ForumsQuestionsResort tasks on changes and add a subtask feature
Resort tasks on changes and add a subtask feature
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Michael |
Ok, I am new here, so forgive me if I am missing something simple here but there are two things that are driving me crazy about the UI and both seem like they could be easily fixed:
First is that the list does not resort itself as you do changes (either in UI or elsewhere (another browser, iPhone, etc)) - you have to keep refreshing the page. Seems like it should be easy to do client-side in JS and lessen the load on the servers from having to refresh the page all the time. Is there a setting I am missing? Second is - I am a pro subscriber, mostly for the sub-tasks/projects feature. However I can't seem to find any way to add sub-tasks directly without having to first enter a task and then drag it over another task. That seems downright silly and a lot of useless busywork and it makes me think I am missing something. I would love to have "Parent task" selection added to standard "add task" or "add mutiple tasks" dialogs(especially to "add multiple tasks"!!!) - and then have a button, maybe next to "add note", to do "add subtask" which pre-populates the "Parent task" with right task. Thanks -M |
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kleerkoat |
There was a pretty lengthy discussion about the First one you brought up. I myself would like it to behave the same as you describe.
I don't quite remember exactly what the devs said about auto-updating when you change a value, but I do seem to remember that they mentioned that the majority of the users login to toodledo throughout the day, they enter a task and close toodledo, they open it for a few minutes and close it, I guess the reasoning was if people in general are always opening and closing toodledo they generally don't have a problem. I use Prism in firefox to make toodledo like a standalone application, so mine is always up and I am constantly in their changing things. Your second part I agree with also, but I would imagine that there would need to be a lot of backend programming that the devs feel could be spent elsewhere. The adaptability of toodledo to ones own liking, from a functional standpoint is tops, none of the others can touch it. just my pennies worth, ryan |
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Vin Thomas |
An easy way to get the list to re-sort itself without doing a browser refresh is to type the shorcut key for the view that you are in. For example, if you are in the Folder view, press "o" to re-sort. Context view is "c". Due Date view "d". etc, etc...
It would be nice if it would auto update, but this works for now. |
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Claudio |
Hi Michael.
The current way of doing adding the first subtask is "silly and a lot of useless busywork". There have been many requests to have this changed. The Toodledo developers have chosen to address many other issues rather than this one. Perhaps you have the solution but it's not clear how you see it implemented. Are you suggesting having the choice of adding a Task or adding a "Parent Task"? If so, this doesn't solve the problem of adding a Subtask to an existing Task. In Multi-Line format, the solution is easy: Have "Add a Subtask" in every task. (Almost all tasks consist of multiple steps, each of which could be a Subtask.) Problem is that a list in Multi-Line format doesn't display enough info. It should show more than just than one field, and the user should have a choice of what those fields are. In Grid format it's a bit trickier because you wouldn't want to use up valuable screen space by having "Add a Subtask" on every line, nor would you want to add an extra line to the list just for adding subtasks. Perhaps there could be just an icon, similar to the "delete task" icon. FWIW, there are other problems with Subtasks in Toodledo: 1. Not being able to change the order. 2. No task dependencies. 3. Having a newly created subtask disappear if the defaults for a new task do not correspond to the current filter. 4. Not being able to control the default behavior for nesting subtasks. And, not being able to specify Multi-Line for some views and Grid for others. |
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Anders |
For the resorting after change, vin's tip is a good one. I often just hit the number corresponding to the tab I am on since I can't always remember the keys for different views.
For the adding of subtasks, I am hoping this is something that Toodledo is working on. There have been a number of suggestions, and I am personally hoping they will just make the "+" for add subtask a default for every parent level task whether or not it already has subtasks. I use gridview, and although Claudio is correct that space is limited, I don't think that would take too much, and it is already there on tasks which already have subtasks anyway. |
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KatBoy |
I like that Toodledo doesn't refresh automatically; I periodically do a "brain dump" of several new items at once, and prefer to have them all at the top for double-checking, avoiding duplicates, adding notes, etc.
Don't use subtasks at the moment though, would love to see that function refined, especially task dependencies. Then Toodledo would be Perfect! |
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Anders |
I agree about not refreshing instantly for adding new tasks. I also like to have them available right at the top, but what is not useful to me is that if for instance I have a list sorted by priority, and I change a task's priority from 3 to 1, it does not immediately move to the correct location, and the screen must be refreshed.
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
We are working on a big update to subtasks that we hope will address a lot of people's complaints. The biggest one being the ability to add a subtask directly. This is near the top of our to-do list.
