[Design] Remove behavior

[Davor Cubranic]

Mimi Yin wrote:
> Hi Davor,
> I don't think it's a matter of how effectively you're using 
> collections :o) Could you provide some specific examples of this?
>
I don't remember exactly why I first tried it, but my Dashboard feels 
cramped so I guess I wanted to remove some items that I didn't feel like 
they were that important t be tracked in the dashboard. Maybe they were 
FYI's from the calendar or tasks that aren't super urgent. Or recurring 
items that are past their last occurrence but are still stuck in the Now 
state (I have a bug filed for this already).

The control Now-Later-Done also makes the triage somewhat clunky. Lists 
quickly get long, especially if I don't triage them often enough. I also 
don't like that it's hard to get an item from Now into Later because as 
soon as it's clicked on once it becomes Done and moves into another 
section. (Although now that the item is moved to the top of the Done 
section, it's easy to keep the Later section collapsed so that the item 
is visible just down the screen. Still, I think it causes a loss in 
context. The item either should not be refiled until the cursor is 
moved, or a double-click should take it straight to Later.)

BTW, as I'm increasingly using Chandler for my information management, 
I'm starting to use it more for task lists as well as calendaring, and 
its limitations in this area are really starting to make me feel like 
I'm losing sight of what I'm doing now or should be doing next. 
Dashboard (and the Tasks area) feels very nice at first, with its 
traffic light statuses of items and a clean UI. But as the list of my 
tasks  grows, I really miss the flexibility of the PIM that I've been 
using for the past few years: Ecco Pro.

Firstly, Ecco makes it possible to attach various dates to information 
items, and these serve as "ticklers" in the GTD system: "To do", "Follow 
up", "Remind me", "Call", and "Anniversary" are some of the predefined 
categories that come with the application. Ecco's equivalent of 
Dashboard is more like a table of ticklers for tasks that are past due 
or due today (or this week, in the weekly view), sectioned by the 
tickler category, so I can focus on "ToDo"s at the start of the day 
before looking at "follow ups" and "reminders" later. On the other hand, 
defining a tickler for a Chandler task is done by attaching a custom 
"alarm" and requires setting up a time (why?). More importantly, it 
doesn't let me distinguish between different types of ticklers.

Furthermore, it's easy in Ecco to define additional filters to further 
expand or restrict the range of tickled items shown in this view. (For 
example, "due in the next week".) I admit I don't use those at all, 
although apparently people who have to juggle many tasks (e.g., 
lawyers), find this feature incredibly useful. I realize it's not 
something that's in the immediate feature plan, but I thought I'd bring 
it up since I'm already talking about Ecco.

Finally, Ecco's folders are miles ahead of Chandler's collections for 
organizing and managing information. However, I think once tags are 
added, Chandler has the potential to surpass Ecco's ability in this 
area. I know it's not going to happen in the next few months, so I'll 
wait with my suggestions until they're more appropriate.

One more thing: the layout of the summary table in the Tasks area is 
wasting a lot of space for things that are irrelevant to it, like the 
Who column, while there is hardly any room for the task description. Are 
there any plans to redesign this? Right now it really looks like a poor 
cousin wearing hand-me-down UI from another app area. I know a task can 
be created from an email message, but I really don't care who sent it if 
I'm looking at the tasks summary in the Tasks area.

Davor