What and When to expect MLO4

[MCA]

Over the last two years MyLifeOrganized became my best friend, helps
me keeping my head clean while following a 60hrs/week job, writing my
PhD and doing 'bout 1 billion things in my free time.

At the moment, however, I am up to decide myself if MLO will be my
trusted pal for the future any longer...

Over the last months I only noticed updates and endless discussions
about mobile platforms, Android clones and cloud syncing.

As a windows user I am not interested in any other platform than MLO's
original host, being able to carry a USB stick makes mobile plattforms
unneeded, too, for me and syncing all my private and confidential data
of MLO to a cloud host is absolutely nothing that comes to my mind...

On the other hand I urgently wish for certain features that MLO is
missing at the moment. Among them my 3 top ones:
- Outline filtering
- RichText Notes
- User defined fields


That brought me to some alternative solutions in the internet that
seem to cover those features.
I currently think about if I shift away from MyLifeOrganized in the
end... This all depends on WHEN we can expect to get our hands on a
new, more featured MLO Desktop 4 and WHICH features in the end it
really will cover.

Are there some statements/dates around?

I would love to see some real improvements around soon as I really
like the power and smooth handling of MLO.


Thanks in advance.

[Greg.O]

+1

It's been a long time since significant new features have been added
to the main MLO application - most development efforts seem to have
been given to creating versions for Android and other platforms at the
expense of the Windows version which, I would believe, is closest to
the hearts of most MLO users. Features requested by users for a long
long time (rich text notes, calendar) are ignored and no clear
indication is given as to when or whether they will be implemented.
The lack of communication from the development team is really
disappointing. Can we go back a few years when user suggestions were
listened to and actually drove the development of MLO?

By the way what are the alternatives you have found?

Regards,
Greg

[John]

On Sep 21, 4:12 pm, MCA <mca....@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On the other hand I urgently wish for certain features that MLO is
> missing at the moment. Among them my 3 top ones:
> - Outline filtering
> - RichText Notes
> - User defined fields

The above are also my requests. User definer fields (Date, Number,
Text etc) would be great.
Add notes & Sub notes to any Task would make MLO a great outliner PIM
in addition to a being a very sophsticated Task manager

John

[Marek Jedliński]

> - Outline filtering
> - RichText Notes
> - User defined fields

That, and multi-line items in the outline (i.e., ability to wrap text if it doesn't fit in the column width).

I use MLO for bug tracking and to-do lists for apps that I write (among other things), and it isn't always convenient to limit myself to a very short description, with details relegated to the Notes pane. It would help a lot to be able to fit more or less a complete sentence in the main task column.

marek

[Mark Levison]

Have you gone and voted for these things on mlo.uservoice.com? or proposed them if they're not there?

This helps give Andrey a better sense of priorities.

Cheers

Mark Levison

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[Marek Jedliński]

Will do, thanks!

marek

[daniel sekera]

+2

[daniel sekera]

+1 for this as well.  i would sometime much rather just have a multi line task than task with notes

[Mark Levison]

Daniel - I can't search Uservoice.com easily but have you posted your votes there? That forum provides Andrey a deeper understanding by forcing you to limit your selections. In a mailing list you can just keep on saying +1, +2 with an unlimited number of votes.

Cheers

Mark

[Mark Levison]

A general comment and not picking on John, what I see here is a bunch of specific feature requests. It would help Andrey doing a better job of meeting our needs if we told him what business problem a feature would solve. Ex:

- I would like to be able to past the text of my emails into the notes field and have formatting preserved so that I don't lose links.

- I would like be able to limit the number of tasks I see in the outline so that I can focus on ...

When we specify a feature it comes with a lot of baggage, when we tell Andrey what our business problem is we give a wider range of options to solve it. So please provide the problem you want solved and why its important to you. Both will help Andrey develop a product that meets the needs of many.

Finally when asking for Rich Text in something like notes please appreciate that this will require a change to the file format and affect **every** MLO platform. That's a lot of work it will take time.

Cheers

Mark Levison

[Marek Jedliński]

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 17:52, Mark Levison <ma...@mlevison.com> wrote:

Finally when asking for Rich Text in something like notes please appreciate that this will require a change to the file format and affect **every** MLO platform. That's a lot of work it will take time.

Thanks, Mark, this is understood. I would suggest HTML as underlying format, because it's probably supported on mobile platforms as well.