Auto-refreshing is one that is a little tricky. We may make this a user option in a future update, but there are some big changes that we would have to make behind the scenes for this to work, so its not a quick fix. |
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Anders |
Posted by Toodledo:
We are working on a big update to subtasks that we hope will address a lot of people's complaints. The biggest one being the ability to add a subtask directly. This is near the top of our to-do list. Awesome. Glad to hear it. You can take your time with the refresh business as far as I am concered. Vin's tip works very well for me. This message was edited May 12, 2009. |
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lite1 |
Developers thank you for your clear communication that also provides info on priority of feature requests. This is in stark contrast to RTM developers and makes me very glad I am migrating from there.
Knowing what is likely as well as what is unlikely (bec. of low priority, or bec. is a higher priority but takes enormous amount of programming to accomplish) helps a user to decide on their strategy for organizing their own data. While I am still in trial for Pro, knowing that subtask feature is going to improve, hopefully fairly soon will have me commit to Pro AND to subtasking and put up for now with its peculiarities. Can't give other concrete examples yet as I'm a noob, but expect that if I have a work around and know that it will no longer be needed because some upcoming feature will handle the situation, I might Tag or enter my Task Subject in a different manner so I can easily search and find all the things that will no longer need such a cumbersome work around. Thanks for being active in the forums, but as Anders said in another thread hopefully forum users can help each other so that developers can spend the most energy on improving the product. Edward |
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Michael |
Perhaps you have the solution but it's not clear how you see it implemented. Are you suggesting having the choice of adding a Task or adding a "Parent Task"? If so, this doesn't solve the problem of adding a Subtask to an existing Task. Actually it does. I thought I was so clear, but isn't it always how it goes - things are so much clearer in your head. This is what I propose - a simple 2 (no, not 1, 2) step approach: Step 1 - Add "Parent Task" field in "Add task" forms. Step 2 - Add a tiny button next to "Add note" that does "Add subtask". Make this button link to "Add task" form and pass the task id to it to pre-populate "Parent Task" field. Granted, I know nothing of this codeset - but it seems like a few hours of Dev and a few days of QA at most. I mean I totally respect decision to work on other features, but it seems like such a low hanging fruit. As for refresh, thank for pointing out the keyboard trick. This is very good, and maybe I can inject some javascript to autotrigger it every x minutes of inactivity. -M This message was edited May 14, 2009. |
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Claudio |
Posted by Michael:
This is what I propose - a simple 1 step approach: Did you notice that you have 2 steps in your "1 step approach"? ;)FWIW, your Step 1 is still not clear. Are you suggesting that there should be another field called "Parent Task"? Your Step 2 is similar to what I suggested in my previous post. I'm quite sure that a proper solution is not "low hanging fruit", given the current structure of Toodledo. This message was edited May 14, 2009. |
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Michael |
Posted by Claudio:
[quote]This is what I propose - a simple 1 step approach:[/quote]Did you notice that you have 2 steps in your "1 step approach"? ;) [/quote] Typo. [quote] FWIW, your Step 1 is still not clear. Are you suggesting that there should be another field called "Parent Task"? [/quote] Yes. I assume there is already a field linking a task to parent task. All we need is a way to select it. [quote] Your Step 2 is similar to what I suggested in my previous post. I'm quite sure that a proper solution is not "low hanging fruit", given the current structure of Toodledo.[/quote] What is missing from this? You can add a subtask to any task or assign any task to a parent task. -M |
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saskia.x |
I'm very pleased to hear that sorting out the sub-tasks is near the top of the list of priorities!
