figaro's dashboard

Justin Williams has been dropping hints of his interests to provide a syncing mechanism for Check Off, but until this release he was dead against charging, something I personally suggested to move the product forward. Now this isn't a dig but I think he has to look at the product and say x,y and z are what it needs to not just survive, but to WORK.
Not that he and his team haven't done this, but there needs to be an admission on the devs part that currently its an incomplete system.

A ToDo list now has to span several devices; portable and fixed, thus always accessible. Either through a web interface or syncing with direct connections, reading the comments confirm this.

I feel v4x is a base of which can now be built upon to serve these desires, Check Off should be sold in a pack, not just part of a solution, but a whole one. Either that or the ability to utilise standards of some sort so that other companies apps can fill those gaps, as Check Off is clearly a favorite for some to use in their overall solution, most would rather keep it.

Personally, I've mentioned this before, I like Google Tasks right now, but it can't be plugged into. Simply put it has the ability to be viewed online (in GMail) and to work on the iPhone and so it is ahead of Check Off, if the two could co-operate well that would be magic, but if I had to choose right now I'm still 50/50. Tasks is an immature app, so that really speaks for its simple ability to be there when I need it.

Check Off has to be more bold than it is now, its also a paid solution, but it must become a greater solution like Don't Forget The Milk with GMail integration etc... or its basically dead. I don't know how many more people have to tell these guys this.

I agree on both acounts, I like the OS for OS X that Check Off has but would need Google's service to make it work everywhere, and auto exporting is a good backup method, maybe every week or something, something in the settings. – figaro, on August 25, 2009 20:17

I ended up emailing support and they converted my fiel with the following instructions:

1. Quit Check Off 3.8
2. Move (dont copy. move it) your com.carpeaqua.checkoff.plist file somewhere super safe.
3. Install Check Off 4.0
4. Drag the attached com.secondgear.checkoff.plist file into [Home]/Library/Preferences. (they sent me a special version of my plist file)
5. Launch Check Off 4.

That will completely bypass the migration process as the attached file is already migrated.

Hope this helps someone.

I don't know you know, the one thing I would like is to see is, IT. I've been waiting a long time, over a year I think and am rather taken by Google's immature, but released, Tasks app. Simply having it online means that I can get to it anywhere.

I still use Check Off for the long URLs, which don't suit Tasks so well, but am slipping away to Tasks. I think the most important thing is to release something, a beta perhaps, because I find now that the wait for what I need is not worth it. Almost.

I don't know what a plist file is but I think your right in saying that the contents should be synchable. I don't know if it should be MobileMe dependent for synching online though, nice as it is, isn't that a paid service while Check Off is free?!

I wish Google would open their Tasks app up a bit, I like what they have going on with that and with your suggestion of a synchable file, well, that would be great.

Google just "graduated" their Tasks feature from the GMail Labs section.. I never used it myself but they seem to think its fit for prime-time. One thing missing is an API to allow for tasks to be shared.. this is not something they must be unaware of and I hope they allow for it because they have good integration their end.

Still hanging on for a release this year, keep on.

Looks good, thanks for the pic. I can adjust to that, but whatever you do it has to look good. Really I'm expecting you to bring what you had, modernise it like you say, but most of all to address the concerns that are posted in the forum, some new features too would all add up to keeping you busy.

I press a key combo now and it slides in, I like that - being a former windows user that kind of effect always reminds me of the superior platform I'm on. But that's no more, fine, but I hope the replacement is just as good looking because I know Windows is all into its tinted glass stuff...

Do you have a list of the things your going to add (i.e. iPhone sync support :) ) so that people have an idea what to expect, and then they can discuss things. This is one feature here, but has no illustrations or mock ups, how about something more tangible.

Thanks. It looks like you have a passionate bunch using your app.

It looks to me like you want to push the idea ahead, I like Check Off as it is so anything else for me is not what I'm looking for.

Oh, I love the free flow look, I don't think it slows it down really, its a nice animation (that should stay an 'option'). People want different things, why not allow for many views and with some features disabled, that way you can please everyone.

I have saved this RSS as a feed in my google reader, will it be the route for updated news on the progress of Check Off? If so please update, its good to hear about the app.. I'd like to know what else from the long request list is being baked into the new 4.0 release (I know that the floating idea of ours is one of your main concerns).

Thanks.

I rely on checkoff being in the menu bar, I don't want a dock app taking up space as it will shrink my icon sizes because it takes up space. The todo app will always be open and I think the menu bar is best for that.

Glad to see attention being focused on the app! especially as 'Notes' was updated to synch with the new iPhone 3.0 software update. Can't wait to see it work, but if it changes to a dock app I might not like it as much as I do now. In the dock its out of the way.

Oh well, at least your aware of it, it might be an idea to add the text "if your file is >20MB this could be the problem", that is if the text is generated by your app and not Aperture.

I have a feeling Aperture is going to be a lot kinder to developers in the next release. Whenever that will be.

