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Reviewed Showcase App

MiniTask - To-do list AIR app

July 09th 2008 | by James

(63 votes, 4/5)

to-do list

MiniTask is a small to-do list application that works. We have previously reviewed one other to-dolist application on this site called Doominow.

MiniTask have taken a slightly different approach but again the UI is simple and it just stays out of your way.

To-do lists have always been associated with learning how to program Ruby on Rails.

MiniTask’s functionality is available via a menu on right click. The standard to-do list functionality is here like setting the status of individual and group tasks.

What is cool is that an alarm can be set for a task. When the alarm time is reached the task item just pulses in the app window.

There is a copy functionality to and from the application although I had issues with the HTML copy. Pasting into the app work well.

Without sounding too negative I couldn’t get used to having to double click to both edit the tasks text and also to change the status of the item. Maybe the developers were going after that Windows application feel but I’m sure a single click would give a better user experience, especially for Apple laptop users.

Design eye

It has been a while time since I have seen a pixel font used at least this is not a 6px affair and you can read it clearly. Not sure if everyone would appreciate only having capitals. Just be careful you don’t write too much as there is no line wrapping or scrolling for task item text.

The contrast is nice and clean although I would prefer a solid fill to the checkbox if a task is done. I looked but it appears the app does not have any settings or preferences panel.

The alarm idea is good but possibly a popup clock / date picker could work slightly better.

This said it is a good looking app with good simple functionality that you need in a to-do list app.

Technical eye

Built using ActionScript 3, the actual application SWF is only 16k in size.

Your Comments and Views

Felix said on July 14th 2008 at 4.07 pm

Hi James,

thank you very much for your review of MiniTask!
Just a few notes:

- What issues did you have with the HTML copy feature? Please note that if the target application doesn’t understand HTML tags this feature won’t work (e.g. on Windows it works well in Word and Excel but doesn’t work in Notepad – you could use the normal copy command to paste just plain text there)

- You’re right, double-clicking to change task states isn’t the most intuitive way because the icons look like checkboxes (where you would expect a single-click). We changed this in the latest version! However we didn’t change the double-click for task label editing as it may be a little annoying to select another item if you just want to deselect the active item + it work’s better with the drag & drop feature for task reordering. If you don’t like the double-click you could also right-click and select “edit”...

- We picked the pixel font because it emphasizes the minimalist nature of the application. Maybe the lack of lowercase letters will be an issue if you have lots of text but usually you just enter short text like “Call…” or “Do…”

- I’ve just tried a solid fill for the checkbox but unfortunately it doesn’t look so nice :(in my opinion). As the label is also coloured green it should be no problem to distinguish done tasks from undone tasks?

- MiniTask doesn’t have a separate settings panel, all settings are available via the right-click tray/dock icon menu.

- We considered using a date picker for alarm editing but then found that it would be “overkill” for MiniTask. It would probably look prettier, however I’m not sure if you would be really faster setting exact alarm times?

Hope this clears our considerations / thoughts up a bit?

Gil said on July 17th 2008 at 11.33 am

The single click in the new versions works just great.

I also really like the fact that I can easily print out all the tasks (or at least print them to a PDF)

Felix said on July 18th 2008 at 12.56 pm

Just released a new version which lets you add separators to divide your tasks and supports some keyboard shortcuts…

James said on July 19th 2008 at 1.53 pm

Hey thanks for the update Felix.

The comments made in the review are just my thoughts and ideas so please don’t take them as a critisism. :-)

James

Ryan said on July 23rd 2008 at 3.00 pm

Love the app, just one problem though. The past two days after I log back in to windows the previous days tasks were not restored. Only older tasks were restored. If I you could figure that out I would love it even more, b/c I really hate using sticky notes!

Felix said on July 23rd 2008 at 9.43 pm

Hi Ryan,

could you mail me an exact description of this error? (what version of MiniTask and OS do you use, when does it happen etc.)
Did you manually exit the application before shutting down?

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