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Best To-Do List Software?
JojoLinkyBob writes "Greetings, Council of Slashdot. I am curious what everyone here recommends as their favorite organizational software. Specifically, I am trying to find a simple freeware/open-source todo list manager. In the past, I've dabbled with TreePad,
Shadow Plan, Mantis, and various virtual sticky- note apps ..all with mixed success. Currently, I'm back to my old-school ways of scribbling my todo's on the back of each Daily Dilbert Calendar page, which sadly means today is June 23 :)"
there really is only one contender for me, and that's Richard Curnow's tdl, awesome for programmers and just day to day todo lists.
:)
If you're looking for a structured way to store your random bits of data, there'
s treeline, a really simple but rea
lly effective little app.
I'm not really a bells & whistles type of guy, i like my apps streamlined and effective
iCal is the best scheduling/to-do software I've ever used. Its not some grand application like Outlook, and thats good, cause iCal's only focus is scheduling and appointments. It's also beautiful, friendly, and easily syncs with any phone that is supported by iSync.
stickies --freeware, small, many features.
I really dig Omni Outliner from The Omni Group. It is, of course, for OS X--My platform of choice.
:)
They also have some teriffic charting software, OmniGraffle, that I use to do flowcharts for all of my coding. You guys all do flowcharts, right?
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Seriously, why both with all these fancy programs when you can use notepad (it will open in the blink of an eye, no waiting around for loading), theres not much bloat, and it creates files which are compatible on all OS's.
Theres a good post-it-note program on planet source code, but you'll find yourself not using it.
i happen to be a big fan of freemind.
a little more complex than a traditional to-do list, but you can interconnect tasks and lay out projects in a freewheeling yet ridiculously detailed manner.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle work pretty sweetly for me.
Still a bit buggy, but with calendar, shared calendar support, publishing through webdav, it has the potential of being as good as iCal !
Its great.. and you can view it anywhere with web access...
http://www.nauta.be/booby/
oby provides Web-based management for bookmarks/favorites, contacts, todos, notes, and news, allowing the user to import and export to common standards (Netscape/Opera bookmarks, Opera contacts/vCards, etc.).
The application is fully themeable (by using phpSavant) and has support for multiple users and languages.
Booby is written in PHP and is database independant (sort of) by using the database abstraction layer 'ADOdb'.
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ActionOutline (http://www.actionoutline.com/) is nice for Windows users. It's got a hierarchical view and you can add arbitrary rich text for each node. You can also add hyperlinks and flag things in various ways.
The best, in my experience, was Ecco. After NetManage bought it and destroyed it, it died. Luckily, they still (ostensibly) offer it via FTP, but I haven't been able to access that link for a long time. Plus, it's the last build, so it's a very stale Win16 app now. Still usable, though, if long in the tooth.
Using text files is actually not all that bad of an option. A nice alternative to the truly awful Notepad is Metapad which is free and can seemlessly replace Notepad. Among other things it has active hyperlinks, auto indenting and can do a lot of simple reformatting (like caps to lowercase, etc.).
you can post your iCal calendar to the web with a free spymac account and avoid paying for a mac.com one. I don't use iCal, so I don't know how the two compare.
SafeSex!
Yay Nullsoft.
http://www.nullsoft.com/free/safesex/
ToDoList ... currently on version 3.6.4 is a great To-Do list manager. Incidentally, the site it's offered through (TheCodeProject.com) is a great resource for Windows developers as well.
For all of you Windows users, check out this OS ToDo list :
http://www.codeproject.com/tools/ToDoList2.asp
Very simple to use and the author is very responsive to suggestions.
Jim
qtextender.com
Excellent recommendation, a great wiki for this purpose is
TWiki. Makes for a great Web accessible todo list.
The interface may not be as fast as dedicated todo list software, but it has the benefits of being good for taking notes, colaborative document editing, file upload, definable users lists for reading and editing documents.
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I support spreading santorum
I'm currently using HNB as my calendar and TODO-List. HNB is a text-mode app:
HNB Screenshots
I use this, Agendus a powerful to-do list solution for a palm if you've got one.
I know you wanted a PC solution but let's face it - they all mostly suck. I need something super-portable and syncable if it's going to be my to do list for the entire day. That's why I prefer the PalmOS software.
It costs a bit of money but you know, who pays for these things anyway? Well it should be you.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
A couple of task apps that I've used in the past are Postive-G's Task Tracker or Dev Planner.
What I've resorted to now is using Microsoft's OneNote and creating sections for the products I'm working on, with pages for TODO lists, Wish Lists, R&D, code snippets, etc. Easy to use and probably one of the best applications Microsoft has released in years.
The key with any tool - take CRM tools for example - is to actually take the time to use them on a consistent basis. One of the biggest barriers to consistent use I have seen is the variation of standards and interfaces of the tools that I like.
