The Next Version

Please excuse the slightly pretentious title, but Version 1.2 just doesn't seem right as a heading. I'm going to use this post to talk a bit about version 1.2 of nActionr, and the changes that will be coming.

The first change that most people notice when they try, or see, the new version is the task list. The old one, while it served its purpose, was not functional enough. It did not allow enough control over what was displayed. The upcoming version of nActionr has a new task list component created to act as a task list. It's probably easiest to show the differences for starters rather than explain them all without letting you see the differences.

Lets first look at a picture from v1.1. You have a list of items and they're color coded. And that's pretty much it. Now let's look at a picture from v1.2.

There's quite a few differences but one good usability change is that the task entry textbox along the bottom of the screen is greyed out when you can't save what you enter into it. Select a task, though, and you can still edit it as before. Choose a context and project and you can still enter a new task as before.

I'll run through the differences between the versions as quickly as I can.

  • A next action has been defined. The checkbox for the Next Action task has a red border across the top of it. These can be set by the user, or automatically created by the application based on the order of the items.
  • The "Wait for response from Auntie Ethel" task has been set as a Someday/Maybe. Someday/Maybes are identified by the blue border going across the bottom of the checkbox. Someday/maybes are set by the user only.
  • The completed task (added for the benefit of this post) at the bottom is now italicised, struck through and greyed out so that your eye ignores it when you are glancing at the screen.
  • Individual rows are more distinguishable as the background for each task alternates between white and a light blue.

That's the visible stuff on the actual tasklist. Now for the rest of the new-for-version-1.2 features that are related to the task list:

  • A visual indicator to show if you are showing Someday/Maybes or not. This is the little blue SM on the toolbar at the bottom. Clicking this toggles Someday/Maybe display off and the icon changes to reflect this.
  • A visual indicator to show whether all valid tasks are shown or just the Next Actions. This is the red ALL next to the SM which currently indicates that all valid tasks are being shown.
  • Current sort indicator. You can now sort the task list quickly between: Alphabetical, [User Defined] Display Order, Identity and Importance. The Identity is the order of creation, while the Display Order is the user defined order of the tasks. This is selected from a pop-up that appears when you click the exclamation mark icon (which currently signifies Importance mode). The items are sorted in order of: Overdue, Next Action, Incomplete, Someday/Maybe, Completed when importance sort order is chosen.
  • Overdue items are bolded and underlined in order to attract attention when glancing at the screen.

This post has gone on for a while so I'll stop for now. There are more changes that I'll share with you over the next few days. If anything here isn't clear enough for you, please do let me know. It'd probably be best to use the forum as others may have the same questions but, as always, e-mail works too!

Posted by Jonathan Ballinger on Friday, September 14, 2007