290814 - Tasks should have a "quick edit mode": click and type to create new tasks in the task list, in-place editing of task titles

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Tasks, enhancement)

Description

[rabbitambulance]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/0.9.1 StumbleUpon/1.994
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/0.9.1 StumbleUpon/1.994

ATM entering a new task is just too much of a hassle if you are really just
adding a lot of stuff at once. IMHO you should have the possibility to just
click into the empty space on the task list and start typing away (like you can
in the adress field of thunderbird mails: you click, you type, you hit enter,
you go on typing). The original interface should remain to edit due date et al.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Joey Minta]

A few thoughts on this:
-This bug is at least a subtask, if not a duplicate of bug 202368.
-In general, I'm against this idea.  The only field that could be created with 
direct typing would be a name field.  Most tasks at least have some sort of due 
date, notes, category...something.
-If a task only has a name field, then there's actually only one additional 
click involved in 'New Task'-> Name field -> OK. as opposed to 'Click empty 
space' -> type name -> click elsewhere to save.
-The question of which calendar file the task would appear in would remain 
ambiguous and could inadvertantly lead to data loss.

Comment 2

[Matthew (lilmatt) Willis]

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

Bugspam filter: TorontoMostafaMove

Comment 3

[David Tenser [:djst]]

This gets my immediate vote. It is too cumbersome to quickly create a todo-item with the current UI.

Joey, why are you against making it simpler to create new tasks? How do you justify such an opinion?

Comment 4

[Joey Minta]

(In reply to comment #3) 
> Joey, why are you against making it simpler to create new tasks? How do you
> justify such an opinion?
> 
On further consideration, I withdraw my previous objection.  This works well for events, and could be done similarly for tasks.

Comment 5

[Damian Szczepanik]

Joey, is it still valid? it seems to be working for tasks too: you can click into an empty space and start filling a task

Comment 6

[Joey Minta]

(In reply to comment #5)
Yes.  This bug is in the Sunbird Only component, and the ability to edit tasks inline is only (partially) available in Lightning.

Comment 7

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

Lightning and Sunbird now share the code for the tasklist. Moving from "Sunbird Only" to "Tasks".

Comment 8

[Jens Müller (:tessarakt)]

What about the relation between this bug and bug 455396?

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> What about the relation between this bug and bug 455396?

Bug 455396 wants an editable *task properties pane* where we now just have the task preview (below the task list), because it's insane to have data right in front of you but no direct way of editing it.

This bug 290814 is about a click n type approach for adding/editing tasks (i.e., task titles) to the *task list* at the top. So the principle is similar, but it applies to different elements of the UI. Oh, and it has been proposed before: Bug 202368 from 2003, where the same approach was proposed for entering new events: just click n type, right where you want your event on the calendar grid. Which is significantly different (less difficult, more intuitive) than the current method of having to drag up a time span using mouse to create and edit new events in-place (which btw isn't keyboard-accessible). Bug 202368 claims to be fixed, but actually, it is not.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to comment #4)

> On further consideration, I withdraw my previous objection. This works well
> for events, and could be done similarly for tasks.

Actually, as explained in comment 9, "click n type" is not yet implemented for events, we only have "drag n type". To see the charming simplicity of "click n type" in action (I hate to say it), you'll need to look at M$ Out_look (e.g. OL 2002): single-clicking on a point of time will select the 30min span (blue highlight), then just type, press enter, done. Oh, and shift+cursor works, too (only before typing), in case you need to extend your event to more than 30mins.

Comment 12

[bgmCoder]

Ah, I made a long comment about this issue here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455396#c10
that thread is very similar to this one.

Please do implement directly-editable fields in the task list!

Comment 13

[bgmCoder]

Again, I have, three years later, made another plea for this!
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455396#c12
That is a link to the other thread that is similar to this one.

I would make these requests somewhere else, but where is there?