OrchestrateHQ - screencast
UPDATE: New Screencast!
It’s been a busy night and most of the basic functionality is working now. For those of you who are curious as to what OrchestrateHQ is, take a look at the screencast. I’d prefer it if you looked at the youtube link since it won’t rape my bandwidth, but if the quality is annoyingly bad, there is a higher resolution link to a quicktime file below it.
OrchestrateHQ is a productivity tool and is the predecessor to another personal project that I have codenamed Lightbulb. Coding for OrchestrateHQ began on the 10th of June and I hope to roll it out within a week.
OrchestrateHQ is a simple to use, free web application for task management. It improves on the basic to-do list features of such sites as tadalist and voo2do and wraps everything in an intuitive, AJAX-based interface.
I’m building OrchestrateHQ because I really need to use it. Other online task managers are either too basic or too convoluted for my working style. I’m hoping that OrchestrateHQ will help other people streamline their task load, too.
First comment unless some jerk beats me to it.
So what does it do? Orchestrate?
Purple Chimp > thanks for asking - I’m actually going to be adding to this entry as I make progress with building this app over the weekend. As you can see, I’ve just added a bit that tells you what it does.
I could use something like that, but you’re right: Everything out there is either too simple or not simple enough. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
>I’m building Orchestrate because I really need to use it.
Yo. Sounds like you are gonna have a fun weekend ;)
>Other online task managers are either too basic or too convoluted for my working style.
So what are your thoughts on Basecamp? Can’t get enough of that right now…
Basecamp is a brilliant bit of software and I use it frequently at work for projects - however, I’m not trying to make a project management app. Orchestrate is more of a simple task manager that works how I want it to. Basecamp has an ok to-do list section, but it’s a bit clunky and I don’t really like the amount of page scrolling I have to do.
oh and p.s., been a while - how are things in the UK web world?
I could really use something like that and have not been satisfied with the current offerings. Can’t wait to check it out if you make it available.
Hey. I had an idea for something like that some time ago I have no means to build anything like it.
So what can orchestrate actually do? I thought a useful tool would be something that can organise and plan your week for you, like a timetable. So for example, I have an exam at the end of the year, an essay due tomorrow and an art major due in a few months. A program that could take that information and tell you how much work you should be doing each week or daily or etc, eg, the essay is due tomorrow so the program might say do two hours today and only thirty minutes revision for your exam. So in essence it can sum up how much you should be spending on a task each week and put it into an organised database, or something along those lines. What do you think?
Anyway, good luck with it all.
That sounds interesting, but ultimately I don’t think an application can allocate time to different tasks like that unless you start entering tasks with attributes such as deadline, priority etc etc. By doing that, you convolute the processing of information, so to me the benefit is lost. If I want a fully-fledged task planner there are plenty of solutions out there, but that’s not what I need really. I just need a way of keeping track of tasks grouped by type, in a quick and intuitive environment.
I’ll be uploading a screencast of the Orchestrate Beta version soon.
There is www.rememberthemilk.com for people unsatisfied with current offerings. I’ve read quite a few rave reviews about it.
You know what would be even better than a video? Having an actual beta version online maybe? Who cares if it’s not feature-complete. Add an easy bug-reporting tool to it and I think you’ll get lots of feedback. Playing with AJAX stuff is just a lot more fun than watching a blurry video :)
sam > I quite liked that one too, but again, it had a little too many options that I didn’t need, and I thought I could improve on the interface. RTM is almost like a web version of iCal, and iCal frustrates the hell out of me even though I know other people who live by it.
fan > It’s not ready for public beta testing. If it was, I would have put it up online. I do this for a living, you know…there are actual reasons for my actions…
what framework(s) are you using here? looks good so far.
What editor do you use on Mac for PHP/Javascript coding?
scott > I’m really REALLY glad you asked that. See, when I first thought about doing all this I was all up for learning a new framework, like Cake PHP or Symfony. I became quickly frustrated though at how labyrinthine the process was. I understand the MVC model from working a little bit in Rails (following a few tutorials and thinking “wow, that makes a lot of sense”) but I don’t see why I should have to adhere to some proprietary framework that piggy-backs onto PHP to achieve that. I guess I was influenced by this article by Lerdorf Rasmus, one of the guys who basically invented the first versions of PHP:
The No Framework PHP Framework
That approach makes WAY more sense to me than sticking some framework on the top that not only slows down my development because I have to learn it, but also might cease being developed one day which leaves me with a dated site architecture.
