top | item 21932381

Show HN: An infinitely nested task manager where progress bubbles up to the top

126 points| adriaanmulder | 6 years ago |discotask.com | reply

86 comments

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[+] miki123211|6 years ago|reply
Is the great accessibility intentional? If not, you should know you're on the right track. The app is basically usable with a screen reader, and that's something you can't say about most task trackers. If you want to keep it that way, my hn username at gmail.
[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
That's great to hear! Can't say it was intentional, I haven't honestly even gotten to my routine accessibility-pass I do on most apps.
[+] charliesome|6 years ago|reply
The homepage is a white screen with JavaScript disabled.

If requiring JS to render the homepage is a conscious decision made considering the various tradeoffs, please at least add a message saying so in a noscript tag.

[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
Will do, thanks for the feedback!
[+] eliseumds|6 years ago|reply
Developers, please stop blocking zooming on mobile Web pages via meta tags.
[+] marcosdumay|6 years ago|reply
You mean by this tag?

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">

I imagine the only problem here is the maximum-scale parameter. Is that so, or are there other ones?

I haven't touched a frontend for a few years. It was the case that this tag was needed to display anything on mobile (and Google would all but delist you if you omitted it or used it incorrectly). I imagine things have improved. The optimist in me would like to think that the tag isn't even necessary anymore, but I can't trust that guy.

[+] jraph|6 years ago|reply
I never notice this. On Firefox mobile there is an option to always allow zooming and it works well. I agree with you though. Using such an option should not be needed.
[+] anoncake|6 years ago|reply
Browser developers, please stop honoring these meta tags. And generally stop giving web designers toys they can't handle responsibly.
[+] nwrk|6 years ago|reply
100% Workflowy copy / clone

(https://workflowy.com/)

Let see how this pan out.

* “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”, Steve Jobs

[+] cbsks|6 years ago|reply
Wow. That landing page is bad. I learned that some successful people and businesses use Workflowy, but I didn’t learn what Workflowy is or why I might need it. Is the desktop page better than the mobile one?
[+] monitron|6 years ago|reply
I like Workflowy but the core feature of this app (infinite progress rollups) is not present in Workflowy. I find that Workflowy barely works as a task progress tracker because it doesn't have any real native support for that workflow other than marking items as completed. So besides both apps being outline editors, I feel like you're really overstating this.
[+] jv22222|6 years ago|reply
It doesn't really seem like a clone. It looks like it is expanding on the core idea but adding deeper project management states. At least, I can't find out how to have the orange green etc. in Workflowey.
[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
WorkFlowy is an awesome app that I would recommend to anyone as an idea/note organizer. DiscoTask is very similar in so far as it is based around nested lists. However, DiscoTask is not a competitor to WorkFlowy; it’s made specifically for bigger teams with many projects and is really meant to (eventually) compete with apps like Trello and Jira.
[+] pram|6 years ago|reply
The page says literally NOTHING about what it is, or does. What?
[+] cellis|6 years ago|reply
I built something like this as well called TVSK (ios only): check it out here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tvsk. My app allows you to estimate time of subtasks and see it bubble up through parent projects.
[+] davalapar|6 years ago|reply
Jesus christ this opt-in landing page is helluva waste of bytes.
[+] city41|6 years ago|reply
There's a good number of dead scrollbars on Linux/Chrome:

https://i.imgur.com/kyT6xlF.png

https://i.imgur.com/5LJzJsa.png

If you're developing on OSX, I recommend turning on scrollbars to make this more obvious.

It looks like there's the beginnings of keyboard shortcuts? (like tab and shift tab) I think for this to really appeal to power users, there should be very good keyboard shortcuts. And for an app like this, I'd think most users would be more on the power side.

When clicking on a task to drill into it, I wish it had a focused input ready for my to type right away.

So far this looks pretty cool. I think it's a good idea, and it looks pretty promising.

[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
As a vim user myself, keyboard shortcuts are a top priority. Will look into that scroll bar issue. Thanks for the helpful feedback!
[+] whyineedaccount|6 years ago|reply
I'm surprised to see those scrollbars. Makes me wonder if I should enable them to start seeing them all over the installed apps hahaha
[+] everyone|6 years ago|reply
I love Trello so I checked it out.. Seems like a really good idea. I would use it, but I would worry about losing all my shit if it moved to a payed model.. Maybe keep the existing features free always, and only charge for future features?

Also visually, its white with lots of almost white / grey stuff.. Its really hard to see anything!

[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
I will probably keep it free for teams with one member, and charge monthly for additional members. I’ll be adding an import / export feature that will hopefully make people more comfortable using such an early stage product.

Thanks for the feedback!

[+] amflare|6 years ago|reply
100% this. I'm wary of getting too invested in this with no guarantee that I'll be able to keep my stuff if I choose to not pay on whatever arbitrary date that is pushed.
[+] turtlebits|6 years ago|reply
I like the concept and would absolutely try it out, but it requires too much clicking.

