ProductiveFirefox

In an effort to simplify everything, we are now blogging over at http://blog.gtdinbox.com (ProductiveFirefox is being put to pasture).

If you were an RSS subscriber, we suggest you also update your subscription to the new blog (see its sidebar).

As this is another update of a “million little bits”, I’ll spare you the tedious details and just focus on the big changes

Clearly we didn’t go far enough with space minimisation (is that a word?) last time, and so the big + button on the Labelling Box - which I loved btw - has gone. It has been replaced by moving the dropdown boxes into a single row (those dropdown boxes now also need less clicks to make them disappear). Eran Kutner deserves the thanks for suggesting it! I suspect we’ve still not pleased everyone with this, and I hope in a future release to restore the style of inline labels that GTDInbox 2 once had. On the back of recent blog comments, I also made it possible to minimise individual parts of the Sidebar to reduce space.

It turns out it’s much more complicated than I anticipated to make the Popup resizable, so that has been pushed back for a future release. In the meantime, I took a best guess and reduced its height but increased its width.

Okay, this is where it gets potentially funky… bear with me! In the Popup, I removed the header that allowed filtering of Next Actions, Actions, Personal, etc. While it had a purpose, it was not intuitive and it took up valuable space. There are plans afoot to bring similar functionality back, but with a (hopefully!) better interface.

On the sidebar, the way the links worked have been refined (several people asked for this) - the main link now opens in Gmail and includes only active emails. The ‘popout’ icon now opens the Popup. This is also more consistent with Gmail.

In response to Bill in the last blog comments, the ability to have multiple statuses at once is now an option. And in response to Jack Nelson on UserVoice with a very neat point, in the Popup, if you preview a thread and then click Back, it remembers where you were in the list of emails. And thanks to Glen Norris, a major bug with the Options screen was fixed. And before I forget - the Esc key now closes the Popup (about time!).

Oh and Pete deserves a big thanks too - my changes were starting to make it look a bit, well, rubbish - and Pete managed to draw his craftman’s eye over it before this release.

As per usual, get it from http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/ (and refresh the page if you don’t see A12).

More to come next week… including a new website and maybe even a public release!

Okay, such is the size of this update not even I’m sure I can remember everything that is in it!

Let’s start with the more mundane. Thanks to several of you (notably Bliss and Nick), GTDInbox is now better at self diagnosis, and will give a variety of error messages to tell you if it’s misbehaving. It’s also no longer case sensitive on default status labels (e.g. it would not formerly recognise S/action is the same as S/Action - now it does).

It now has a Welcome message for new users, information help on the Settings/Labels page, and is better at informing you about what is happening on the blog.

Ok, let’s step this up! You can now create labels from the dropdown labels menu in the Labelling Box - i.e. create labels by type within a conversation.

Multiple Inboxes? We now have better support. It’s not perfect (because Multiple Inboxes themselves are a hack, so we are limited), but you can Preview messages in Multiple Inboxes, and use the popup to change labels.

Remember those magnifying glasses and trash icons with all the keyboard combinations? We felt them a little inelegant, so they were pruned. The trash icon is gone, as are the messy keyboard actions. Instead, there is just the magnifying glass, with an automatic popup menu that lets you do other stuff (like Action/Delete/Spam) more quickly.

Pete spent ages sweating the details on the interface design, making big usability strides in the Labelling Box and sidebar and well as less noticeable bits and pieces.

What else what else… ah yes, I nearly forgot my favourite! LOTS of you have been saying the Labelling Box is too fat for its own good. It needed a diet. Well, we decided to go experimental instead and gave it some clothes that disguised its figure Now, only the Status line is shown; and there is a big + button in the top left. If you mouse over, the rest of the label links are shown (and disappear when you move your mouse away); and if you click the + button, it shows the labels permanently. There may well be a better approach - it’s not finished yet - but we hope this is a good first step.

Get it from http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/

PS I’d love to draw your attention to our previous post on how you use GTDInbox (and what you want) -> http://productivefirefox.com/2009/07/13/introducing-gtdinbox-on-uservoice/

UserVoice - An Overview

We are now using UserVoice to gather ideas for feature development, rather than the traditional forum. The reason for this is simply that it is much more effective for combining multiple ideas.

The idea is delightfully straightforward: when you submit something, it tells you what else it thinks is similar and already exists. If you agree it is a similar idea, you can then vote the existing one up and add your own thoughts/perspectives to it.

As you will no doubt immediately recognise, this makes it very good at creating one place for an improvement suggestion, and then evolving and prioritising it.

GTDInbox on UserVoice

Let’s Be More Interesting…

The risk/problem with UserVoice is that we end with very fragmented requests, “do X”, “do Y”, etc.; rather than “I use it like A and want to achieve B”.

So, I’d like to use the blog right now to do precisely that.

The real question is, “What do you use GTDInbox to achieve, and what would you like email to do better?”