I think frameworks can make a lot of sense when you are developing in a team as it encourages some kind of median standard to the way you code (otherwise things can become quite chaotic), but when developing alone I think I’m going to stick with a no-framework framework. I work much faster that way. Orchestrate is just bare PHP and scriptaculous/prototype.
siuyee > I’m using textmate. For project-centric coding where you need access to lots of files at once, it’s pretty unbeatable.
Brilliant! Watched the Quicktime screencast, and am totally into the cleanliness and simplicity of the app’s design. The added Javascript effects are impressive as well. I was surprised too to hear that you made that in around 24hrs. Are you using the Prototype Javascript framework? Also, could you maybe comment on other technical aspects of the site, e.g. use of a PHP framework. It’s interesting to see you document the process of a web app’s conception. Not many developers have done this before. Know you’re busy, and am not sure about how in depth you want to make this documentary, but at some point it would be nice to have a section on your site devoted to this project where we could keep track of your progress.
If you’re not going to have Orchestrate allocate time slots and have a calendar and all that bumpf, why not just have a simpler and optional deadline field associated with each task. Then you could have the title text of the task phase from green to yellow to red as you get closer to the deadline…
I toyed with the idea of “optional” fields, but in the end (at least in my case) all pending tasks can be filtered down into roughly two groups:
1) shit I have to do soon 2) shit I don’t have to do soon
The latter I can store away in the back of my mind, and it’s likely that there will be some other form of reminder. For example if it’s an important deadline for a project, it’s unlikely that I’m going to forget that, and it’s likely I will have constant reminders (meetings, conversations etc) with people around me or clients that force it to stay in my head.
I think if you need software to tell you that you have a project deadline in two weeks then you have larger problems than can be fixed with something like Orchestrate. Orchestrate is more for the menial, day-to-day tasks that are as frequent as they are small. The kind of tasks that you lose nothing from by simply dealing with them in sequence. Again, I see little sense in jumbling up tasks of wildly varying importance (like, “call client”, “call courier company”, “revamp entire CMS for 20th June”) - even if they are arranged in some kind of priority order with neat visuals. I think of that as clutter.
Just to reinforce - I’m building Orchestrate because this is how I need this kind of app to function. Other people might have completely different working styles and needs and in that case, Orchestrate would be a bad fit.
At the same time however, I would like Orchestrate to have a broad appeal and for that reason I might, in the future, build a preferences panel with a “bumpf” option so if you decide Orchestrate as I intended it to be is not enough for your needs, you can flick a switch and suddenly there are more options.
Looks cool so far. I am a little confused as to what this has to do with sexbots. Will it have an option to assign tasks to the sexbot, such as laundry, when not performing their main job? Will those task upload to the sexbot via WiFi or BT?
More seriously, the idea of being able to export to PDF is a good one. Particularly for task lists where you won’t be at a computer but will have many things to do (thinking grocery or christmas shopping) unless there was some way to sync with a pda or smart phone…hm.
Sounds interesting. The YoTube ‘cast doesn’t seem to be working fer me (I don’t want to raise your bandwidth costs by d/l the Quicktime cast).
Leo > sorry, the YouTube link should be ok now.
yongfook > Orchestrate looks awesome - simple, clean, quick, easy… way to go :)
Thanks for the YouTube update. Looks good. I’m glad your considering a pdf capability. Sometimes I like to print them out or save them locally for access. Well, you’ve whetted my appetite. looking forward to hopefully using it.
Looks really nice, small suggestion (if you haven’t thought of it yet), when you delete a list, just have it fade out instead of the main display area refreshing.
Looks great, I think this will become my home page for one of my browsers in the near future. Just one thing: where is the shiny logo with a dude with a stick in his hand ? I want my shiny buttons ! How about if the “logged in” system allowed you to make list templates for often repeated lists ? For example a shopping list which would always contain “buy milk, buy bacon, buy cheese, buy russian wife” ? I’ve been trying to come up with something for that and that’s all I have. Or maybe the ability to make sub-lists, but then the whole thing get another level of complication, probably not such a good idea in the end.
yaay no more postit lite for meee :D
Goddamn. I wish it didn’t look like I came to your site to wank, but you’ve addressed the one problem that I have with ta-da list–which I’ve started using since your last post referring to it. I will most definitely be using Orchestrate.
The one perhaps design related problem I have with what you’ve shown in the screencast is the little red ‘X’ delete box. To me, this constantly looks as though there is an image that is not loading in the page…even though I’m smart enough to know otherwise (which I’m not…why won’t it load?). I’m not sure if that little visual-psychological hang up of mine is enough to make you change what you have there but there you go.