Thanks for the reply, the best I can offer (not like you don't know already) is to maybe try and contact the iPhoto team because they have that sort of thing with Facebook, but surprisingly not Flickr. That is people online can add notes to pictures to write the name of people under their faces and it gets synched back to iPhoto.

If it were possible Apple might well have done it in the first place and its likely they will in an update, adding it to your own extension might just be a big waste of effort if Apple do it, however waiting for it to be done in iPhoto might make it easier for a program like Aperture - or at least to appeal to the Aperture team.

Good luck.

I've been using CheckOff for ages, for all the same reasons as others have mentioned. I've also been waiting for it to be revamped. Before I list the new things I would like to see I must say that my definition of a GTD app is that is must be ever-present ,thus ultra portable. This achievable with an iPhone app that overrides Apple's To-Do app; allowing entry on the device and synching. In turn this means that the need for online synching should not be necessary a device with you all the time is a better replacement to an internet connection.

1. When c&p I would like only plain formatted text to be used, I hate the current situation where the last font used is applied to the next new note you take. Something in the options to stop this would be good.

2. I list completed tasks (archived) with a tick in the checkbox, I would like a nice fade effect to take place which shoos away the todo to a 'completed folder' adding a date/time stamp to the task in the comments area, maybe in square brackets. Also the idea suggested by somebody else to have a strikethrough effect is good, but should only then be used if tasks remain mingled in ones existing (uncompleted tasks)

3. A new icon to replace he tick please. like a ☃ Snowman or replaceable with a char from the Symbols & Dingbats character category..I also like ♗ (Bishop) and ⚰ (Coffin) ◌ (dotted circle)

4. An undo feature (accidentally deleting a task and haing it unretrievable is like playing Megaman I on the NES on 'easy' - not easy! its a bit old school to be so harsh) and a fix for the export option (which currently crashes the app)

5. Searching for a todo should be made possible with a search box, currently I export the todos and use spotlight to find entries - this is a must with hundreds of todos. Searching for something I feel has been overlooked, search is everywhere these days, maybe not when 3.8 was made.

6. An option to time date stamp when the task was created, simply putting this info into square brackets at the beginning of the todo or maybe at the end e.g. [created: 1st June, 2009] ~please don't use numerical only formatting because that can confuse things depending on the country you live in.

7. Allowing me to choose what extra knobs & whistles I see; a drag and drop feature like FireFox has with its toolbar. I would like just to have a search field at the top and none of the menu options or colour coding... so a drag and drop option would be ace!

8. Using colours should be done sparingly in my opinion. I would like to be able to set one colour as the priority colour: so anything in red will float to the top and always be at the top no matter when it was crated - presuming that CheckOff starts from the top every time its opened up, which currently it doesn't. If not then some keyboard or mouse click (maybe holding down the mouse button) would show the most urgent todos. I don't know if you have seen the effect that gracefully moves text around by certain manner of order, the text slips between each other to re-order themselves - this would be aesthetically nice when viewing impending todos marked in red.
In fact using that small space to the left of the checkbox to simply colour and prioritise a todo would be a way of ridding the need for a button at the top of CheckOff, making way for just a search box.

9. Text gets lost if its too long, this goes not just for the title but for the comments. Is it possible to show all the text in a box at a small pt size when clicking the todo title and then have it automatically and rapidly size back up to normal, so you instantly see that there is more.. sort of a zooming up effect and maybe a scroll ticker for titles too long? I would like to say that the rule of one line for each todo/task is one that should be kept.

10. To create a task I still have to use the cursor :( I click the hotkeys to bring it up and then hit 'n' (for new todo) and start typing a new todo title but find that the automatic knee-jerk response to press the tab key to start filling in the comment field only allows me to rename the title and not pass to the comment field.. this is not intuitive for me and like you said a lo of the shortcuts in the code are undocumented

11. Yet another app for you to write: a simple widget that displays all the priority todo's, those labelled in red (ref: 8), most people shouldn't have more than 5 things they need to do immediately. Simply checking your widgets would be easy to do when looking for those impending tasks, unless you figure out an easy way to see them in CheckOff itself.. maybe even shunt these priority ones off to a Google Widgets so they could be seen in Gmail (now accepting Google widgets)

P.S. I like the genie effect and any due date feature should be optional (i.e. can be turned off)

Final thoughts would be that I need something always there i.e. iPhone/Mac app, something that is always up to date (sync), something that is simple (done), something that once in use gets strait to the point - hitting 'n' and entering text is good enough (tab would be even nicer to switch to the comment field though!), searching for something is severely missing! and finding something at a glance that lets me see priority tasks with colour on a white background is a brilliant way of highlighting todos.

(Sorry about the car link, that was a Yahoo Answers answe, I really don't know how that got there!). Well, I think the cloud is the way forward and that would allow for the best synching method. You have to at least sync between a portable (i.e. iPhone) and a computer, but GMail would be nice as its always there when you load your email (note: must be https compliant)