On the other hand, this goes back to the recent posts here about the desktop vs mobile apps. It would be unfortunate if the limitations or complexities of mobile platforms were to hold back the development of desktop MLO.

As to my request for multi-line items, I realize from my own Delphi experience that VirtualTreeView cannot handle that very well. Its only supported well if all items in the tree have the same height, but not when each item is different. In the end it would probably require dropping VirtualTreeView in favor of another third-party control. Quantum TreeList (from DevExpress) handles multi-line, dynamic height items extremely well, for example.

marek

[Mark Levison]

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Marek Jedliński <marek.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 17:52, Mark Levison <ma...@mlevison.com> wrote:

Finally when asking for Rich Text in something like notes please appreciate that this will require a change to the file format and affect **every** MLO platform. That's a lot of work it will take time.

Thanks, Mark, this is understood. I would suggest HTML as underlying format, because it's probably supported on mobile platforms as well.

On the other hand, this goes back to the recent posts here about the desktop vs mobile apps. It would be unfortunate if the limitations or complexities of mobile platforms were to hold back the development of desktop MLO.

We can rehash the good and bad of mobile for the rest of time. Two yrs ago everyone in this forum was saying MLO will die if Andrey doesn't do: IPhone, Android, BlackBerry, ....

Now the discussion has swung back the other way. Keep in mind that Andrey has a small team doing the work and they're human.

Interesting point I challenged you and everyone else on this thread to tell us the what and the why of your needs and you skipped that. Telling Andrey html is right way to go is technical decision best left to Andrey, we should focus on how this will make our use of MLO better. So I ask again what is that you want (without technical details) i.e. I want to copy and paste an email without losing formatting or I want to copy and paste a web page. In addition we need a why what business problem will that solve? 

In my case I've never understood the case for rich text - so sell me (and maybe Andrey) on why it matters to you. Not just more +1 but tell what underlying business problem it will solve for you.

Cheers
Mark Levison

Mark Levison | Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Certified Scrum Trainer
Agile Editor @ InfoQ | Blog | Twitter | Office: (613) 862-2538
Recent Entries: Story Slicing How Small is Small Enough, Why use an Agile Coach

[Neal]

Dude, even desktops no longer have keyboards hardwired to them anymore.  The Samsung tablet comes with a keyboard.  Same with the Asus ep121 tablet I have talked about.  On the Android side, the Asus slider has a keyboard docking station.  Acer iconia Tablet plugs in a USB keyboard, etc. etc. etc.

Look, you guys need to understand this better.  Desktops are a thing of the past.  Now you see "all in ones" showing up.  The monitor and cpu are combined.  The keyboard is wireless.  A tablet is a portable version of that.  Use the keyboard at your desk, use the tablet in your conference room.  Have your data WITH YOU wherever you go.

[Mark Levison]

Tone check, whether we agree on tablets vs laptops vs desktops vs phones we need to understand that everyone has a valid point of view. In this case step out of your comfort zone and ask where the other person is coming from. Take a moment to see their viewpoint. Like you I expect tablets are the way of the future but also understand there are those who will disagree.

Cheers

Mark

On Thursday, September 22, 2011, Neal wrote:

Dude, even desktops no longer have keyboards hardwired to them anymore.  The Samsung tablet comes with a keyboard.  Same with the Asus ep121 tablet I have talked about.  On the Android side, the Asus slider has a keyboard docking station.  Acer iconia Tablet plugs in a USB keyboard, etc. etc. etc.

Look, you guys need to understand this better.  Desktops are a thing of the past.  Now you see "all in ones" showing up.  The monitor and cpu are combined.  The keyboard is wireless.  A tablet is a portable version of that.  Use the keyboard at your desk, use the tablet in your conference room.  Have your data WITH YOU wherever you go.

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[Neal]

People are entitled to their opinions.  I tried to explain it to them here but I'm not going to take any guff about it or get mocked.  Sorry, just not going to happen.

Anyway, I tried to explain this to Andrey.  And to be honest, I no longer really care.  Besides, I think Andrey will figure it out dealing with the IPad crowd...

