Simple Lists

Keeping a list of things to do is something most everyone does. I certainly do. Crossing something off those lists is one of the most satisfying things I encounter in a day. Traditionally, I keep these lists on scraps of paper and consolidate to a larger, heavy (to signify importance), piece of paper every so often. This works, but it certainly has disadvantages.

• Tough to share it with others or between home and work


• Tough to save large archives, unless you want a box of scrap paper


• Can't search it


• Easy to lose

I've tried to take my todo list digital many, many times. Microsoft Outlook tasks, Microsoft Project, Google Notebook, _todo.txt in the root. These are all as capable as paper, but they all had drawbacks that never let them stick. I always went back to paper and pen.

Over Thanksgiving, I took some vacation. I've found that I enjoy my vacation far more when I have a nice list of things to do, (and get them done). Otherwise I find myself watching the Today show until mid-morning, doing nothing of real value all day, and next thing I know, the family is walking in the front door.

So one of my todos for my last vacation was to check out the software that I got in the last MacHeist bundle (listing here) that I never got around to trying. One of those apps happened to be TaskPaper.

I went in pessimistic, expecting to be deleting the app after a day or so. After a few minutes of checking it out, I decided to give it a go for the week with my vacation todo list. By day 2 I was hooked. The digital todo list was finally a reality for me.

I love the simplicity of the app. I love the tagging and tag based filtering. I love that it still feels satisfying to cross off a task. I love the amazingly simple data format rules that let the app style the data appropriately.

TaskPaper seems to have a good buddy in TodoPaper. TodoPaper has essentially the same design, but for Windows systems. I'm now using TodoPaper at work and TaskPaper at home. I'd love to see them add a way to sync them.

TaskPaper recently bumped to 2.0 and got even better. The interface got even cleaner and they added a great query language (not @done is a favorite).

The only real holdback on these apps is the price. $30 for each seems a touch much to me but I'd still buy it at that price. I'm very happy to have gotten my TaskPaper license in MacHeist and work bought the TodoPaper license. Free trials are available, as well as discount codes every now and then. Be sure to check the site blogs and the TaskPaper screencast for a discount.

New, Different, Better?

I ran across a nice article about Sam Lucente, HP's vice president of design. Most interesting to me was this visual gathering of navigation controls in use on HP's products.



Most people couldn't care less about this sort of thing. Me, I can't help but notice. It amazes me to see product attributes that appear over and over, especially within the same company, end up being different. Is it because the engineering teams don't talk to each other? Is it because the teams suffer a bad case of not-invented-here syndrome? Is it because it gets designed by someone that isn't thinking about this sort of thing? Uhhh, yes.

The article also details how common design can save a company money. It makes sense to me. You can have a dozen engineers spend time designing a navigation control, supporting circuitry and software, or you can do it once and reuse. I'm not saying things shouldn't ever change, but I'd prefer the change be because the new iteration is better, not because someone felt like doing it their same and different way.

I'm with you HP and Mr. Lucente. I like your Q Control and hope to see it everywhere (because it isn't showing up on the iPaqs yet :)

Play Bar Brothers

I realize there aren't a whole lof of ways you can design a play bar, but I did think it was interesting to see how similar the Netflix Watch Now and iTunes Fullscreen Cover Flow play bars are.

The order is the same. Play/pause, scroll bar, volume, and then full screen control.



I actually like that these are similar. I don't want to learn a new layout for every app I use.

Staring at the Start Menu

After reading Joel on Software's post about the Vista shutdown menu, I was moved to stare at the XP start menu for a bit. I wondered what I did and didn't like about it.


For reference, here's a mostly default XP start menu.

You can see that my default browser has been changed to Firefox and I've run a few programs which show up as frequently used.

Overall, it's not too bad. The placement of the All Programs probably makes sense because if I used the program alot, it would be in the recent icons, or perhaps an entry in the Quick Launch bar. One bad thing is the amount of crap that is shown by default. More on that in a sec.


My first WTF comes when you move the Start button to the top or the side. You can see that the menu doesn't change in the slightest. That's really odd to me because your mouse pointer is now approaching the menu from a complete different direction. It seems that the items would be rearranged to reflect this new orientation.

If the orientation doesn't matter, then the menu isn't designed for repetitive use and would lean towards being pretty rather than functional, wouldn't it?

The Start bar down the left of the screen is the orientation that I run on widescreen and dual-screen setups. I find this to be the only way to get reasonable window titles so I know which window to pick when I have dozens of them open. It's interesting that I don't have this problem when I use expose with the Mac.

You can see that you have to mouse past a giant username header on the menu every time you access the menu. That seems like a usability no-no to me, especially on home systems that probably only have one user. You can configure most of the rest of the menu. Why can't you turn the login name banner off?


I put my image editor where my mouth is and mocked up a flipped start menu. It isn't pixel perfect, but you get the idea.

I also configured the menu to a simpler presentation. I'm not sure I've ever accessed Set Program Defaults and Access, so I'm pretty sure I don't need it every time I click Start.

After looking at this for awhile, I find that I prefer the original start menu, but in the drop from the top orientation. If I could get rid of the login banner, I'd be all set. Things that I use least, like Turn Off and All Programs are far from the mouse pointer, which is good. Things like Internet and Mail are within ease reach.

I haven't actually tried out Vista yet, but it looks like things aren't much better there. Perhaps it allows more configuration. I'll let you know :)

Laws of Simplicity

Simplicity is complexity well explained.
That's a statement I came up with back in 2000. I believe that was the start of my simplicity kick. I had recently graduated from college and found that I had way too much crap. Something needed to be done. I had to make a change or I'd be a pack rat forever.

I still have a lot of stuff, but now I have less :) The thing about stuff is that it isn't just physical stuff. You can end up with too much emotional stuff. Too much virtual stuff. Too much stuff.


Recently I heard about a book called The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It backed up many of the ideas I have formed around simplicity and offered up some fresh ones.

The book is worth a read for both professional and personal reasons. From programmers to politicians, I think any profession can learn a thing or two from this book.

I won't spoil the book for you, but I did pull a few keepers that I'd like to share with you. When you are done reading these, head over to the accompanying website [lawsofsimplicity.com] for more good stuff.

• Reduce - The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction



• Failure - Some things can never be made simple



• Away - More appears like less by simply moving it far, far away



• Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful



• Simplicity is about the unexpected pleasure derived from what is likely to be insignificant and would otherwise go unnoticed



• Anything that can make the medicine of complexity go down easier is a form of simplicity, even when it is an act of deceit



• Hiding complexity allows the owner to manage the expectations himself



• Consumers will only be drawn to the smaller, less functional product if they perceive it to be more valuable than a bigger version of the product with more features



• Savings in time feel like simplicity



• Giving up the option of choice, and letting a machine choose for you, is a radical approach to shrinking the time we might spend otherwise...



• ..because technology will only continue to grow in complexity, there is a clear economic benefit to adopting a strategy of simplicity that will help set your product apart.



• Complexity implies the feeling of being lost; simplicity implies the feeling of being found



• There's always a return on failure when you try to simplify - which is to learn from your mistakes