Least favourite feature still there

[Steve Crane]

I stopped using Tudumo ages ago and couldn't remember why. I've just had another go with it and was reminded why.

The single most annoying feature, that literally made me hate opening Tudumo is the multiple pop-up windows for reminders. If you have a lot of reminders it can take several minutes to work your way through these. It would be so much nicer to have a single dialog with a list of reminders. If each one had radio buttons for actions like snooze, delete, etc. you could quickly run through these and click a single button to dismiss the dialog. I recall bringing this up with Richard before but perhaps others don't have as much a problem with the multiple pop-ups as I do so other features have taken priority.

--
Steve Crane
http://craniac.net

[Mark Srebnik]

Steve,

FWIW, I agree with you 100% and also had let Richard know about this issue a long time ago....

It got to the point where it seemed like I was spending the first 5 minutes after opening up Tudumo to do battle with the never-ending series of reminder pop-ups....started to think that if this was a video game (called Reminder Blaster or Attack of the Reminders...) at least we'd have some lasers or other artillery to blast them with.... ;-)

Unfortunate, as otherwise, like Tudumo a lot....but now I'm using The Hit List on my Mac... ;-)

Mark

[aikidave]

Hi Steve,
I believe you can disable the reminder pop-ups from the Options menu.
I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like they can be disabled. Or am
I missing something here?
Regards,
Dave

[Steve Crane]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 4:17 PM, aikidave <aiki...@gmail.com> wrote:

I believe you can disable the reminder pop-ups from the Options menu.
I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like they can be disabled.

Yes, reminders can be disabled globally but I wouldn't want to disable them, just have them remind me in a better way (all due reminders in one pop-up dialog, rather than one dialog per reminder).

[Richard Watson]

I started writing a popup a while back but it quickly replicated the
Tudumo screen. My thought was then to have a small popup notify you
of new alerts, and if you click on it, a special view of them inside
Tudumo where you can manage multiple alerts properly. That's harder to
do, and why it's been on hold. I do apologise - I know how irritating
the popups can be.

Regards,
Richard

[Steve Crane]

Considering it is so difficult to do what you intended, perhaps there are other ways to achieve the desired result. The annoyance seems to be getting a number of modal dialogs that must be manually dismissed in your face at centre screen. Perhaps it would be a simpler change to display a toast notification for each reminder that can be clicked to open the same dialog currently shown to cancel or snooze the reminder. If ignored they would simply fade away and be redisplayed when next Tudumo starts much like the reminders are now. I think that subtle toasts that catch the eye but don't otherwise interrupt what you are busy doing would be an acceptable solution to the problem. A nice addition to this would be a filter in Tudumo that shows only overdue tasks, allowing the user to address and action these when he chooses.

[Richard Watson]

Not "so" difficult, just enough of a hassle to get itself off the
front of the queue. Again, it's always influenced by how many people
want something and how quick it is to implement.

I intend to use a toast for the popups later but maybe I could bring
that forward for this if it doesn't add much extra hassle to the
normal case. Do you want it to popup a toast for each notification,
and then another if they click on it? If it changes the feel too much
I also prefer to make one change instead of changing to X and then to
Y.

The "Today and overdue" filter should already be close enough for what you want?

Regards,
Richard

[Steve Crane]

If the toast can completely replace the dialog that would be ideal but my thinking was that toasts should be lightweight so the marking as done or snoozing should be deferred to another function. I thought that using the current dialog for this would be simplest but perhaps this isn't needed at all. A user could probably address this through the normal program interface after being alerted by the toast.

One notification per toast seems to be the accepted norm. I've seen some applications stack them if multiple are opened at once.

But these are just suggestions. Any change you can easily implement that makes sense to you and removes the focus grabbing dialogs is a step in the right direction.

Cheers,
Steve

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Steve Crane schrieb:

> But these are just suggestions. Any change you can easily implement that
> makes sense to you and removes the focus grabbing dialogs is a step in
> the right direction.

Agree. How notifications are handled is currently for me the weakest
spot of Tudumo. I'd like to have something non-modal with more functions
for handling the task (changing its state, seeing the details etc.).
"Toasts" would be useful, but only for the actual alerting - they should
then link to a non-modal dialog for processing the task.

-- Christoph

[Geoff Bullock]

I like the way reminders work at the moment as they force me into making a decision about the task. I use reminders for things that are time-dependant, i.e. Pay bill today, Ring x before trip, etc. Being centre screen and modal means I am either reminded or can adjust the task if priorities have changed.

My concern with a toast approach would be whether I would actually be reminded. My only experience of toasts is with information that is "nice to know" but not essential. For example, it's nice to know what new emails have arrived, that x has signed in, or that my download has finished, but not essential.

If a toast-based reminder pops-up and fades after x amount of time, what happens if I'm not in front of the pc at the time? I realise the simple answer to that is to review Tudumo regularly, but if I did that I wouldn't need reminders in the first place!

Secondly, if a user has a lot of reminders that will be pop up as toasts are they going to take them in, especially if they get stacked? At the moment I agree that it's a pain if you have several reminders going off, but you are forced into reviewing those tasks, if ten toasts pop up are you actually going to take more that a couple in and remember to review them later?

Finally regarding the single dialog window with a list of reminders idea, it sounds close to the way Outlook presents reminders, add a naughty but tempting "Dismiss all" or "Snooze all" button and we're back to square one - no reminders!

