Doris Blog

Mac users be sure to update your Doris app, some UI improvements in the new release.

A long overdue update for the Doris iPhone app is now available in the appstore.  This update includes partial support for the new features recently introduced in the Mac version of the app.  Also the graphics are now retina ready.

After 17 days in review the latest version of Doris Desktop finally went live a few days ago in the Mac AppStore.  

Check out the web page for a full list of features, screenshots and keyboard shortcuts. The new version of Doris has many improvements over its predecessor (which has now been discontinued).

This Mac version of Doris remains the best way to manage your tasks, todos and notes and the iPhone app is currently being updated to bring it up to speed, a new release will be available in the next few weeks.

The main improvements include:

• Search
• iCal integration
• Estimate task times
• Flags for Important and Today (tasks remain in their groups and can also be marked as Important or for Today)
• Improved keyboard shortcuts

Now the data migration on the server is complete there’s a lot more you can do with your task management.  The following new features are (currently) available only on the Desktop version of the app, to be released on the Mac AppStore in the next week or two:

• search through all your tasks
• flag something as for Today, Important or belonging to your Inbox: this way you can easily manage the state of tasks without changing what group they’re in
• iCal integration: enter something like “call Carol tomorrow at 6pm” and the task is recognised as an event which can be sent to iCal in one click
• add estimated times to tasks and get a total count of hours per group
• offline warning: the app will warn you if you don’t have a network connection

To make sure the new features are reliable I’d like to invite anyone who wants to be a beta tester to send an email to support@dorisapp.com.  Testers will receive a free version of the app when it goes live.

NB: You need to be a Mac user on Lion

Some users reported problems logging in on Windows 7 so we investigated the issue.  It turns out there was a javascript problem that affected only Windows 7 users using Internet Explorer 8 only, the browser worked fine on all other versions of Windows.

The problem has now been fixed.

We also fixed an issue that was affecting some users where the task count per group wasn’t working properly.

Please let me know if you discover any other issues.

By the way, we’ve going to be making some changes to the database in the next few days to get ready to the new release of Doris Desktop on the Mac App Store.  The planned outage will be advertised on the site and most likely very short.

Doris Desktop 1.10 is now ready to download.  There were a number of things that changes in Lion broke, in particular old data was being cached, all fixed in this latest version.

Doris Desktop 1.9 is now ready to download.  A small fix was required to make it Lion compatible.

Doris Desktop 1.8 is now ready to download from the new, dedicated website.

New in this release:

• Link detection added in task description, as well as spell checker and auto-correction
• Data detectors enabled, effectively this means we have iCal integration!
• Added links in Help section for online help and feature requests sites
• Restricted to Snow Leopard and added warning for other users
• some minor UI tweaks, like now you can use the Return key to submit new tasks

Download DorisDesktop 1.7 here

DorisDesktop is still in beta but will be released in the Mac AppStore in July.  The new release, which is currently for Snow Leopard users only, has the following features:

• multiviews: view your current tasks, task history and graphs
• 2 report graphs: productivity by task and tasks completed by date
• UI improvements and better indication of loading data
• improved installer as you can see from the pic
• feedback button: please use it to let me know what you think of the app so far, and which features/improvements you’d like to see
• remember to make sure you have 1 group called Inbox and another called Today, you’ll get custom icons

My apologies to Leopard users, there is currently a glitch which will cause the app to crash for you, I’m on the case and it should be fixed shortly I’m afraid the app will be Snow Leopard only from now on, OS X 10.6 and above are required.

Dear Mac users,  please upgrade to the latest version of DorisDesktop:

Download the latest version of DorisDesktop

This latest version fixes a lot of usability bugs and is recommended for all users.  This will be the last update before I introduce the new multiple view layout that will make a History view possible and some other nice surprises.

Here’s what’s updated:

• Fixed ability to tab through fields when adding new task
• Disabled multiple selection of tasks
• Added command r to refresh tasks and sync
• Badge added to icon in doc for current number of open tasks in Today
• Fixed wrong task and group selection bugs
• Total task count added to window title
• Group folder icon based on type: group, today or inbox

For this last item, if you have a folder called Today (it’s not mandatory) you’ll get a nice checkmark icon for it.  And if you name one of your groups Inbox you’ll get the appropriate icon.