If it helps, I will kick it off with my own thoughts. I use it for workflow and shortcuts. So, it structures my email largely to ensure I do not forget things - I’m always 99% confident I will follow up on an email I turned into a task. The shortcuts fall into two categories: I like direct things like ‘Preview’ and the Labelling Box, and more general benefits (that arise from multiple features), like being able to retrieve files and other information faster from a contact.
What I want it to start doing is get better at helping me organise my inbox (so I can spend less time with email - lazy email, if you will), and provide more shortcuts that connect my email to additional information/resources on the Web, and vice-versa.

I look forward to your comments!

Ok, let’s try this again… I hope, I believe, that Preferences will work this time around. They’re in Firefox’s Addon window (Tools -> Addons, find GTDInbox and click Options). They might look a little plain, but they are powerful - if you break anything with GTDInbox let me know and I’ll get you back on your feet Oh, and you have to refresh Gmail to take advantage of them.

What else? A few bits here & there!

* Pre-Compose Labels are a little less fragile (and in the next version I will make them bullet proof).

* This bit I really like… in the Sidebar Box, if you click on a label type (e.g. Projects), the hierarchial menu now includes bold numbers to show you how many tasks are on that label - you know, things like P/GTDInbox/Bugs (50)

* This shouldn’t matter to you guys, but it’s a little easier for beginners. There is a setup routine for Status labels and help on the label types.

* A big bug was fixed with the Archive/Finish+MoveNext functionality on the blue labelling box. This should now be much more fluid.

* Just a little touch (thanks to Mate), if you keep the Sidebar Box minimised, you still have a shortcut to access the Dashboard

I believe that’s all for alpha 10 - as usual, any questions/bugs/ideas/thoughts, drop them in the comments or send me an email.

Download Alpha 10 from http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/ (Refresh if it’s still showing an earlier version).

Download GTDInbox Alpha 9 from http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/

This is not your average blog post… you’ll no doubt be aware that Gmail has released a fairly major new feature, and I believe that has royally broken 2.x.

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This has slightly screwed with our timeline. We’re doing a bit of a juggling act between contracting to bring the pennies in, and getting 3.0 to Beta - the bottom line being we were not quite ready to discontinue 2.x but I suspect migration to 3.0 will be the best choice for a lot of people.

So if this is your first foray into the world of GTDInbox 3.0 Alpha (alpha for “it’s really not quite finished yet”), welcome! As a quick introduction, 3.0 is a complete rewrite to be way more flexible (lots of new features coming), faster (!), more stable (!!), and far more useable. The problem with a rewrite is that some features have yet to be reintroduced, and it’s not yet bug free.

If you want a quick catch up, I recommend:

* The post that kicked this all off, Unveiling GTDInbox 3.0 Alpha 1

* A more up to date, Our Plans for the Next Few Versions

* A behind the scenes look at How and Why We Work

* Oh, and we are on Twitter, which we use for the smaller updates that are not blog worthy -> GTDInbox @ Twitter

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Back to this new Alpha 9…

We have finally restored the Preferences, this means you can change your prefixes (i.e. you are not forced to use S/ and P/) and your default labels (such as ‘Action’). There’s not much in the way of help yet; so I only recommend you change this if you used to do it back in GTDInbox 2.x. Oh, and the Preferences are now in Firefox, go to the ‘Tools’ menu, then ‘Addons’, find GTDInbox, and click ‘Options’.

Pre-Labelling is back on the Compose screen! It’s a little intermittent right now, but I’ll track down the problems for the next release.

It works on the final release of Firefox 3.5! And it’s *fast*.

To save space, the Dashboard/Label/Contact popup now puts threads on a single line, like Gmail does.

And most crucially, how do we handle Gmails’ new Labels UI? Well, in the sidebar GTDInbox Box, there is a line for each category of labels (Projects, Contexts, Misc, etc. -> may be hidden behind a dropdown arrow). If you mouse over these, they pop out with nicely structured labels. We no longer try to modify Gmail’s own Labels UI (it got very complicated/breakable when they introduced drag and drop); but we may look at supporting drag and drop on our own labels.

Big question here… if you can no longer do something as effectively as you used to, let me know what that is and I will see what I can do.

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As this is still an Alpha and I’ve had to release it a little faster than would have been desirable, there are some known issues,

1) As above, the Pre-Label on Compose screen is a little intermittent

2) When you open up Labels via the dropdown (e.g. in the blue Labelling box), and click the scroll bar, it disappears.

3) The new single-line messages in the Popup do not always display correctly.

4) There are some broken spots in the user interface - things need to be more obvious (like using the correct mouse pointer to indicate its clickable).

5) I’ve just realised Options does not appear to be enabled in Firefox 3.5… I will try and find out why.

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If you have any problems getting it to load, please check out:

Diagnosing Load Problems

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Download GTDInbox Alpha 9 from http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/

Expect those bugs to start getting addressed in the next few days.

