ForumsNewsiOS app update - 3.0.2
iOS app update - 3.0.2
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
In December we released our big 3.0 update to our iOS app, where we redesigned the user interface and made many functional improvements. For a complete explanation of what we added please read here.
We did a ton of testing on that update. Unfortunately it wasn't enough. We received many valid complaints, so we made the difficult decision to revert to the previous version while we worked out the issues. Today we are releasing the revised update. Please visit the app store and download version 3.0.2 of our iOS app. We are proud of it, and we hope you like it. Here are the main complaints that we got from version 3.0 and what we did about them. 1) The fonts are too small or too big. We went through the entire app, and examined each piece of text. For those pieces of text that were too small, we increased the size to match the smallest text found in Apple's own apps. For each piece of text that was too large (mainly the task title), we decreased the font size to allow more information to fit on screen. We then tested this with several people outside of Toodledo, including people of different ages and eyesight ability to make sure that all our fonts were readable. 2) The colors are too grey or the contrast is too low. Again, we went through the entire app and examined each piece of text with relation to it's color and background. We made the text darker and the background lighter as necessary to boost contrast. We used the industry standard W3C and WCAG 2.0 contrast ratio guidelines to ensure that every piece of important text has a high enough contrast ratio to get AA compliance. To address the "gloomy" feel of the app, we added back the blue toolbars at the top of the page, to match the colors of this website. We also enhanced the colors and contrast between different levels of priority indicators. We took many of the light grey background colors and made them white or near-white to make the app feel brighter. That said, the most important part of a to-do list is your data, and the UI shouldn't distract from this data. The UI should melt into the background, which is why we intentionally do not have lots of color. We will have color themes in a future update for people who want different/extra colors. 3) On the iPhone, the home page accordion rows gets scrambled and behave poorly. The scrambling behavior was a bug related to a combination of settings and circumstances that was difficult to track down, but we finally isolated the bug and fixed it. The other complaint was that it was now a 2 click operation to view the entire list of folders instead of the 1 click that it was before. We added a blue disclosure button for each group so you can tap it (1 click) to see the entire list, or tap the row to do the accordion action to quickly see the most recently used items. 4) After upgrading, the entire app is empty. This was a bug caused by an incorrect migration of data when someone was skipping several versions of the app during an upgrade. If you upgraded from the last version to the new version, it would work fine, but if you upgraded from 3 versions back to the newest version, it was not working. This is now fixed. 5) When viewing a list, there are too many "no due-date", and "no folder" labels cluttering the screen. We redesigned the way that rows are displayed. If a task has no value for a piece of information, it will display a blank spot instead of "No folder". This makes the list visually less cluttered and improves readability quite a bit. As an additional improvement, if a task has no values for all of the labels below the title, we shrink the row's height to give even more space for showing more data. We also decreased the average height of each row so more tasks can fit on the screen at once. 6) The iPad popups are too slow. Checking off a task has a delay. The iPad popups have been optimized so they will open much faster now. Checking off tasks has also been optimized. If you have "Sync on edit" enabled, it can still be a little slow if you check off multiple tasks in quick succession and we are working on optimizing this as well for a future update. 7) The Notebook section on the iPhone looked and behaved differently than the task section. We redesigned the Notebook homepage to look and behave exactly like the Task home page so that there is more consistency with the design. We also fixed a number of other smaller issues. We know that the previous update was very disappointing to many of you and that we failed to deliver a quality product. We hope that this revised update will receive a warmer reception. We will continue to make refinements and improvements to the app as quickly as we can and we welcome constructive comments and suggestions in our forums and via support tickets. App Store If Toodledo helps you be more productive, please consider giving us a rating/review in the iTunes App Store. Even if you have rated us before, you can rate us again with each new update that we release. It really does help us to have good ratings. |
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markewallace |
As a new user and one who purchased the current iOS app despite knowing about the complaints on the withdrawn one, I look forward to seeing what this one is like.
