Hog Bay Software
TaskPaper submitted to Apple
TaskPaper is a surprisingly adept to-do list with a paper-like user experience. Other to-do apps start with a database and build up; TaskPaper starts with a sheet of paper and builds down.
★ Paper-like user experience.
★ Powerful search and filtering.
★ Untethered sync to SimpleText.ws.
Inspired by TaskPaper for OS X. If you purchase TaskPaper for iPhone, you may use the coupon ‘NOTREAL’ to order TaskPaper for Mac from my website at a $5 discount.
Want to learn more? Please watch the video on my website.
Thanks,
Jesse Grosjean
Update
If all goes well the release date will be Feb 17th, that’s the prefered release date that I submitted. I’ll be winter camping for a few days before that, and didn’t want it released when I was away or just headed away.
I’m looking for TaskPaper icon feedback.
Sebastiaan de With has been helping me with TaskPaper for iPhone’s icon. There’s one choice per line of icons above. Take a look now and please form a first opinion.
Now for my thinking… the first idea is shown in row 4. I liked the icon, but in the end I decided that I wanted more of a “logo” look, and that I’d like to stay with the same basic TaskPaper for Mac shape, with some modifications to the “check”.
The next option was row 2, I love the clean edges and overall look, but initially the dark background seemed to make it look smaller then a standard iPhone icon. I’m not really sure if that’s the case now that I’m looking at it again.
Row 3 added more highlight so that it would stand out from the background more.
Row 1 changes things to red to keep things consistent with the Mac app color. If I choose one of the darker versions I’ll eventually update the Mac icon to match.
Any and all thoughts welcome, though I’m pretty sure that row 4 is out.
Update
Comments (lots on twitter too) are pushing me to line 2. Also, please note that these are just quick sketches, a total of a few hours of work, and line 1 was me modifying the photoshop file. Also I was pretty specific in my request, I wanted a really simple icon, and not something representational. I just want to protect Sebastiaan de With here… he was under some big constraints :) These are some of his more “normal” icons.
Thanks
That was a lot of quick feedback, thanks! I’m going with line 2. Lots of reasons to go with or against each possibility, but line 2 says “simple/clean” loudest to me, and that’s what TaskPaper’s all about. Thanks again!
Simplicity in Writing & Doing More With Less.
Luis Borba just posted Simplicity in Writing, a new ebook describing how he uses TaskPaper together with WriteRoom in his writing process. It’s a great example of breaking TaskPaper out of the projects and tasks box.
Doing More With Less: Minimalist Software, is a new post about a writer and his tools. It’s a pretty good summary of my goals when designing software.
I’ve just posted a new TaskPaper for iPhone beta.
The best thing about this release is that it’s now much faster to create outlines. Previously to create an item you clicked the (+) button, a popup menu (project, task, note) showed, and you selected the type of the new item that you wanted to create.
Now click (+) and a new item is immediatly created with a default type (depending on context). If you wanted to create a different type just tap return (in an empty line) to change the type. Also hit spacebar at the front of a line to indent, and delete at the front to dedent. The end result is that you can now very quickly create any task list structure all directly from the keyboard. The whole process is much faster then any other app that I’m aware of.
For beta testers here are more release notes and the beta download.
TaskPaper for iPhone quick feedback
I want to support multiple item (row) selection on the iPhone, but I’m not sure if there is a standard way to do it. On the Mac selecting multiple items is easy, just hold down the shift key. Does anyone know if there exists such as standard on the iPhone.
If there’s no better solution I think that I will reserver the far right side of the screen for multiple selection. So the normal behavior will match that of a standard list view… tap on a row to select it. But if your tap hits the far right side of the screen then the behavior will be to add the new row to the selection, or remove it if it was already selected.
Does that sound reasonable? Any ideas for how to let the user know what is happening?
Update Here’s the interaction that I’ve come up with.
I have a bottom toolbar item that when pressed shows a popup menu of items. All items in that menu work on the current selection… cut, copy, paste, etc. The interaction is to use that button like a shift key.
When pressed and held down it acts like a shift key, tapping on any row will toggle it’s selection status. (in normal mode tapping on a row selects the row and deselects all other rows).
A nice side effect of this is that as soon as you release the “shift key” you are presented with the list of commands to operate on the selection. So to quickly copy three items you would:
- Press the “shift key”
- With another finger, select the rows that you want.
- Release “shift key”
- Choose “copy” from resulting popup.
In 10 minutes of testing it seems to work really well.
TaskPaper for iPhone beta 0.3
I’m an hour past “late Friday”, but this is close enough :) Beta testers can get the new version here. I no longer have room for new beta testers, but everyone is welcome to keep up with the release notes and piece together what they can. If you missed it I also posted a demo screencast of the previous release.
TaskPaper & WriteRoom 10$ Off Sale!
Google Checkout is letting me down, but that’s good news if you are looking to buy WriteRoom or TaskPaper right now. The problem is that Google Checkout has a bug and can no longer process many of the coupon codes that I’ve issued.
Until they fix the problem TaskPaper & WriteRoom are both $10 off. That’s double the normal $5 off coupon that you get when you buy WriteRoom for iPhone. This sale will end as soon as they fix the bug or I switch to another payment processor.
