481080 - Task filters "Today" and "Next Seven Days" should show all active tasks for the period

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Calendar :: Tasks, enhancement)

Description

[mmolle]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009020409 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-1)
Build Identifier: Iceowl (lightning) 0.9 build 2009011310

The Today filter shows Tasks which:

* Have no start or duedate and are not checked complete
* have no start or duedate but are checked complete today (which is okay for me)
* have a start day in the past and a due date in the future (past and future including today)

what is _not_ displayed, but which should be displayed in my opinion is tasks which:
* have only a half specified time interval: only due date or only a start date in the past not including Today.

I think: if Today is in this half-specified interval _or_ after due date but not yet completed, it should be displayed with Filter Today.

What's more: There is this green coloring for some tasks. I cannot fathom what it means. Tasks which have a startdate in the past are green. But Tasks without a startdate (which means they are 'current' all the time and not limited to an interval) are not. So this green means /what exactly/?

Thanks for this great software.

mo


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Matthew Mecca [:mmecca]]

Currently, the "Today" and "Next Seven Days" task filters work the same as they do for events in the unifinder, by filtering out items with start and end/due dates before or after the selected date range. This is less useful for tasks, since it doesn't consider completed status or the fact that tasks are not required to have a due date. 

A task with no due date that started yesterday, but has not yet been completed, should still be considered active today (and in the future until it is completed), making it a valid result for both the "Today" and "Next Seven Days" filters. 

Overdue tasks should also be considered still active, even though the end date falls before the selected date range, because they have not yet been completed.

I think the following task filter behavior would make more sense:

- Current Tasks: Continues to work as it does now, showing tasks starting on or before the currently selected date, and tasks completed today.

- Today: Shows incomplete tasks starting on or before today, and tasks completed today. This would be the same results as the Current Tasks filter would show if today's date was selected, but does not consider the currently selected date in the view. This would be useful in the Today Pane where the event section could be set to show events on a future date without affecting the task list.

- Next Seven Days: Same as the Today filter, but also including tasks starting within the next week.

Comment 2

[mitch deoudes]

One thing I noticed is that the times of the tasks are important as well as the dates. i.e., if a (today) task is set for noon, and it's currently 3:00pm, it gets filtered out by "next seven days".

I know you can simulate the behavior people seem to be asking for (i.e. a today / next seven days filter that shows past incomplete tasks as well) by setting the filter to Incomplete and then advancing the date of the Today Pane into the future.  But this blows the functionality of the event viewer part of the pane.

I feel like what it comes down to is that folks don't want to be juggling settings/dates/etc. just to keep a TODO list that automagically shows "what I should be working on right now".  1) Enter a task for next month, "buy milk".  2) Forget about it until it pops up in the filter.  3) If you fail to do it, it hangs around until you do.)  4) When you check it off, it disappears.*

The current (overly complex, and not useful, imho) scheme might be made to work by a single setting that allows the task filter to have an offset from the Today Pane date, instead of being tied to it.  Enter an offset of +7 days, set the filter to "Incomplete", et voila.  Better still, make the filters checkboxes, so that more than one can be applied.  Next Seven Days + Incomplete = goodness.

* - note for #4 above - contrary to the previous poster, I don't agree that completed tasks should stick around unless "show completed tasks" is checked.

Comment 3

[Matthew Mecca [:mmecca]]

Attachment: Fix v1

Makes the behavior of the Today and Next Seven Days task filters consistent with the Current Tasks filter.

Comment 4

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Comment on attachment 592463 [details] [diff] [review]
Fix v1

r=philipp

Comment 5

[Matthew Mecca [:mmecca]]

Pushed to comm-central - http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/fbbc916ed987