I am considering upgrading my membership. Whether or not I do really might hinge on how well this iOS update is. I am already an RTM Pro member but am considering jumping ship. - Mark |
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Christoph Dollis |
I'd upgrade and try it, but only if I can downgrade if need be.
My memory's pretty vague on this, but I seem to remember it didn't have the same Hotlist icon-badge functionality or some such. That was a dealbreaker with me because I use it (and my calender app icon badge) extensively --- assuming my memory is even correct. Is there some kind of easy way to downgrade again if I don't like this upgrade? Maybe release the old app on the Apple store as a "Basic Toodledo App" or "Official Toodledo Old School App" or some such? And for what it's worth, I absolutely love Toodledo for its sorting functionality. I've built a near perfect task management system for myself, which wouldn't be nearly so good without Toodledo's website and iOS app functionality. I'm a ProPlus subscriber, have renewed my membership a couple times I believe, and am a huge fan. That said, you really ought to do what Astrid does well and allow repeating tasks to work properly on the iOS app *offline* even after syncing with the website. It may take a bit of thinking about, but it can be done. And an Android app would seem prudent for your business, even though I prefer iOS. Those things aside, Toodledo is hands down the best task management app for customizing a system to one's liking. I also like the sounds of what you've done with the app's GUI after listening to your customers. Oh --- as a further aside, I took an existing Google Chrome extension and customized it a bit so that it both has my Hotlist count as a badge on the Toodledo icon in Chrome ... and has the full version of Toodledo appear in an iframe inside a pop up when I click the button. It's handy. I can click a link in the pop up footer if I need to see the full website in its own browser tab, which I rarely do now. Perhaps publishing something like that in the Chrome Web Store would help get some free publicity and more customers, plus add a nice feature for your existing Chrome-using customers (both paid and basic). This message was edited Feb 25, 2013. |
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King_1361987693 |
Nvm.
This message was edited Feb 25, 2013. |
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daniel_h |
thank you! I was one of those that liked the new version, and am glad to see it back.
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tore.rykkel |
This is a very good way to handle a problem. I have been using the app all the time, satisfied with the 3.0 upgrade. I could agree to some of the complaints, but it was not a big issue for me.
However, when the problems started to appear, the way you have handled us, your users, is excellent. And the way you have gone through the whole application shows me you are taking problems really seriously. That is the best PR you can get. Hope this will help you to grow your organisation, further develop the product and that you will have a steady growth of new customers/keep the old ones. This application surely makes me work with much more ease. |
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steve |
Thank you for this update.
I had a real issue with the new large main font size in 3.0 and this has now been adjusted. Many thanks for listening. I've been a really satisfied "Pro" user for quite a while now and intend to be for a long time in the future. I think you've handled this really well. Thanks again. Steve This message was edited Feb 25, 2013. |
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Jimbobal |
Wonderful - so happy to have it back even better than before - Great work!
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Christoph Dollis |
This new one is a huge improvement vs. 3.0. But a couple issues:
1. On the iPhone, the task font size is smaller than in 3.0, but it is still too large -- I could fit more info in with the 2.x version of the app, small font size selected. It would be good to have the preference back to select a smaller font size. Maybe even have the option to select a larger font size for harder-of-sight people. In that case, call the current one medium. 2. I don't use priority in my system for any purpose, but for the mobile app, I HAVE to enable the priority field anyway in order for both my Hotlist and Toodledo-icon Hotlist badge to work. This was true in both version 2 and 3. It's a minor bug, however it clutters up the display and it would be nicer if the Hotlist worked properly even if we didn't use the priority field. Further, then we wouldn't have useless coloured corners. I've also noticed that not having priority selected as an option in the new mobile app lightens up the background of the tasks to pure white, which is nice. Bottom line? Users shouldn't have to jury-rig the mobile app by selecting an unneeded field just to get the Hotlist to work on it. Doing this isn't necessary for it to work right on Toodledo.com. Kudos: the colour scheme of the mobile app, matching the fine colours on the website, is a BIG improvement. This message was edited Feb 25, 2013. |
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Christoph Dollis |
Additional thought (pretty important) --
Now that the Toodledo iOS app DOES have the coloured corners for priority (which are a good idea), it is really a bad idea to have a totally different colour scheme for Toodledo.com's priorities after selecting "Settings" > "Row Style:" > "Title is styled by priority". The priority colour scheme on the iOS app (e.g., with Top Priority being in red instead of, as on Toodledo.com, a light-gold colour, which is actually less visible than the dark-brown colour of High Priority) is much, much better. I would strongly urge you to change the colour palette for the "Title is styled by priority" on Toodledo.com to match the colour scheme for priority on the iOS app. Otherwise, wasted time, confusion, and distracted attention will prevail. On the plus side, this should be a super easy fix ... just a bit of CSS. This message was edited Feb 25, 2013. |
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Christoph Dollis |
I'm still testing the new app. Overall I'm still thinking it's a definite improvement.
