look&feel can be fully achieved on Firefox using Chromifox Extreme (or Chromifox Extreme Carbon, that is the Theme I actually use), plus some other extensions (Hide menu bar, Chromifox companion): given this, my draconian opinion is that porting to Chrome is secondary: if I was you, I’d continue to focus on FF GTD, and just recommend to Chrome users that to use GTD to switch to FF using Chromifox theme.
The above is just my opinion, but I’m sure everybody here will agree that maintaining multiple versions of GTD = “double” effort on each feature = fewer future features/more time to develop them, in a situation of limited resources…
Hi Ste,
That’s a great tip – I wasn’t aware someone had built such addons – that’s why Firefox is still awesome
But nonetheless, I suspect people like Chrome for the increased speed and ‘lightness’ (a strange concept I know, but I feel it). Quite a lot of users have said they’ll stick with Firefox to keep using GTDInbox, but I understood that to mean they’d like to be able to switch if they could!
Ideally, we’ll just port the core platform of GTDInbox once – and then all future development will run on Firefox/Chrome simultaneously and with no additional maintenance effort.
(I say ‘ideally’… what I hope will happen and what is technically possible may yet prove to be two separate things!).
Hi,
I know this is very very soon, but did you thought about implementing GTD in to google wave?
Again, Thank you for all your work.
Hi Guy,
I’ve thought about it, but until Google Wave evolves into something useful in itself there’s very little we can add, whereas there’s LOTS we can do right now for email
But we will keep a watchful eye on it…
Thanks for the update Andy, but I’m not seeing any emails in my Overview. Seems like a bug.
In regards to Chrome, I would love to see GTDInbox there (because it would run faster), but I would prefer to see a stable semi-final version of GTDInbox first. As “ste” says above, two browsers will slow down overall development progress.
Interesting update here, but I think I’ve found a bug. When I press Finish, I had set it up to remove all status labels, mark finish, then archive. It does the first two, then stops cold. I have to manually press the archive button. It also used to move to the next email in the Inbox, but that stops as well, whether Finish or Archive has been pushed, I have to manually click the “older” link to move to the next email. That’s too many clicks for getting things done.
Hi Robert,
It’s not actually a bug, it’s just an interim solution – but I hear you!
We were getting feedback that the automatic ‘Finish and Move Next’ was confusing a number of users – and we agreed it was not in keeping with other Status buttons.
Like I said, it’s interim, and I think most likely we will reinstate the old ‘Finished’ button, in the style of the ‘Archive’ button.
This is a high priority for the next release.
Hey Andy,
If it would help folks out, could it be made configurable? I think I remember it being that way back a few versions. I like being able to look at the email, do any quick actions I need to do, then get the thing out of the way with the fewest steps possible – I tend to routinely process over 300 emails a day, so any extra time saver is most welcome.
At any rate, I do like the speed of this release and the cleaner buttons/UI. Great job!
I’m really pleased to see the tabs match the actual Status Labels – I always thought I was doing something wrong with everything lumped under “Todo Items” instead of actual labels. Makes defining and using custom action type far more usuable. Great work!
+1 on the restoring the old Finish & Archive functionality – a user selectable option would satisfy all on that one.
Chrome port – Meh! – not interested personally. I much prefer FF for the add-on functions that are not available in Chrome.
Aaaargh…..gone is the option to avoid the popup and use the sidebar with queries showing in Google’s query view. Help! Is the A20 version still available for download? The popup window is unusable on laptop/small screens showing max 6 mails per window where Google shows 4 times as many….
Hi Andy,
when I open the popup, and click on the label at the left top of the window, a query opens, syntax being:
Search results for:((label:p-interactive))
Works fine, shows all results for this project.
Now when I click the project in the sidebar directly, on the text hyperlink to avoid the popup, this query opens:
Search results for:label:p-interactive (label:s-action OR label:s-action-compose OR label:s-action-contracts OR label:s-action-email OR label:s-action-invoice OR label:s-action-order OR label:s-action-privat OR label:s-decision OR label:s-maybe OR label:s-next-action OR label:s-some-day OR label:s-waiting-on OR label:s-waiting-on-answer OR label:s-waiting-on-production OR label:s-waiting-on-samples) -label:s-finished
Does not show any results at all.
First query has 2 pairs of brackets, the latter dysfunctional only one. Could this be the reason?
Would it be possible to replace the complex syntax with the easier one in the sidebar link?
Hi Marc,
Okay, that query *should* return an P/Interactive label that is actioned (i.e. in any way has a Status) but not finished. Do you have any results like that? If so, please drop me an email as it’s a definite bug that it isn’t finding them!
The good news is, if you hold down the Shift key when you click that sidebar link, it should Show All (rather than being Status constrained).
Please let me know how you get on with that – we’re being quite experimental with the UI at the moment!
Andy
Many, many thanks Andy!
I use the project labels as containers for things which are not yet actioned in order to avoid overkill in the action categories, but I actioned one item in the project and indeed it showed up in the long query.
And even better, holding down the Shift bar while clicking the sidebar link saved my day!
Good work!
any prediction when we’ll see the return of hipster print?
Hi Joe,
It’s planned, but I think it’ll be part of Pro. We want to create a Print that’s more flexible/reliable than it used to be; and there are other features that are higher on the todo list. The big goal with the Pro package is to help us expand the team so we can get through all the stuff we want to do faster!
Hi,
as Robert said, labeling a mail as “Finished” doesn’t archive it, no more; I have to press “Archive” to achieve it. I’d like to have emails automatically archived when they’re “Finished”,
thanks,
Ste
Moreover,
I noticed that when clicking on “Projects” in the sidebar, the option “Show all -project name- in gmail” (no filter on status) is no more present, so I have to use the standard Gmail search to find all the mails concerning the project.
I’d like to see it again…
Thanks,
Thanks for the update but I miss printing, Can we have it back!!
Thanks
Chris
Hi,
Now that Google Chrome 3.5 beta is out and has extensions support, when is the anticipated GTDInbox port going be released?
I really like the quickness of Chrome, and the lack of extensions was the only reason for me to stay with FF. Now that chrome also has them, I’d really like to move completely to chrome….
cheers,
avner
We are working on it, now. It should be ready within a few weeks at most.