(Oh, and thanks to Sam Katakouzinos who was actually the first to post a helpful message to the forum about the new 3.0! Thanks Sam!)

I occassionally receive emails enquiring about why we’ve slipped behind schedule or asking when will a feature appear. Perfectly valid questions, but I thought it might help everyone’s understanding if I shared a little of how we’re set up and how we work.

First though, that wasn’t actually a complaint. Most bug fixes and lots of great feature ideas all started with the emails you send, they’re the life blood of what GTDInbox is trying to achieve. So please, don’t stop

I will omit our history for sake of brevity, other than to mention that for the first 2 and half years GTDInbox was very much a sideline project maintained only when I could whereas now (as of early 2009) it’s my sole focus.

The company that will support GTDInbox is The Inbox Foundry Ltd, and that was incorporated about 2 weeks ago. Who is The Inbox Foundry? Well, right now it is Pete - the guy behind all the great designs GTDInbox now has - and I. I work on GTDInbox fulltime, and Pete works when he can. Stephen - who is the coding guru responsible for the very powerful framework that GTDInbox is now (as of 3.0) built on, is employed elsewhere but will hopefully be taking the framework to its fullest potential in the future.

And that is it! 1 full time and 2 contributors. I hope this explains why progress is sometimes a little patchy This was especially true for the first few months, where all our efforts were on rebuilding from scratch; and it has taken all that time just to get things to a ‘basic releaseable’. We’re gradually moving beyond that now, but I’m still bogged down in all the non-product details that must be done to get to launch (website, support, business misc, promotion, etc.).

A typical day might include bug fixing, new product development, refactoring to keep the codebase clean (which is vital with such a small team - complexity spells product death), copy writing, email answering, UI designing, product planning, marketing planning and countless more little chores. Although for the sake of sanity I do try and break the days up into one or two areas of concentration.

All of this raises the question of what drives me/us. If I’m candid, the product development is undeniably hard (in view of our resources), and the uncertainty involved does weigh heavily (is the next feature a good idea, will Google clone us, can we break through). Fortunately, there is an answer - and that is ‘great possibilities’. I love what we’ve already done, and even more so the blank canvas of what is still doable. That alone would be fun; but even better it has value - email is such a sorepoint for so many of us that it’s just plain satisfying to work towards improving it.

Actually on the subject of the blank canvas, the coolest thing of all is how GTDInbox is built. We have a very firm vision of the workflow we want to put in Gmail; but here’s the great bit: the interesting features are not limited by what we want to build. GTDInbox now makes Gmail plugin-development very easy, so anyone competent with coding can extend the functionality without clogging up the core product. I have no idea what will be created, but I am confident it will be new and exciting - because frankly, email has plenty of scope for it (interpret that how you will!).

I’m conscious of talking too much here, so I hope this little overview is enough to give you some insight into the team and goals behind GTDInbox. If you have any specific questions, fire away in the comments!

It is time for a little catch up on GTDInbox’s product development and how it’s being scheduled.

The top priority right now is to reduce the complexity in how GTDInbox is distributed. We have Mozilla serving a rapidly aging 2.x product, 3.0 is being pushed only on the blog, the main website is out of date, the new website is not yet right; and the forum is frankly a free for all

Before we can fully make 2.x obsolete, we have to get 3.0 ready for the mainstream - which means hitting Beta. That includes adding Preferences in, bringing back 80% of the features 2.x had, and adding in sufficient help that a beginner can get started.

Once that is launched, it will be trivial to update the website. So, we will have one product, one website, a new kind of forum (the old forum will remain, but will not be actively promoted) and a far easier time releasing new features!

I hope we’ll be at this point sometime next week.

After that, the next product goals are roughly:

* Improve the UI and Workflow (mainly improving interaction and reducing space usage)

* Add additional ways to filter and order threads

* Add Pre-Compose labels back in

* Add a ‘Related’ button

That should take us through to sometime in July!

This is not really a complete update, but I know a few of you are waiting on some critical changes, so here goes!

1) It now works with the new Release Candidate 2 of Firefox 3.5.

2) There is a fix to several labels bugs, some of which were causing crashes (although I urge to add, no damage).

3) The UI has been visually tweaked to be slightly easier to read.

Grab it from http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/Another blog post will follow to share our upcoming plans, and expect the next alpha release by the end of the week.

We’ve added the a new Box on Gmail’s navigation bar to serve as GTDInbox’s “home” within Gmail. There are a few glitches with it and the design is lacking in places, but I wanted to show you where we’re heading. I expect we will add ‘Recent Contacts’ and ‘Recent Threads’ to this too.

Get over to http://www.gtdinbox.com/3/ now to install GTDInbox 3.0 Alpha 7.

In the next release, expect a more refined Box and some visual tweaks that Pete is doing!