I think the future will see more XML and RSS based tools that allow you to integrate all of your systems (calendars, todo lists, issue tracking lists, blogs, etc etc) into one interface without regard for proprietary formats. Those companies that do put their eggs on the proprietary format basket will either be run around by smart filters, or wither on the vine as people see the lack of interoperability and go elsewhere.
That is the space where information management will reach a new plateau, imho.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
In fact, this is true. The best way to keep notes and lists is with a giant document with a plain old no-frills text editor. No worries about compatibility or flexibility, easy to search and many people agree that it's faster and less trouble than going with a complex application.
I eventually wanted something that I could add files to, set up categories with and be very dynamic and upgradable and modifiable. So I installed a wiki. Personally, I chose TWiki (twiki.org) because it's done with perl and has a lot of pre-written plugins. I love it.
It's freeware, source is available, and the lists are stored in XML format.
I remember your eyes, on the twelfth of July...
Spymac is slow, difficult to configure, unreliable and generally ugly. Sure, they give you a 1 GB spymac.com email account, WebDAV space, webspace, iCal hosting etc. but the whole setup lacks finesse and elegance. I wouldn't recommend Spymac anyone except the desperate.
Did I mention it was sloooww?
For free iCal hosting, try icalx.com instead. There exists another free iCal hosting service but I forget the name.
apt-get install devtodo
it proved to be so good that even my wife abadoned small sheets of paper and started using it.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Lightweight and simple, it does what I want and not much more. Has a nice feature that lets you automatically export to an HTML file, so you can easily publish it for others to read.
It really depends on the sorts of tasks you are handling. If you are, for example, a builder then you will have a critical path and (hopefully ;-) strict deadlines. For something like this a calendar based task scheduler is fine. Things like KOrganizer or Plans could be used.
If there is a great number of tasks with no critical path, for example a call center, then you will want something a little more complicated. You'll need to be able to log a task quickly, give it an urgency, tie it back to a particular caller, be able to assign it, maybe even have a searchable knowledge base. For this area things like OTRS are great.
Then you could be a developer, where critical paths vary daily and tasks need to be assigned to specific modules and versions. The obvious choice here is bugzilla
Desktop or web-based is also a consideration. You may require access from multiple locations; maybe you are an off-site engineer; so that needs to be taken into consideration too.
Hog Bay Notebooks (http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/) is pretty neat for Mac OS X. It has a fast full text search and advanced outlining features.
Jesse
I also use iCal, but put my public calendars on the 'net using OS X's WebDAV ability to connect to a WebDAV server on my FreeBSD box. I can the subscribe to them from iCal or Mozilla calendar.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
PalmDesktop isnt free. It must have a Palm Pilot to use it. Read the license.
Ecco is still the best. You are correct that it hasn't been updated since 1997, but it's definitely a Win32 application. I've heard rumours that it runs under WINE as well.
0 1/
Netmanage essentially abandoned this product although you can still download for free from their ftp site:
ftp://ftp.netmanage.com/support/pub/utilities/EC4
Users manual should be included as well.
This is way more than just a simple outline program. Think unlimited relational outlines connected by user definable columns. All fully integrated with the calendar and address book.
As I contemplate switching to various other platforms this is still the one application I cannot live without. No other outliner/pim comes close to ECCO.
Might be this one right here. I think Sun hired this guy to integrate it into something of theirs (java desktop maybe?). It looks pretty sturdy.
::jafomatic
Here's a better link that goes straight to the download page: Here
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
For short-term lists I tend to agree - I keep the day's to-do list on a daytimer.
For lists over the course of a few days, I personally prefer a much more high-tech approach. I keep tasks in a comma-separated text file, which I can import into any app I need to, report off of with perl, and generally depend on.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
It's the only text editor I've ever used which doesn't read Unix-style linefeeds. That alone is enough to make it unusable. It doesn't have multi-level undo, which makes it easy to toast your data. It's notorious for screwing up file extensions when you're saving. Some versions of it are unable to open large files. It is completely devoid of the many useful and necessary features which other text editors.
One such piece of software is a cult-hit, Zoot. See reviews here and here. Find out more at the Yahoo Group for it, which also happens to have excellent lists of other excellent but often underappreciated PIM software.
Also consider web-based task managers like Yahoo Calendar. The advantage is that they are easily accessible from anywhere and there's no need for backups. Yahoo task management also syncs with a lot of other stuff, I think.
Ah, that's way too much work. Mine is "~/todo", so I don't need to hit shift twice ;)
alias todo='vim + ~/todo'
So there =P You also might want to look at the "+/{pat}" command line option for vim. Then you could search for the '[ ]' which would autoskip to the first task you don't have done.
