232939 - [extension fodder] Redesign the TODO/TASK List functionality and logic

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Calendar :: Tasks, defect)

Description

[maxie3]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

One common design tendency is to build stuff the way you've seen other things
built...without questioning if there are better approaches.  I say this because
I see that the task list is being designed to be very similar to Outlook's task
list design.  I'd like to suggest an alternative approach that may be more
intuitive, might make more sense and is also the approach used in the Franklin
Planner Software (FPS).  (Available at www.franklincovey.com)

In Outlook the task list is just one big list...each task with a start date and
end date and a bunch of other attributes.  A consequence of this design is that
you have to filter everything to look at today's items....although it is not
clear if you should be looking at things that started today, things that started
in the past and end in the future or things that end today.  I've always found
this design to be very counter-intuitive....because who makes real life task
lists like this???  

In FPS, each day has its own task list.  If you don't finish something today,
then you can either forward it to tomorrow or any future date or delete it....or
 just leave it unfinished.  However, each day has its own list.  If you change
the day you are looking at, and you have the task list sync'ed w/ the day in
focus, then the task list changes to the focus day's list.  I find that this
approach (of having a different task list for each day) more maps to how people
use "Things to do" lists in real life.  We simply list the things that we want
to do today.  There's no "Start Date" or "End Date".  If, for instance,there is
something that we can't do until tomorrow, we don't put it on the same list with
today's list....it goes on tomorrow's list.  And while some of the items on
today's list may end up on the list for tomorrow....the lists are still two
separate things.

There's another good reason for why in real life we do this...simply because
each day has its own priority weighting scheme.  For instance, if today is
Sunday....mowing the lawn may be a high priority....however, if I don't get it
done today, then it probably wouldn't be a high priority on Monday's list,
simply because Monday is a workday and there's a whole different set of things
that influence what is a priority on a workday (e.g. whether you have a job,
when you get off work, other work week responsibilities, etc)...so if I don't do
it on Sunday, it won't appear on another Things to do list until next weekend.

Lastly, for the general wish list of things to accomplish...FPS stores these
items in a Master Task List.  This is just a list of items that will at some
point hopefully make it onto a daily task list.

Anyway, my general point is that I don't think Mozilla Calendar should be
designed as a clone of Outlook...without considering other alternatives.  I
highly suggest that the to do/task list designers download the trial version of
Franklin Planning Software and play with it to compare its to do/task list
approach to that of Outlook's to see which you think better fits how we think of
our tasks in real life.  The software is available from the
www.franklincovey.com.  Note:  DO NOT download Plan Plus...which is simply an
Outlook overlay that tries to fit the Franklin Planner paradigm onto Outlook,
with limited success.  To see the uncorrupted and cleanest version of the
Franklin Planner system in software form download Franklin Planning Software (FPS).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Mostafa Hosseini]

Agreed. Rephrasing the summary.

Comment 2

[Jacob Gest]

I would agree that I would like to be able to at least have a view in which the
todo list displays only tasks in a given day. I also like the idea of being
prompted to set the task for a different day if it is not completed. Still I
think   it would be wise to have options. I do have some task that I want to
start and complete in a timeframe so i don't think removing that feature would
be good. Also it is sometimes nice to be able to have a task span more than a
day but I think that can still be supported with a day view. So I think there
should be an option, just as in events, to make the task lat the day long, or
maybe it could say "Not time oriented".

Comment 3

[maxie3]

(In reply to comment #2)
Good to know that someone else is interested in this bug.  ;-)

I definitely agree with your statement about liking options...so that everyone
can configure it to their own tastes.  This is also why I think it is important
to have the overall design be as intuitive as possible....so it'll be easier to
design options that work intuitively.  

And I would argue that basing the design around daily task lists is much more
intuitive than having one huge list that you then have to create "views" to look
at in different ways.

If you think about how you would use a paper-based system you can quickly come
to the same conclusion.  What do you with a paper-based system?  Each day you
probably make a list of things to do.  When you are making out this list, you
probably refer to the previous day's list and transfer some of those items that
weren't completed to the current day's list.  As well, you might schedule some
of those unfinished items to some future day's task list for whatever reason.

