Howdy,

As the week draws to a close, so too does a large swathe of work we've been doing tightening up, tweaking, twiddling, fixing, and testing Sandy's web site interface.

As usual, our focus has been on striking a balance between simple and powerful, friendly and unobtrusive, fun and functional. We've incorporated some of the incredibly helpful feedback you've all provided here on Get Satisfaction in the form of interface enhancements, bug fixes, and site- and email-wide improvements. And behind the scenes we've set some even more interesting developments in motion that you'll see surfacing in the days and weeks to come.

So you can regard today's update as a warm-up before the next phase of the performance we call product development.

We hope you like what you see!

Rael

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TIDYING: Here, there, and everywhere

You'll no doubt notice the spring cleaning we did on Sandy's web site, but here are some of the highlights in case you missed them:

* Sandy's site feels that much more pleasant to visit with that legal-pad-yellow vanquished.

* Gone are the filter and sort controls from the sidebar. (They were all but unused. Updates to the default filtering and sorting depending on whether you're looking at your to-dos, calendar, bookmarks, Daily Digest, ... should take care of just about all you formerly had to fiddle with to get to.)

* Subscription links for your iCalendar and RSS feeds are at the bottom of the page when you need them, out of your way when you don't. (They rather cluttered the sidebar and made entirely too much of themselves.)

* The calendar appears in the sidebar on all of "Your stuff" and "Daily Digest" pages (rather than just on Digest pages).

TIDYING: And email too!

We also worked with Sandy to tidy up her email messages — every single one, from replies to reminders to your Daily Digest:

* The same color-scheme you see on the Web is also reflected in Sandy's HTML email (turn on HTML email at http://iwantsandy.com/settings/email for a splash of color in your inbox).

* We moved the Home, Help, and Community links to the footer of Sandy's email template. (Those of you skimming a preview of Sandy's messages in your inbox — Gmail, Outlook, and iPhone mail in particular — will find more of the content in those previews rather than those repetitive links.)

* Repeating reminders, appointments, and to-dos now include mention — beyond their @daily or @weekly or other recurrence tags — of their repeating: "- Repeats weekly"

We're sure you'll enjoy the results of our reshuffling, polishing, and tidying!

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FIXED: The non-disappearing edit window

We had thought we had this licked in our 4/12 release, but there were still some corner cases causing some trouble. It was nailing this down that led to quite a bit of the refactoring behind today's release.

Again, thanks to all of you who posted and ultimately helped us narrow down just what was causing this inconsistency: Paul and Nobiq [http://gsfn.us/t/ghx], Nedflanders [http://gsfn.us/t/hwh], Thorsten [http://gsfn.us/t/hwr], Onorio [http://gsfn.us/t/hx1], and others.

We're sorry that this caused some of you some difficulty and will endeavor to avoid introducing bugs like that in the future.

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FIXED: Nits in toggling and rescheduling repeating appointments and to-dos

Those of you who ran into some of the nits in toggling and rescheduling repeating appointments and to-dos should find that all cleared and acting just as you'd expect it to now. Thanks to all of you who sent us the details we needed (and your assumptions about how things were working) that allowed us to make this all work that much better.

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IMPROVED: Toggling to-dos done

We've dropped the three-way to-do / done / not-to-do toggle in favor of a simple to-do/done checkbox appearing to the left of any to-do in your To-do list [http://iwantsandy.com/todos] or Daily Digest [http://iwantsandy.com/digest].

We think you'll find this much more intuitive than the good-in-theory three-way toggle. (You can still turn anything into a to-do by clicking its name, the "Edit" link, and adding a @todo or @done tag.)

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IMPROVED: Your Stuff

The lion's share of this update vastly improves, cleans up, and removes bugs in the way Sandy lists, sifts, and sorts your stuff.

* Sorting and filtering is taken care of for you (no more need of any manual tuning on your part) whether you're looking at the entire list [http://iwantsandy.com/list], your appointments, to-do list, contacts, bookmarks, lists, or notes. And each now has its very own URL: appointments live at http://iwantsandy.com/appointments, to-dos at http://iwantsandy.com/todos, and so forth.

* Want to reflect on to-dos already done? Head to your to-do list (Your stuff > To-dos or [http://iwantsandy.com/todos]) and click the "Show done to-dos" link.

* Repeating appointments, to-dos, and reminders are called out by the appropriate tag (e.g. [weekly] or [monthly]) right next to the event's date or time. Editing, forgetting, archiving, or toggling items behaves as you'd expect it to depending on whether you're changing the entire repeating series or an individual occurrence (and Sandy will confirm with you when there's any possibility of confusion).

* Repeating events show up whenever appropriate as individual occurrences on each and every day they're supposed to when you're looking across multiple days, weeks, months, or years.

* Your stuff is no longer cluttered with special tags like @todo or @weekly or the like when not needed: if it's a to-do, then the to-do checkbox appears; if done, it'll appear checked. Any other tags you've used show up as usual.

* Hover over the "Your stuff" menu on Sandy's site and you'll find — along with "Today", "Last week", "Next month", etc — new choices: "The next 7 days" and "The next 30 days." Kudos to those who thought to ask — these are now my two default views on Sandy's site!

* Sandy now abbreviates dates and times as appropriate anywhere they appear on her site and in her email messages: an event at 9am today won't list the date; an event at 9am tomorrow will; neither will show the year if it's this year; etc.

Take a new look at your stuff at http://iwantsandy.com/list

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IMPROVED: Daily Digest

You've told us quite precisely what you'd like to see in your Daily Digest and we're bringing most of it to you in the coming week or two, starting with today's many improvements:

* You'll no longer see duplicates in your Daily Digest — when, for instance, a to-do scheduled for today appeared in both the "Calendar" and "To-dos" sections. If it is scheduled for today, you'll find it in the "Calendar" section.

* Your Daily Digest — whether today's or next Tuesday's — now includes overdue to-dos, those due today (or next Tuesday if you're looking at next Tuesday's digest), and unscheduled to-dos. (If it's not yet due, it no longer shows up until its time has come.) Many of you requested this feature and we're glad to have finally had the chance to bring it to you.

* To-dos are sorted by status and due-date: past-due, due today, then unscheduled.

* Overdue to-dos not yet checked off as done are slightly highlighted so that you can spot them and get them done.

(Please note that we wanted to get this update out and into your virtual hands so the emailed version of your Daily Digest will sport the same improvements as the version on Sandy's website in short order.)

Visit your Daily Digest for today at http://iwantsandy.com/digest

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IMPROVED: The "New..." form

Something that was chapping my hide — and I know it was bothering some of you too — was the way that telling Sandy about something using the "New..." form (from Sandy's toolbar on every page of her site) popped up a small notification but didn't take you to the stuff you just had Sandy remember for you. You'll now be redirected to the new content a moment or three after you click the "Send" button.

"Email" Sandy right from the iwantsandy.com web site at http://iwantsandy.com/new

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TIDIED: Print

We tidied the Print version of your Daily Digest and any views of Your stuff.

Print a pocket-able, portable, paper copy of your Daily Digest: visit http://iwantsandy.com/digest and click the "Print" link.

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P.s. As always, we'd love to know what you think, what you liked (or didn't), and if we missed anything (or made anything worse).

We are looking for a small group of beta testers for our new FTP/SFTP deployment tool. Interested? Check out our blog post.

http://www.wildbit.com/blog/2008/03/0...