[Grant]

Neal,
Desktop, laptops and (separate) keyboards are not going to away,
especially in the professional world. There are just too many tasks
that are better and quicker (time is money and money is king) done
with a large screen, and well designed physical keyboard and mouse.
For that matter, pen and paper have not, and will not go away either.
So lets accept that MLO will still have to work on all these devices.
But the origins of this discussion where that releases of MLO for new
platforms needs to be balanced with its continuing functional
development.

Mark, and a few others: regarding justifying a wish for a new feature
by giving the business need it solves, it not really necessary.
People experienced with a tool deserve the respect that their
intuitive desire for a new feature, like more text formatting in Notes
is correct. When more than a few ask for the same feature, its is
pretty much confirmed that there is a need, even if not analytically
defined - and the fact that most of the world does not work with
simple text editors, but prefer and use the capability to improve the
visual attractiveness, and visual navigation and accelerated
understanding that goes with richer formatting capabilities seems to
pretty much put any doubt to rest.

Lastly, it always amazes me when someone says they want something like
a simple calendar view, or more text formatting capabilities that
there are bunch of people who take that to mean a request for a full
featured Outlook like calendar or a Word like program (or physical
keyboard only request) and then go on to bash the idea as silly and as
far too technically complex for the MLO team to implement (and then
elsewhere also say that people should not make technical decisions for
the MLO team - which is just what they are doing). These these people
have taken the suggestion immediately to an extreme, indeed a worse
case scenario, and decrease the chances for rational dialog around
what scale of features is really needed in this case which probably
would reduce the technical complexity by 80%, while still giving 80%
of the new capability being asked for.

But regardless, there is one point I agree with many on: we hear far
too little from the MLO team about their concrete future feature and
release plans. I know there are lists of future features they are
considering, etc. but with not dates, etc. Some of those have been on
the list for years, and what actually gets done seems fairly random to
the outside world. And no-one yet has disagreed that the MLO team
have focused on new platforms and not on improved functionality the
last 2 years or so, for better or worse...

So that is my two cents. As always I look forward to the continued
creative replies...

[pottster]

Nice post Grant! Agree with all of that.

[Trish Putnam]

A couple of comments inline:

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Grant <gran...@gmail.com> wrote:

Neal,
Desktop, laptops and (separate) keyboards are not going to away,
especially in the professional world.  There are just too many tasks
that are better and quicker (time is money and money is king) done
with a large screen, and well designed physical keyboard and mouse.
For that matter, pen and paper have not, and will not go away either.
So lets accept that MLO will still have to work on all these devices.
But the origins of this discussion where that releases of MLO for new
platforms needs to be balanced with its continuing functional
development.

No disagreement from me regarding desktops, laptops, keyboard and mouse - they aren't going away anytime soon, and they are still my principal tools for heavier computing needs.  I definitely think that the primary focus is the desktop version of the app - that's where I do the majority of my "housekeeping" for projects, schedules and tasks.  Keyboards and mice are peripherals that we're all expert in using and it's become engrained.

 

However, that said, it is not right to class development of tablet/slate based versions with the phone versions.  Tablets, due to their screen size primarily, are perfectly capable of doing complex work with MLO that would be difficult to do on a phone.  One of the primary markets for tablets is for business folks, management, and others who need to move around a lot through their work day to meetings and client sites.  These people will be away from their desks for hours at a time, and need to be able to manage their calendar/task lists/projects on their primary portable device, which, more and more commonly, is becoming a tablet of some sort.   A tablet in most ways is more closely aligned with a netbook than a smartphone, regardless of the OS that's being used as a platform. 

 

I'd really like to see MLO more closely aligned between desktop and tablet versions.  It's logical to keep the smartphone version "dumbed down" due to the challenges of the user interface on a small screen.   

 

Mark, and a few others:  regarding justifying a wish for a new feature
by giving the business need it solves, it not really necessary.
People experienced with a tool deserve the respect that their
intuitive desire for a new feature, like more text formatting in Notes
is correct.  When more than a few ask for the same feature, its is
pretty much confirmed that there is a need, even if not analytically
defined - and the fact that most of the world does not work with
simple text editors, but prefer and use the capability to improve the
visual attractiveness, and visual navigation and accelerated
understanding that goes with richer formatting capabilities seems to
pretty much put any doubt to rest.

Grant, I see your point, but when the business justification - the problem being solved - is provided, then it's easier to consider options for a feature.  Say that someone asks for feature X.  With the context that feature X is requested to solve problem Y, the designer and developer can consider other ways that problem Y could be solved or at least partially solved if X is very complicated.  Perhaps option Z would be a simplified way to accomplish most or all of what problem Y actually needed and could make it into the next release instead of the more complex X that would be 3 years out on the roadmap. 