There is no keyboard navigation at all, not even closing modals or selecting items in the dropdowns. Being able to navigate through the tasks and expand with the arrow keys would be awesome.

[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
Based on the HN feedback, keyboard navigation is a top priority :)
[+] Kwantuum|6 years ago|reply
Is this really doing something complicated enough that I need an account for it? And why would I ever want to make an account with no demo or any idea of what this thing does and is about aside from two vague sentences?
[+] huhtenberg|6 years ago|reply
Some random nits:

1. Adding an item - when pressing Enter to create it, the resulting (static) text moves 1px down and left relative to where the edit field was. It's a smaller thing but annoying.

2. It's possible to add empty items, so holding Enter down will create a long list of nothing.

3. There's no easy way to delete items, e.g. erroneously created ones.

4. There's no easy way to edit items either. This appears to require 3 left-clicks at least - 2 too many.

5. Text size and spacing is too large and non-adjustable. The thing with ToDo lists is that you'll definitely want to cram as much items on the screen as possible.

6. Adding a brand new label is somewhat confusing, because, apparently, the label first needs to be created and then, separately, assigned. This is not obvious, nor expected.

All in all though (and ghost scrollbars notwithstanding) it looks nice and simple, but the UX needs a bit of polish.

PS. The name is not very memorable. Perhaps consider changing it while you are not too far in with the current choice?

[+] zjs|6 years ago|reply
It would be interesting to be able to visualize dependency relationships.

It's easy to see what's blocked, but being able to identify blocking tasks that aren't yet in progress is important.

[+] iudqnolq|6 years ago|reply
Does this look like org mode to anyone else?
[+] TeMPOraL|6 years ago|reply
It does, because it's an outliner with a progress bar and some tagging bolted on top. It does look nice though, in a way non-Emacs users might appreciate. I can entirely imagine myself - from the alternate reality where I didn't know about Org Mode - using this for personal projects.

But enough with the criticism. I like how this looks like a nice, self-contained product. And I love that the author understands that tasks are subdivisible to more than one level. I'm really, really fed up with the usual issue trackers and project management tools we use in this industry - all of them limit your tasks to one, at best two levels.

(I wish someone one day would recognize that tasks don't form trees, but directed graphs; Org Mode, being an outliner, doesn't handle this, but I'm surprised no other tool seems to handle it either.)

[+] zyang|6 years ago|reply
I have used workflowy off and on. After trying disco I like where it is headed. However it's missing a few ux touches that workflowy does really well,

- keyboard shortcuts - subtle animation when navigating nest levels - ability to add deep nested items while in top level view

Looking forward to see the next version!

[+] caycecan|6 years ago|reply
I really love this as it might obviate Trello - I have two details that might add to the experience.

Drag and drop functionality to move bullets and lists up and down so that points aren’t locked into the order you input them in (exactly how Trello works)

Support for link recognition (any link will auto underline and become a working web link)

[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
Drag and drop exists in the current version, just click and drag the bullet point of the task you want to move. Also should work on mobile. Link recognition exists for task descriptions and comments (select a task and click "Details & comments"). There is no link recognition for titles because clicking a title already has an action associated with it, this would lead to a UI problem if a task title is just a link with no other text. Thanks for the feedback!
[+] caycecan|6 years ago|reply
I also would like to be able to make a single point blocked by multiple points.
[+] get-logname|6 years ago|reply
Nice privacy policy.
[+] mariocesar|6 years ago|reply
I actually like the candide talk, commonly you have two options. 1. Invest a good amount of time researching and making sure to write a privacy policy that match the your goals for the site short term and long term. 2. Copy one and hope for the best.

This third option is nice, is honest, it's not a lie, and makes clear to the end user who is responsible.

[+] a_t48|6 years ago|reply
Hey, at least it's honest.
[+] data_scientist|6 years ago|reply
Really nice! I would love to add all my notes here, but I sometimes needs to include images, and this is a blocking feature for me. Any plan to include that?

A really nice to have would be to have inline Latex mathematical formula, but it may be too specific for your app.

[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
Thanks! Definitely will be adding file uploads.

Not planning on adding Latex anytime soon though.

[+] dx034|6 years ago|reply
I generally like the idea but I'm not sure why you need the full name at sign up? There's no need within the product to have my full name. Also, it requires at least two words which is not necessarily the case for all names worldwide.
[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
Full name is just for a better autocomplete experience when writing comments and assigning tasks. Also interesting that some people have one word names, I’ll keep that in mind!
[+] Chirono|6 years ago|reply
One piece of feedback: please don't require unique usernames. You already have a unique email address, and it's a pain to have to remember another unique username for another site when the first thing I try isn't available.
[+] adriaanmulder|6 years ago|reply
you don’t really need to remember your username. Log in with email password and you can see your username from the profile screen. I added usernames as the method for team organizers to invite you to their team. Had I gone with email I’d be collecting the email addresses of people who didn’t sign up for DiscoTask, which I don’t really want to do.