Really clean and well done though. It seems like something very obvious that ta-da list should have upgraded to a while ago.
Guig > good point. Actually that whole trash area needs a bit of a re-think. I’m not even sure it needs to be showing all the time.
Is that your voice? Your posh!
It’s wierd that my post about possible use of frameworks showed up so late. I also noticed the issue with the trash area. I would suggest maybe placing a little trash icon on each task list box that when clicked would ask the user for confirmation for the deletion of the list.
benefit for registering–hot monkey sex.
Give me back the 9:41 min of my life! Also, you say “whoopsy-daisies”. It’s true, what they say about your countrymen, then.
Now, victoria, what did you really think you were getting yourself into when you decided to watch that screencast?
Hmm…this actually seems quite useful. At the moment i’m using Google Calender, so it would be nice if Orchestrate had the ability to sync with Google Calender or something that gave the tasklist a date/timeline aspect. I guess that would defeat the streamlined and simple aspect of Orchestrate though.
I look forward to trying iOrchestrate out. Hopefully it’ll work okay in Opera.
Chris > that sounds like unnecessary clutter to me. Trashing a list is something that, potentially, you may never have to do. Putting an option that you might never use on every list just seems like a waste. Again, the ideology I’m following is to not provide every option possible at every possible moment - that just contributes to an unintuitive, crowded UI.
“Trashing a list is something that, potentially, you may never have to do.”
I don’t think you mean this, right? You did talk about limiting–at least visible–lists to about 12 or so. And the nature of most lists is that they are obsolete when you complete them. It seems as though deleting lists will be a very important feature. Having said that, I still like you’re trash “bin” design more than a little icon on wach list. Like you said, it cuts down on visual clutter…plus I reeeeally like draggy things.
jinx> I dunno, it’s a YF video; I clicked mindlessly without knowing why. Whoopy-daisies, I suppose.
Guig > well it depends on the way you work, but for me, I’m likely to have a few ongoing lists that are never “completed” - they just keep getting added to. Something like “Quick Work Tasks” is not a list I’m ever going to need to delete, really. It needs to be there all the time.
12 was just an arbitrary value more than anything. If I let the number of ongoing lists be infinite, then there comes a point when you have like 25 lists all going at once where the point of using the application is lost. It’s more of a fail-safe to make sure people use the thing as I intended (to streamline your task management) rather than as like, proof that you will need to delete lists.
I think the ultimate “zen” of Orchestrate would be to sign up, know EXACTLY how to organise your tasks into 12 themes or less, and never ever have to change them. I’m hoping that after using Orchestrate for an extended period of time, I might be able to do just that.
YF: Will there be a way of colour-coding the red header portion of the lists?
vickiho > I think that’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure if I would actually use it much. I really want to keep things as simple and clean as possible, but as I said above I may consider pooling these extra ideas, deciding which ones will really add mainstream functionality and not just be a gimmicky feature that only a small minority of users actually use, and incorporate them into some kind of easily switch on-and-offable “blumf” version.
I see what your saying. I was thinking that my lists right now look like “Things to do before I leave Japan.” and “Bestiality movies to delete before I get my computer fixed.” etc…. In which case there is a specific deadline at which point the list is no longer needed.
vickiho> It could be worse. The only ‘cast I did was filled with “At the end of the day” and “This is were the rubber meets the road”. and that is why its the one I’ve done.
What I’m looking for, and I think this could be it. The only thing I might like to see is a date field, where I can enter a due date or completed date. I say “might” because if the task is sufficiently important enough, who needs a date reminder?
This sort of tech talk ain’t my bag. Please make more smelly ballsack jokes.
Smelly ballsacks are not a joking matter. They are a serious hazard to the a prosperous fornicating lifestyle.
Some people might want RSS as a way for 3rd party apps to load the data. For example, outputting a simple list on a blog sidebar.
i just watched the video, it’s amazing!! i definitely need one of those and would use it. if anything, i would suggest like aqua and fuchsia for colors.. but that’s your taste!
In terms of the goal you set, I think Orchestrate meets it perfectly. A quick way to make a to do list, sans-details of an appointment book. A bunch of reminders that, once glanced at, should trigger a series of seizures followed by frothing at the mouth, and an eventual blackout. And then, when you come to, you think, “Right, i need to get some milk, eggs, and nitroglycerin for that exploding cake I’m baking to give to the boss tomorrow”.
The only issue I have, which isn’t really an issue, and was already mentioned, is the icon for the trash. I trash bin would be sufficient IMO, but i do like having it there all the time. It means less clicking for when you actually need to trash something from the list.
