FocusPad Development Suggestions
Erik Westra
Following on from my message yesterday with Tony regarding the ongoing
development of FocusPad, I've been thinking a bit about what FocusPad
does well, and how I think it could be improved. Of course, Tony is
the author of this excellent tool, and while I'm offering to help him
if I can, he is the ultimate arbiter of what should and shouldn't be
included. I did think, though, that it might be worth starting a
discussion about what features a future version of FocusPad might have
-- I'm sure others have ideas as well.
I don't have the 2.0 beta, so I can't comment on how well the various
2.0-specific features work, but based on Tony's comments about there
being serious problems with this version, and looking at the list of
features he mentioned, I would suggest the following:
1. Keep the fluid and fixed page styles, but drop the dated pages.
Dated pages are a neat idea, but I suspect they add a ton of
complexity under the hood...and they're not really needed any more now
that Mark has given us the DWM2 system, where everything sits on a
single page. Believe me, DWM2 works incredibly well with FocusPad
1.x, so in the interests of simplicity and keeping the codebase
manageable, I'd propose getting rid of dated pages entirely.
2. I'd also like to suggest a new type of page, with manual page
breaks. Pages wouldn't have any specific size at all, and would just
keep growing and growing until the user decided to start a new page.
With this pad type, previous pages could optionally still be added to
if you wished, even though a new page has been started.
You could use this in all sorts of ways, for example:
- You could have a one-page pad with no breaks at all, for a DWM2-style list.
- You could use page breaks to separate the open and closed lists in
an AF4-style system.
- You could run a SuperFocus-style system by having partially filled
pages that then get added to after the page break has been added.
Of course, this won't be trivial to implement, but I do think it'd be
a good addition and would help to make FocusPad a powerful and
flexible list-management tool.
3. I do have one more very simple request / suggestion: I'd like to
see the "tick plus" command (which copies the current item and then
marks it as done) remember the colour of the current item when it is
copied. At present, only the text is copied across, and the colouring
is lost. This causes me some grief in my usage of FocusPad, as I
currently have to click on "tick plus" and then scroll to the end and
manually re-apply the colouring. It'd be wonderful if this annoying
quirk could be fixed (maybe as an optional feature with a preference
setting if there is some good reason for having the current
behaviour).
4. On a far more adventurous note, I'd love to see an option within
FocusPad for supporting Mark Forster's newer systems which require two
columns per page. I know this sounds difficult, but in practice I
don't think it would be all that bad (at least for the end user!).
Imagine if FocusPad had a "two column" mode that could be turned on
for a given pad. With this mode, you might start on the left column
of page 1, flick to the right and see the right column of page 1.
Flicking to the right again would reveal the left column of page 2,
and so on. Of course, as the left column on one page overflows, new
tasks would go into the left column of the subsequent page, and
similarly for the right column (depending, of course, on the type of
pad you are using and how it handles overflows). And there would be
some nice visual indication of whether you are in the left or the
right column -- for example, I could imagine having some sort of
background lines that suggest the left and right sides of a notebook.
You could get fancier -- for example, allowing a two-finger drag to
the left to switch by whole pages rather than columns, or having a
control at the bottom which switches between the left and right
columns. But in terms of the user interface and how the program
behaves, I do believe it would be possible to support dual columns
within a pad. I'm not saying it'd be easy to implement (anything
but!), but I do believe this would be a worthwhile addition to this
already-excellent program.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts on the possible features for a
future version of FocusPad. I'm sure that Tony has lots of ideas
(probably better ones than me!), and as I say he is the one who
ultimately decides what should and shouldn't be done with this app.
I'm very happy to help out with the development if I can, but this
really is Tony's brainchild and he needs to decide where it heads.
Does anyone else have any ideas / suggestions for how FocusPad might
develop going forward?
Cheers,
- Erik.