However I just discovered a frustrating bug. Even with "Lock Portrait Rotation" on in "General" > "Preferences", the keyboard swings to landscape mode. This did not happen in the 2.x versions. |
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peermogensen |
Fine new UI for iPad and iPhone. Very nice. Thanks.
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Purveyor |
Overall, I think that the new interface is better than the old version in terms of usability. Not thrilled that there are no settings for changing the font size or any other aspect of the user interface other than "Dual List Counts" and "Multi-line Titles". Still curious about who provided the feedback during the testing process.
Posted by Jake: We made the text darker and the background lighter as necessary to boost contrast. We used the industry standard W3C and WCAG 2.0 contrast ratio guidelines to ensure that every piece of important text has a high enough contrast ratio to get AA compliance. Okay. :-|But it seems that you didn't conform with the WAYTA and WWAC 3.0 guidelines. To address the "gloomy" feel of the app, we added back the blue toolbars at the top of the page, to match the colors of this website. The blue across the top creates a contrived contrast. It just stands out as color for the sake of color, rather than being integrated with the overall look of the rest of the app.Throughout the app, the "ON/OFF" switch is light grey when "ON". This is not consistent with the ON/OFF switches in other iOS apps or in the iPhone/iPad Settings, which use blue for "ON". Seems to me that you decided that there was too much blue so you went with light grey even though the iOS default offers better visibility. Also, the indicator for the Sort Order field is light grey. Not easy to notice. It should be darker. Anyway, style has never been Toodledo's strength and I doubt that it ever will be. The synchronization is rock solid and there are many nice features on the website so I'll give the new iOS app a try. I hope that version 3.1 will have separate Sort Orders for each View, along with Saved Searches. And maybe more than three icons at the bottom, with the choice to remove Notes ... This message was edited Feb 25, 2013. |
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f_murray |
I downloaded the latest update (02-25-2013) onto my iPad only to find out that it doesn't work at all - in fact it crashes. You either need to revert it back to the previous version or do a lot more testing as now my paid for Toodle-do is worth Toodle-nothing! I am not impressed!!!
Frank Murray |
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most.mackinest_132... |
Posted: Feb 25, 2013
Score: 1
Reference
The new version worked briefly but was excruciatingly slow. Now it doesn't work at all. When I open it, I get a blank All Tasks page which eventually crashes. Please work the bugs out quickly or enable users to get the last version back!
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f_murray |
My screen is the same as "most.mackinest_1325867031 " screen, except mine NEVER worked. Please fix ASAP or revert to the previous "Working" and "Good" version.
Thank you Frank |
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keith |
Looks great Jake. So far, so good.
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f_murray |
The iPhone version is working, although I don't like the new look at all.
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christoph.uhl |
Please change the look (for iPhone) into the old version. The new one is too difficult and too different to use.
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tore.rykkel |
Both iPhone4 and iPad2 works fine with the new app.
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