 

It allows the ability to think around the problem space for a solution, rather than focusing on something that addresses a symptom, as well.  Perhaps one feature request is for HTML formatting and another is for Rich Text formatting, for example.  They're two separate requests if it's without any context.  But if both requests are intended to solve a similar problem, it might be that only one need be implemented, or that one will at least be a good compromise for the short term.  In part, that also addresses your next comment, as it focuses the dialog on what needs to be solved, rather than the exact implementation. 

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[Someguy]

"People experienced with a tool deserve the respect that their
intuitive desire for a new feature, like more text formatting in Notes

is correct." True, not everyone is going to be good at expressing
their wishes in a well stated, rational fashion, and they can still
have insight on real improvements. But it is also true that
experienced developers can see that a flag and a status are usually
the same thing conceptually, and what differentiates them is the usage
case. The art and genius of development and customer management is to
be able to hear "I want Flags", understand "I want a status with a
visual cue so I can get meaning in a glance" and deliver what the
customer wants without turning a masterpiece of programming into a
collage of features stapled together. If the customer can express
their desires with some usage context, that is easier to do, and
everyone wins.

I think what bothers people about the suggestions along the lines of
rich text, calendar view, etc, is not that anyone questions that some
people would like and use it. What bothers people - or maybe I should
speak for myself - what bothers me about these suggestions is that
they are at odds with what makes the tool so good. The selling
features of MLO, to my way of thinking, is that it is fast, light,
stable, flexible and powerful. What is currently wrong with it is
feature bloat. We have flags and statuses and goals and priorities
and color coding and on and on and on. Adding all these things hogde-
podge, I think, has reduced the ability to add more powerful and
elegant features. All of these kinds of features could be handled by
custom fields and a robust skinning system for instance. Then
features like this could be added quickly and easily by releasing
templates - and we would not have these religious wars - and the tool
could stay lightweight and simple and powerful for me, and full of
multiple thinly disguised status fields and visual cues for others.

The issue is really one of getting agreement and consensus on what MLO
is. There are many suggestions for a web front end to cloud sync, for
instance. A good feature, if MLO is a way to access a todo list over
the internet, but I thought it was a way to manage a very complex and
busy life in a very simple to use yet powerful way - so I see auto-
syncing and rapid entry and mobile platforms as key features. A web
front end can be many things, but no web front end has ever been
called "flexible" or "powerful" . Is a calendar view a good idea - it
is, if MLO is a dayplanner and organizer - but I see MLO as a
collector and organizer of tasks, which you then complete in meetings
and appointments arranged in a collaboration system like outlook or
lotus notes, so I view a calendar as feature bloat unless you are
going to add workgroup calendars and messenging to it as well -
otherwise it will just be a way to organize appointments with
yourself, which other people will just book over top of in your
collaboration tool. Outlook sync, on the other hand - is a good
feature that could still use some work. That is my usage model - a
task collector and organizer for a complex life in a large
organization. i would imagine, if I were self employed, I would have
a different view. Certainly the calendar view would be a lot more
compelling, for instance. So what is MLO and who is it for?

Of course, here is the problem - I don't decide what MLO is or who the
target market is. Andrey does, based on our input and his motivations
and opinions. And once he does decide, there is nothing wrong with
him saying - that is not what MLO is trying to be, and therefore I
won't build that feature. To argue that "most users want X. therefore
he should build it" is silly. That is how zunes get built. "Most
users" are mediocre, with mediocre ideas (by definition, in fact).
MLO needs to be excellent at something.

I say all this without intending to be disrespectful, buy the way. I
know for instance, all the status fields and goals and so on are
required to make the auto-generated priority system work - and there
are clearly people for whom that feature is a centrally important
selling feature. It just is not for me. I am not right, and neither
are they. Embrace my idea of custom fieds, and MLO can be a powerful
way to hierarchically manage almost any kind of small tibits of
information. Embrace their ideas, and it is a lot more limited, but
it is a more powerful tasking engine. What is MLO supposed to be?
That is the question.

On Sep 23, 6:27 pm, Trish Putnam <trish.put...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A couple of comments inline:
>