I just wanted to chime in mostly with regards to the refreshing issue. Personally I'd prefer it if this didn't change (or if it was a user-defined option); I like the fact that the recently added tasks sit at the top of the list until you refresh, and the checked off tasks remain on screen too. It makes it much easier to "undo" things if you've made a mistake, or edit things if you've thought of something to add or change. And I also have to agree that the responsiveness & honesty of the developers is one of the things that makes Toodledo great! Yes, there have been things that have been sitting on the list of "most requested features" for a very long time, but they've always made it clear that most of these things are a lot more complicated than they might seem, and besides, a good developer shouldn't just respond in a knee-jerk fashion to every single user request. The customer isn't always right; sometimes users want things that are incredibly complicated to implement, sometimes they just haven't worked out that they can easily accomplish the same thing with the existing features, sometimes there aren't enough users who want the feature to justify it, and sometimes the developer just has to stick to their own vision of the product. But, as RTM have shown, you can take this kind of thinking too far! I think Toodledo has the balance about right; listens & responds quickly to user requests, but makes sensible "executive decisions" about what to prioritise. Go Toodledo! |
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Michael |
Posted by saskia.x:
I just wanted to chime in mostly with regards to the refreshing issue. Personally I'd prefer it if this didn't change (or if it was a user-defined option); I like the fact that the recently added tasks sit at the top of the list until you refresh, and the checked off tasks remain on screen too. It makes it much easier to "undo" things if you've made a mistake, or edit things if you've thought of something to add or change. I actually agree with some of that - it is nice to have things not change right away, but it would also be nice to have them sorted easily. After someone suggested the view key-bindings as a solution I looked into that. Two things came of that. One is that a keybinding for refresh solves 80% of the issue. Unfortunately there is no refresh keybinding just select views - but then the other thing I found when I checked what "select views" keybinding actually do - which is just reload the page. Well, there is already a keybinding for that in the browser(though with a meta key)! The other 20% of the issue is based on the fact that I split my time on ToodleDo between 3 computers and iPhone - so I generally keep ToodleDo open on each Computer in browser or an Air "app"(I made a full feature ToodleDo in Air). The upside is that I can quickly see my tasklist, downside is thatits usually hours or days out of date - which tends to confuse me (I am clearly easily confused) - so doing a refresh after X minutes of inactivity would be sufficient for my needs. Attached is a quick and dirty GreaseMonkey script I put together as a "proof of concept" for autorefresh. It adds keybinding of "r" for refresh (this can be added in a few lines in TD code) and auto-refresh after preset time (1hr by default). The gotcha is that if you happen to start editing something and did not save it - you will loose the data after timeout. I could check for this, but I wanted to keep it simple and given the long timeout period - I figure it's acceptable. var timeoutAfter=1000*60*60*1; // 1 hour default var lastEvent=new Date().getTime(); function activitySeen(e){ lastEvent=new Date().getTime(); if (e.type == 'keypress'){ var obj = e.target.tagName; if (e.metaKey || e.ctrlKey || e.altKey) return; if (obj !="HTML" && obj != "BODY" && obj !="DIV") return; if (e.charCode == 114 || e.charCode == 82) location.reload(true); } } document.addEventListener('mouseover', activitySeen, true); document.addEventListener('keypress', activitySeen, true); setInterval(function(){ if ((new Date().getTime()-lastEvent)>timeoutAfter) { location.reload(true); } }, 1000); -M P.S. Sorry for lack of formatting, not sure how to quote code properly here This message was edited May 15, 2009. |
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stuarts28 |
Toodledo - When will the updates to subtasks be released?
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Proximo |
Good to hear there is a MAJOR upgrade to subtask because the way the currently work or don't work is a major issue. If we can have subtask behave as they should, this would be a major improvement.
The next big thing is Project management. Not work around, but implement project management to toodledo. This would round out Toodledo as an extremely powerful task/project management solution. Thanks for all the hard work.... |
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Anders |
The problem I see is, how are subtasks supposed to work? It seems like that is a subjective topic. I definitely think some changes would be almost universally aplauded, but the more particular features would probably be viewed differently by people who have different ways of using subtasks.
Also Proximo, what do you mean by project management? If you are simply talking about a new level called Projects, then I am right there with you. Projects or subfolders is probably my greatest wish for Toodledo at this point. If you are referring to adding cost/benefit stuff, resource management, and all kinds of fancy analysis tools, I wouldn't use them, but more power to you. This message was edited May 26, 2009. |
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Michael |
Posted by Anders:
The problem I see is, how are subtasks supposed to work? It seems like that is a subjective topic. I definitely think some changes would be almost universally aplauded, but the more particular features would probably be viewed differently by people who have different ways of using subtasks. I think the bigger issue is that we do not need to define HOW they work, just make them work and let users figure out how they want to use them. I know I posted this in several threads, but I am of firm belief that all you need is allowing each task to have a parent task. Thus, the work is: 1 - add one field to task creation - parent task and not mess with anything else. 2 - add to each task display "add subtask" button which simply pre-populates #1 3 - Add a view of task and all of its children. (nearly identical to Folder view) Thats really all. There are some nice-to haves too, like if you do an action on task, give an option to propagate to subtasks, but that is icing on the cake. Let the users figure out what they want to do with this structure. For example, you can actually get rid of the Goals and Folders (I am not advocating that for the record) and just use this structure, if you choose so. -M Everything else that is convoluted and hard to implement (Projects, extra levels) becomes redundant after that. |
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