I realise everyone has there own way of working, but the reason I like Tudumo is that it does a lot of work for me, freeing me up to complete tasks and projects. I don't want a tool that I'm having to monitor all the time, as that takes me away from the thing I need to be doing.

Cheers,

Geoff

[swsch]

I realize that I might be riding a dead horse, but here's my take on
this topic:

* multiple modal dialog boxes:
Bad usability, quite easy to click over the umpteenth item, which
you were aiming for.
* temporary display:
might be overlooked while away, might pop up at exactly the wrong
moment, e.g. during presentations
* global on/off switch:
a bit crude for adjustments

How about adding an optional pane on the side of the window?
You could have a switch in the View menu toggling its visibility,
similar to the QuickEntry.
You could show as many reminders as you want.
You could reuse well-known keystrokes to delete, complete, delay an
item.
Basically it would amount to providing a dedicated view for a
specialized filter.

s.

[Richard Watson]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 9:09 PM, swsch <stefan....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I realize that I might be riding a dead horse, but here's my take on
> this topic:

Not a dead horse - any opinions welcome :)

> * multiple modal dialog boxes:
>  Bad usability, quite easy to click over the umpteenth item, which
> you were aiming for.

I agree. It's more historical than intentional - I added dates from a
request (DA says put them in the calendar, so Tudumo's focus was more
on context, not time), and only discovered later that they're used a
*lot* by some users.

> * temporary display:
>  might be overlooked while away, might pop up at exactly the wrong
> moment, e.g. during presentations

I think there has to be some kind of alert because if you're setting a
date, it's an explicit 'make sure I know about this' so I'd prefer not
to rely on the user having the Tudumo window open. I do see that
presentations could be a bad time but maybe there's a way to check for
that state. If it's your boss looking over your shoulder then Tudumo
can't do much about that!

> * global on/off switch:
>  a bit crude for adjustments

Why so?

> How about adding an optional pane on the side of the window?
> You could have a switch in the View menu toggling its visibility,
> similar to the QuickEntry.
> You could show as many reminders as you want.
> You could reuse well-known keystrokes to delete, complete, delay an
> item.
> Basically it would amount to providing a dedicated view for a
> specialized filter.

I'm quite committed to the single-list-view because it's visually
simple. I'd probably only change that for a feature that affects most
users and improves the experience enough that it's worth the visual
overhead. If there's another way to achieve the same result, I'd
prefer that. I still think the longer-term optimum is to leverage the
custom-view idea for a temporary view of due actions, with a toast as
alert.

Regards,
Richard

[swsch]

On Nov 1, 8:36 am, Richard Watson <rich...@tudumo.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 9:09 PM, swsch <stefan.schmi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If it's your boss looking over your shoulder then Tudumo
> can't do much about that!

what? tudumo can't do this? But this is a must-have feature!!

> > * global on/off switch:
> >  a bit crude for adjustments
>
> Why so?

Because with a single switch I either get alerts with all kinds of
bells and whistles or nothing at all. That's what I meant by "crude".

> > How about adding an optional pane on the side of the window?
> > You could have a switch in the View menu toggling its visibility,
> > similar to the QuickEntry.
> > You could show as many reminders as you want.
> > You could reuse well-known keystrokes to delete, complete, delay an
> > item.
> > Basically it would amount to providing a dedicated view for a
> > specialized filter.
>
> I'm quite committed to the single-list-view because it's visually
> simple. I'd probably only change that for a feature that affects most
> users and improves the experience enough that it's worth the visual
> overhead. If there's another way to achieve the same result, I'd
> prefer that.  I still think the longer-term optimum is to leverage the
> custom-view idea for a temporary view of due actions, with a toast as
> alert.

I accept that. Two lists beside each other do look ugly.

How about changing the systray icon along with the toast?

Right now it is blue lines with a single red one in between.
If the alert toast goes up, you could change the background
color from white to yellow.
Or use black/gray lines for "normal" state and switch to
red lines when jobs are due.

You could get really fancy by making the icon's popup menu
provide options for opening tudumo with a user-defined set
of filters, with "todo reminders" as one possible pre-installed
option.
So the context menu would show several options:
open default view
open todo alert
open work list
open family list

That approach would not disturb the look-and-feel of the main
window at all. It would also be adjustable to the users' individual
needs and keep 'em out of your hair, as they could adjust the
criteria themselves.

Have a nice Sunday,
s.

[Aaron King]

When presenting, if you could just control the monitor the pop-ups
happened on (instead of always going to the one that has focus), that
problem would be solved.

Another option I like even better, which also solves in a short-term
way a lot of what other folks are complaining about is to give an
option to the reminder pop-up that is similar to the option I've seen
on most IM clients -- open minimized to the task bar but flash a few
times. That's better than toast because it doesn't totally go away.

Long-term, I think the only way you'll have a good solution for
reminders that has all the features users want is to deal with them
one at a time and then leverage the existing UI to make it easy to see
what has been recently reminded about. Handling multiple reminders in
a pop-up is hard and at some point you are adding so many features you
are getting close to the main UI. The pop-up sould be simple, just
make it easier to get to recently fired items in the main UI. That
could be a view or state, could involve moving those items to the top,
some other sort of visual cue.. or perhaps provide some options so
users can customize the behavior a bit.

-- Aaron