Now release it already, i need to remind myself to bake a cake.
the trash icon in the current development version is now a trash bin icon.
I’ve spent most of the last couple of days ironing out little bugs - it’s almost ready for a public test. I’m going to be releasing it on Saturday at the latest.
Will you sue if I make “creative use” of input parameters? ;-)
meaning what? you are going to try to hack it the moment it’s out there?
I really like the simplistic interface and it is the sort of thing I need to split my activity plan. I’ll be looking forward to trying it out for myself in the near future.
I was just joking. Obviously.
I would hope so. I’m trying to do a good thing here.
neat. i started using Ziddlywiki to take work notes and i really started to realize that my needs for a todo list were much greater.
and cuz of this post ive now signed up on tada, voo2do and remember the milk. and so far tada seems nice enough for my needs, but just this side of too simplistic… and orchestrate sounds like it might work better.
“I would hope so. I’m trying to do a good thing here.”
If only that dude in Memento had this. He wouldn’t have been reduced to tattooing ’shift swap with Chris at 10am’ on his left gonad.
“I would hope so. I’m trying to do a good thing here.”
As a developer (low-level stuff, more prone to security-related bugs) I actually welcome bug-reports of that kind.
If you want to help with bug testing, you can simply ask to be one of the testers - you don’t calmly remark in the development post that you are going to attempt to try something malicious once the site is up. That’s the kind of behaviour I would expect from good-for-nothing script kiddies - not from someone who visits my site as often as you.
I know you’re a fan of sexy AJAX “animations” where you can drag and drop, etc, but I would like to suggest that you make things a little more friendly for disabled users. There are people out there that don’t have strong mouse control or dont use a mouse at all. So, I’d recommend having another way to expand those task lists.
I’m not saying remove the drag and drops, but it would be nice to be able to expand it by double clicking as well. I think the small green task boxes may need a small X or trash can icon in the titlebar to avoid dragging it onto the red X.
Or, of course, have keyboard shortcuts. Highlight a green box and press Enter to expand or Delete to delete.
Otherwise, nice app. Simplicity is good but usability is paramount!
Chidade > Thanks for the comments. Usability is paramount, I agree. And IMO one of the easiest ways you can impede your site’s usability is by doing exactly what you suggest: adding several different methods of achieving the same task. Could be just me, but I find that kind of thing confusing.
I think you are talking more about accessibility, in terms of keystrokes or accommodating people who aren’t using / can’t use a mouse. I’ll do my best to make the site more accessible as time goes on, but I’m never going to add features / bloat that I think will be detrimental to the user experience of the majority, and I’m always of the mind that more people benefit from me removing the unnecessaries than they do from me adding the wouldn’t-it-be-cools.
Accessibility, usability, potato, potatoe ;)
No, you’re right, I did mean accessibility. Keyboard shortcuts would ultimately be best but I still don’t think it would hurt or bloat the application too much with some small icon in a corner. Still, if you add keyboard shortcuts, that would solve the issue without changing the look of what you have.
To be honest, I think that your drag-and-drop function probably falls into your wouldn’t-it-be-cool category rather than something that everyone already knows and is familiar with, ie: a small X in the corner to close. Accessibility also applies to able-bodied people too, don’t forget. Some people like having a choice between keyboard shortcuts, pointing and clicking with a mouse and a favourites-style toolbar. My idea is not really about how cool it looks, but rather how it feels to use.
Minimalism is nice and all but maybe you’re getting a bit too zen? ;)
Chidade > it’s this whole “some people like X” ambiguity that I don’t want to let rule any of my design decisions. Sorry, but none of your arguments are that convincing - I’ve heard them all before, seen them implemented and seen where that road ends. I’m going to stay on course. I’m a believer in less is more - if you think that’s “too zen” then probably your design sense differs greatly from mine.
And whilst I welcome suggestions, it feels like you are attempting to micromanage. I’ve told you where I stand, it’s not really your job to try to “convince” me otherwise.
wow you two are really going at it. in any case, i find it difficult if people make suggestions about my music because i don’t trust anyone else’s taste in music really. it’s hard to accept criticism when you find it difficult to connect with other peoples’ ideas of the subject matter - and possibly, it’s better to stick to your own ways of doing things. maybe this is a simpler issue with programming because the arts are so diverse and personal and unfathomable and open to interpretation and art critics need to die.
hey wow like how the comment just fades in there. haha! wooooo!!!!!! programming, eh? wow.
If you’re looking for testers I’d love to volunteer. I think your zen concept is fabulous and think your vision is clairvoyant.
