A few suggestions on how to improve backpack
Backpack launched today. I’ve been using it for a few hours and it looks great. However, a bunch of things come to mind for possible future improvements:
- Somehow i think the whole thing should be more date/time-aware. Even better: calendars for each page, just as there are already lists, notes, &c. Right now i’m planning a trip to a conference with backpack and i already dread the moment i start with my schedule for the program because there’s just no suitable way to do this right now. Actually, a full-blown calendar isn’t really necessary, but something suitable for basic scheduling, a bunch of entries with date/time-information in chronological order, grouped by day would do nicely.
- Tighter integration of lists and reminders. Lists aren’t really for generic lists – as i grok it, they’re mainly tailored towards todo-lists (for a plain list, use * for bulleted list items and # for ordered list items in your body, notes and possibly elsewhere). So if i already have a list full of todo-items, i should be able to create a reminder from a list-item. Just another little button next to the edit- and trash-links that’ll take you to your reminders page with the reminder-text preset. Associations between reminders and todo-items could also add deadlines to todo-items, something that’s terribly absent right now. Actually, i really think todo-lists should support deadlines. Would make for a nice auto-reminder thingy as well.
- Aggregate similar content where it makes sense. As mentioned above lists are basically todo-lists and i think it would make sense to aggregate them onto one page to give an overview of all the stuff you got to do without going through all your pages in backpack. The same would make sense for the schedule-per-page thing suggested above.
- I’m not sure where backpack leaves tada-list. Some part of me thinks there is no place for tada-list after backpack, another thinks the two should be tightly integrated or perhaps even merged. Just a feeling, not that i actually know, i’ve never really used tada-list because it makes my browser freeze upon adding a new item.
- I couldn’t find a way to reorder notes. It’s possible to reorder list-items, so why not notes?
- You can add links like this: “sometext”:http://someplace.com – it would be nice if it’d be possible to add email-links similarly: “someone”:someone@someplace.com
- There should be more rss feeds, would be useful for public pages. I’d like to have them at least for notes, list-items and images.
Right now i see backpack taking over a lot of the stuff i used voodoopad for. Nonetheless, i really miss some of the features described above, especially the scheduling thingy (as if you couldn’t guess that by now). I’ll stick with a free account for now, let’s see how this turns out over time…
Thanks for the feedback. We’ve reviewed it and noted it.
Comment by Jason Fried on May. 4th, 2005, at 21:32 #
Oh, and yeah, this is v1.0. It’s been out for 1.25 days. Hang tight — we have a lot planned.
Comment by Jason Fried on May. 4th, 2005, at 21:32 #
Google Web Accelerator and Backpack
Surfing the Google labs, I noticed a new app called “Google Web Accelerator. It’s supposed to speed up the loading of websites, even providing a little counter, showing you how much time you’ve already saved. Well, I’d love to check it out, but sys…
Trackback by Stormgrass on May. 5th, 2005, at 15:55 #
[...] I was intrigued to find Christopher Wimmer’s post on engadgeted.net ยป a few suggestions on how to improve backpack, in which he talked about his own curiosity about how he’d integrate Backpack and VoodooPad. I’m hoping he may soon offer some insights about Backpack versus (or alongside) VoodooPad, now that he’s become an enthusiastic Backpack user. Does Christopher (or anyone else) have tips on how to make Backpack play nicely on VoodooPad, advice on which things I should use Backpack for and which things I should use VoodooPad for, or a compelling argument about why I should give up one in favour of the other? [...]
Pingback by alexandrasamuel.com » This is your brain in binary on Aug. 21st, 2005, at 20:08 #