[Dev] Chandler 0.6 new user experience

[Sheila Mooney]

First of all, thank you very much for spending the time to download  
Chandler and give us such detailed feedback. This really helps us to  
make the product better!

Many of these issues/comments we are aware of already. You have found  
a couple of new bugs though and I will make sure those are logged. We  
did make some improvements in performance for 0.6 but realize this is  
ongoing and we plan on tackling a number of different performance  
goals for 0.7 as well. This issue regarding creation of items in the  
Trash folder is known and will be addressed in the next release. We  
didn't spend too much time on printing in 0.6 but this along with  
improvements/enhancements for recurrence are some of the features  
under discussion for 0.7.

For 0.6 our focus was really on usable calendaring so many other  
areas of the application are still very preliminary (we know there  
are bugs and inconsistencies), particularly around tasks and email.  
For 0.7 we plan on improving the table view and tackling some of the  
task management workflows you addressed below. This means building a  
framework for task creation and triage. We are currently in the  
process of design discussions for many of the features planned for  
0.7. If you are interested, I would encourage you to subscribe to the  
design list and participate in these discussions.

Thanks again!
Sheila

On Jan 18, 2006, at 1:29 AM, Jules wrote:

> Hi, just thought you guys would appreciate some feedback on the 0.6  
> release.  I last looked at chandler some time between the 0.1 and  
> 0.2 releases, so this is an almost-fresh perspective on it for  
> you.  Apologies if any of the below are known problems; in that  
> case just take them as suggestions that the problem is important.   
> OS is Windows XP SP2; a Linux-based server is available for  
> information sharing (I believe this is achieved through WebDAV,  
> which I have no experience of, but am confident I can set up).   
> User is an experienced developer looking for a suitable task list &  
> calendar application for a small workgroup (3 individuals working  
> for a small IT services company).
>
> First thing I notice is that startup is very slow.  On my PII-400,  
> it took about 20 seconds for the splash screen to appear, and well  
> over a minute for the application to load.  Memory usage is also  
> very high: about 75MB without anything added to the calendar.  For  
> an app that I would want to leave running constantly, this is just  
> too much.  Combine with 40MB for a web browser & another 30 for e- 
> mail and my 256MB of system RAM is starting to run out already.  If  
> e-mail could be added to Chandler without a noticeable increase in  
> the memory footprint it wouldn't be hideously bad, but it's still a  
> little high.
>
> When I delete the "Welcome to Chandler" appointment, the  
> information on it in the side bar isn't removed.
>
> Creating a new item for the task list is not very intuitive.  The  
> tick mark in the button to add it to the list seems to imply that  
> the item has already been performed.  If I press this button, then  
> press it again (because a tick mark appeared next to the item and I  
> thought I'd done something wrong) and then try to do something  
> else, it seems that the item is lost and I have to re-enter it.  A  
> "this item is not stored anywhere, do you really want to abandon  
> it?" dialog would be useful. [added later: somehow I've found the  
> item again.  It isn't entirely clear to me where it has been in the  
> meantime, but it does seem to have worked somewhat.]
>
> Somehow I seem to have created new items in the "Trash" folder,  
> which I then have to move to "My tasks".  Not sure what's going on  
> there, but it doesn't seem sensible, whatever it is.  Perhaps a  
> confirmation dialog if the user tries to create something in the  
> trash folder would be sensible?
>
> I have two "Untitled" items in my Trash folder because of this, but  
> can't seem to delete them from it.  I assume this is because delete  
> works by moving stuff into Trash.  It should change behaviour when  
> the item is already in Trash so that the item is totally purged.   
> It would also be useful to have "Empty Trash" as a context menu  
> item if you right-click on Trash.
>
> Printing of task lists isn't implemented.  This effectively rules  
> out using the current version for my purposes, but I suppose it's  
> now a priority task for future, unless I can achieve what's  
> necessary using the calendar.  I'll switch to that approach.
>
> Adding a recurring event is confusing.  I double click at the top  
> of today, and get a new event dialog in the sidebar which is good.   
> I then choose 'daily' from the recurrence drop down list (I'd have  
> liked an option for 'on alternate days' or similar, but understand  
> that that's an unusual requirement; 'weekdays' would also have been  
> useful).  I click on the content box to edit that, then realise  
> that I need to change the title, so I click on that.  At this  
> point, I get a dialog asking me if I want to change all future  
> occurrences of the event.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm still  
> working on the first addition of it, so of course I do.  I'm then  
> asked again when I go back to editing the content.  I think the  
> question should only ever be asked if the item has been 'closed'  
> since it was created, and even then it should only be asked once  
> per editing session.
>
> The way calendars are printed is next to useless.  The first  
> problem is that  'all day' events are not included.  Also, the  
> event details aren't included, only the little marker that shows up  
> on the calendar with the item's title.  I'd also like to be able to  
> print out just a single day's appointments, in a kind of expanded  
> form of the summary that appears in the view in the bottom left of  
> the Chandler window, but including all the details of the item  
> rather than just its time & title.
>
> At this point I realise that Chandler is not yet ready for my  
> application and uninstall it.  I hope this feedback can help  
> improve the next version, though, and look forward to trying it!
>
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