I’ll also suck your * since I sound like a pathetic whore already.
Lloyd > Well, it’s frustrating since you do want to listen to users (although actually, no one in this list has used Orchstrate yet, which makes any kind of suggestion as to how to improve it seem rather baseless) but I think it’s all too easy to just let users / peers dilute or influence your vision into something less than the sum of its parts.
Also, as someone who takes great interest and pride in UI design, I take offense to the suggestion that I haven’t thought things through. Chidade accuses me of using drag and drop because it’s “cool” whereas actually, in terms of user interface it makes a lot more sense than simply clicking around, in the case of Orchestrate.
For example, say I made it so that you simply click the green panels to open them up in the full view panel - where is the symbolic link between these two spaces? There is none. I’m simply clicking in one area and then things are popping up randomly in another - that’s a poor trait to have in a UI. With drag and drop I am dragging something TO the place it will appear, creating a fluid visual metaphor.
As another example - aside from the fact that a “trash bin” icon on each green pane would clutter up the UI - adding it to each panel doesn’t make sense as it is an action that you may never need to use. Its presence on a constant list such as “Daily Home Tasks” would be utterly pointless at best, and at worst, create the risk of you accidentally deleting the list when you don’t want to.
I really don’t want to have to keep explaining / justifying my design decisions. When Orchestrate gets released, I will welcome bug reports and will endeavor to fix them - but for the time being I’m going to stop responding to people who think they have ideas / features to contribute.
As much as I appreciate the enthusiasm, I’m really going to have to put my foot down and say that my design decisions are made for real reasons. I don’t want to (or have the time to) explain what those reasons are each time. If you enjoy Orchestrate, great. If it’s not your cup of tea, there’s lots of other solutions to choose from (scraps of paper worked well for me before Orchestrate!).
Cheers, YF
Moto Oda > thanks for the offer (on…both counts) but actually I’ve been testing with a small group throughout this week. I’m pretty sure that today we ironed out the last of the bugs and now all that’s left is for me to write the “help” page!
I’d be dissapointed if not for the fact you’re that much closer to a release. Congrats & thanks!
I never realised that keyboard shortcuts were “better” or “more intuitive” than using a mouse. I also don’t really see how you can lack the ability to manipulate a mouse but would be able to use a keyboard with ease. I’m pretty sure YF knows what he’s doing.
$.02
If you think about it, Orchstrate was created to solve YF’s needs because there wasn’t a satifactory solution, so it stands that the design should follow his intentions.
I hope we’re looking at a weekend release here, ’cause I’ve been procrastinating until I can watch my tasks float around on a computer screen.
actually I got too excited in whet anticipation for Orchestrate, and signed up for Ta Da and Remember the cow, and discovered that I actually have a SHITLOAD of things to do, and really could do with a relievingly and ingeniously, simplified life organizer like Orchestrate.
Come on come on, Bring it! (the productivity tool, I mean)
David-MTL > Imagine you’ve had a major stroke, or some sort of accident where there’s nerve damage. You could use your limbs perhaps but not normally, maybe only in jerky movements. Perhaps you have a trackball or a modified mouse because your hand is permanently clawed up due to your muscles having atrophied. Maybe you only have one limb, so you don’t you a mouse at all - only a keyboard or voice recognition…
Accessibility in web and program design is generally targetted at people with disabilities. Not always, of course. There’s a school of thought that accessibility also allows able-bodied people to use the program as they prefer, not just how the program dictates.
The reason I keep pestering YF about accessibility in his design is because he’s definitely someone who knows his shit, design and programming-wise, he’s well read on the topic and obviously has very strong opinions on what he thinks is right design.
He’s also somewhat prolific.
So, if YF were to start using accesible design techniques in his work and writing/podcasting about it, it would help go some way towards making accessibilty in web design a new trend, something sorely needed. Yes, I’m trying to use his internet fame for my own ends :P But he’s already mentioned that he would try implementing accessible design later on in the development of Orchestrate, which I’m glad about.
YF> the visual design of your application is fine. I do like it. I like the drag-and drops, I just like having choices as well. I realise that it’s your application, built for your needs but I still hope that you can implement the most basic keyboard shortcuts for accessibility’s sake, since you are releasing this to the general public.
It would be virtually invisible to the average user but be there for whoever needs it. It should also only be a few extra lines of code, so it shouldn’t cause too much bloat, or be too much extra work. Everything else I suggested you can disregard, but I hope you can jump on the acccessibility bandwagon.
Oh. I forgot about voice rec. Good point. All of them.