I wanted to have something similar, but one of my prioirities was global accessibility. I tried notebooks, daytimers, postits, etc, but invariably it would always be at home when I was at work, or vice versa, or left behind when I travel.
So my first step was an online note tool called NoteToSelf that I use to keep all those interesting articles, recommendations for movies, homework assignments, job descriptions, consumer ratings, etc. I wrote it in PHP and love it. It's pretty primative as I haven't put any extra work into it since I got it functional. But it's great for me and I use it throughout the day.
My next step is the to-do list. As an interim, I just use a note in NoteToSelf to keep the tasks, but really want something with priorities and reminders. So I've looked at various ones, and I think I'm going to integrate Horde's Kronolith for calendaring and Nag for task lists. They're all PHP and MySQL so I can integrate or tweak as much as I feel like.. With those 3 things I think I have most of my "PIM" needs met and accessible from any internet-connected device around. I've been mulling over a PDA, but only to act as an offline copy of those 3 apps, and not for their own native PDA apps.
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Even if you don't have a Palm Pilot, Palm Desktop under Windows isn't too bad.
Agreed. I was actually thinking of mentioning it, when I saw your post. The GUI is simple, ToDo list can be assigned priorities, due dates, alerts, put in appropriate categories, etc, and sorted according to the need.
And if you have an actual palm, you have the added benefit of being able to carry the ToDo list when not in front of a computer. And backup of course: should your palm crash, you have everything backed up on your computer, and vice versa.
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
I love OmniOutliner for OS X. I also used hnb (Hierarchical Notebook) which is a commandline outliner, for awhile. Otherwise vi/emacs/notepad.exe/whatever is great.
If you dd the line, how do you keep track of everything you've accomplished?
Anal as it may be, I use text-based to-do lists too, but I also keep a contemporaneous work log in a {not-to-be-named} spreadsheet program.
To-Do lists are great for things you plan to do, but they don't handle all of the things customers/coworkers/supervisors ask you to get done, often immediately, and often with no notice. And you don't want to lose track of all of that material - sometimes your review can depend on what's in a contemporaneous work log like this.
It's a simple spreadsheet, with 5 columns. Time start, time end, customer, project, notes. Time start and time end run from about 0700 to 2400 hours, in 15 minute increments. Customer is usually a department, and notes is freeform, often abbreviated, but includes pertinent information like who I spoke with, did something get delivered/emailed/deployed, etc.
Anal, obsessive-compulsive, whatever. It's saved my bacon a couple of times. A to-do list that you erase, saving no record of your work (except the work, in most cases)? No thanks.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
at work, I vim trick, but w/ a file named 'stack'.
;)
As more stuff needs to be done, the file grows downards. As I finish stuff, i delete the lines, till i'm back to my original task at hand.
works great for me
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
I've done the yellow legal pad, I've done Franklin-Covey / Day-Timer, I've done PalmOS.
What works best largely depends on what your job function is like.
Franklin planners and Day-Timers excel where you have things to be done on a specific date, or need to keep track of your time / appointments. The pain of carrying over tasks from day-to-day is supposed to make you want to either classify them as "never do" or "do it so I don't have to copy it to another day again". The system does well if your job is largely 1-2 hour tasks that can be done on a particular day (e.g. expense account on the 1st, putting together end-of-month report Y). College students and corporate employees are good candidates for date-oriented task-lists. I definitely wish I had known how to use a day-planner back in college.
A yellow legal pad, OTOH, is great if your job is primarily task-oriented (e.g. fix computer Y, go see user Z, write module X) and you don't have any date-driven tasks. Every few days, you copy the undone tasks to the next clean page and toss the old pages in a file.
An electronic PDA is a hybrid between a day-planner and a legal pad of paper. Gives you the advantages of both methods, with very few drawbacks. The key to a PDA is that either you integrate it into as many aspects of your life as possible, or it's a waste of cash. (That means tracking expenses on it, getting software that will upload the results into your financial software, tracking your car expenses, exercise log, diet log, passwords, etc. and anything else that you need to keep track of.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
A wonderful little calender / to-do list desktop application is available at:
http://www.ipi.fi/~rainy
It has highly customizable skinning with tons available already. Integration with different Outlook versions. Simple interface, shortcut commands. Week-numbering, which is important in some countries. Easy to erase to-do items, and calender event alerting. Did I mention a fully customizable look for the floating windows. Version 0.19.3 is out now, go get it.
- A happy user, BBLean and Rainlendar, keeps my desktop clean and me on time.
The other is iCalShare, recommended by a free/open-source PIM app with a rather familiar name, Mozilla Calendar. I use Moz Cal and recommend it, except that to-do list item recurrences do not actually recur--hope they fix that one soon.