Also, there might be some items that you need to do every day...those "repeating
items" you just write them on each day's list.  (Obviously in a software
solution, we'd probably want some sort of repeating task item that would appear
on each day's list automatically.)

As well, every once in a while you might refer to some master list of things
(probably something you wrote long ago and stuffed it in some drawer) that you
want to get to at some point (eg reading a certain book, calling an old friend,
etc).  Anyway, this is a separate big list of stuff.  In FPS, this is called the
Master Task list.

To address some of the specific points you touched upon....
-FPS has an option that will automatically forward unfinished tasks to the next day.
-In FPS, I believe it is the Master Task list that has fields for start and end
dates.
-As well, tasks can be made to repeat daily/weekly/monthly/yearly for a set or
unset span of time.
-A task that was only relevant for that day...could either be marked finished if
it was done....or marked with an X if it wasn't done...and isn't going to be
done..since the task was only relevant for that day.

Actually things brings up another issue.  In FPS, there is a distinction made in
the following situation.  Say you put "Go see a movie" on your daily task list.
 Then later in the day, for whatever reason you decide not to do it.  You can
mark that item with an X, which means that you are not going to do it.  This is
different from deleting the item...in which case, the item is removed from the list.

I'd argue that it is much better to be able to mark things with an X (almost
like marking it VOID)...because then when you look back, you  can see that you
had planned to do it, but then decided not to for whatever reason.  As opposed
to looking back at the list and not ever seeing the item that you had originally
planned to do.

I'm not sure about this, but in Outlook I think you would either need to mark it
as done...or delete it from the list.  There is no "VOID" option.

Didn't mean to babble on so long...but just wanted to respond to some of your
comments.

Comment 4

[Rolf Sponsel]

Funny how Calendars (dates and durations)+ Activities (events and todos) +
Resources (people and material = costs) always eventually tend to end up in
Project Management (supported by a system). ;-)

I definitely agree with the first paragraph of comment #1 (and with other
thoughts presented in that and other comments).

Keeping the current implementation (or an improved version of it), e.g. as an
overlay (as mentioned in comment #1 ), could also be beneficial in order to
facilitate adoption by former Outlook users (until they are ready to take
advantage of the full feature capabilities).

But particularily I believe Project Scheduling/Management should be keept in mind.

A first step might be to introduce "calendars" of type 'Projects' (as a tab - or
the like - in accordance with 'Calendars') for grouping activities together
belonging to the same project. (Or would it be better to use 'Activities' in
order to save 'Projects' for the future - if/when Activities, Calendars, and
Resources are present - as the meta object describing the project and defining
the pieces forming it.

Then it would be possible to add calculation and printing of Gant and Resource
schemes in the future too. Maybe have som export/import facilities for
integration/interaction with OpenOffice.org?

This, of course, doesn't all need to be implemented right from the beginning.
But why not have it in mind whilest implementing an IMPROVED basic TODO/TASK
List functionality.

Just my € 0.02 

BTW, shouldn't this NFR be tagged "Hardware: All" and "OS: All" set instead of
the current "PC" and "Windows2000"?

Comment 5

[maxie3]

Changing the Hardward and OS fields as correctly suggested by Rolf Sponsel.

Comment 6

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

I am against making calendar a project management app. It's a calendar program.
Let's stay with that.

Comment 7

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

The suggestion as original made focusses a lot on day view. What about week views?
Should all tasks planned somewhere in the current view show up in some list? But
how about tasks for a day, while you are in week view?
And won't two task lists be confusing?

Comment 8

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

Reassigning all automatically assigned bugs from Mostafa to nobody@m.o

Bugspam filter: TorontoMostafaMove

Comment 9

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Now that we have the "Show Tasks in view" functionality, I think this bug isn't needed any more. There are also a few bugs open on different aspects of how to show the tasks in the views.

I do think this approach can be very interesting and depending on how you organizer your tasks, may even be the superior one. I'd suggest implementing this as an extension first. If that picks up, we can consider replacing our existing task view.

Chosing INVALID for a lack of better resolution.