Re: Some feedback from a new user

Hi Robin,

Thanks for your feedback. This is great to see people picking up 
Chandler and giving it a try. My comments here under:

Robin Cottiss wrote:
> 1. The dashboard view seems to use the reminder date/time for an event. I
> was confused by this as I am expecting to see the actual date/time of the
> event. I am not really interested in when I am going to be reminded about an
> event.
>   

The reminder should be understood as a "tickler" of sorts in the GTD 
sense, i.e. at what time the item is going to pop again into action. So 
we choose that date (since we have only one column) instead of the event 
date. A debatable choice for sure. May be we should have several 
columns? Or some display option as to what to display in that one?

> 2. The time legend on the Week View calendar is most unhelpful. I cannot
> tell easily (at a glance) if the time is AM or PM (this is when viewing a
> blank page). There seems to be plenty of space. Is there some reasoning
> behind NOT helping the user figure out AM/PM
>   

I think we're using PyICU for translating the time here into localized 
time. For sure, it shows 1-24 hours when using a European locale. May be 
we're dropping the AM/PM or not using the adequate PyICU formating options.

> 3. I finally figured out what the little tick marks are on the monthly
> calendars. I see that they tell you how much of your day is filled with
> appointments/events. Using just the lines next to the dates makes the
> calendar look a little messy. I also thought the ticks might reflect the
> collections but it looks like they aggregate all collections. This might
> reduce the value of the ticks. I created a collection of web conferences. I
> have no intention of going to all these events but they show up as full bars
> on the dates of the conference. It would be nice if the bars reflected the
> collections were currently viewing. Also, because the bars are to the side
> it is not obvious which day they are attached to.
>   

The "busy bar" is a sort of experiment so your feedback is great. Some 
elements here to help you use it:
- The busy bar is computed taking into account all the collections that 
show up in your Dashboard. Those are supposed to be events you go to.
- For collections containing events you don't intent to go to, check the 
"Keep out of Dashboard" option under the Collection menu so those events 
won't clog your Dashboard (and busy bars)
- Note that if you want to go to one of the event, you can simply drag 
and drop that event in a collection that is in your Dashboard (e.g. a 
"Talks I'll attend" collection). The same event can be in both (as shown 
in the "Appears in" list at the bottom of the Detail View) and it will 
be added to your busy bar now.

That being said, I agree that much needs to be done with colors and 
various experiment with position and width (though we already tried 
quite a few...). Not to mention making that display optional altogether...

> 4. I was looking for tooltips over icons to explain what they meant. I tried
> clicking on one the icons on the alarm (I guess) column and it changes the
> date. I could not undo the change so I have no idea what the original time
> was.
>   

You get the tooltip while hovering over the icon. That being said, the 
tooltip tells you not what the icon is (as you are expecting apparently) 
but what will happen if you click on it. Debatable choice again. Let us 
know what you think.

> 5. The ed and cr annotations kept distracting me. Unfortunately my son's
> name is Ed and I create entries that refer to Edward but I kept seeing ed
> and thinking about Edward! Is this meant to be an icon?
>   

It's supposed to mean "edited". It's a moniker for the kind of action 
the Who person did: edited (ed), created (cr), from (fr), to (to), 
updated (up). It's great when sharing an item (you know that someone 
else edited it and who it is) but, as it stands, it's either too much or 
too little... Not to mention a headache to localize... Good intention 
but we'll have to iterate on that design.

> 6. The clock/alarm icon has some other weirdness. Apart from not being able
> to undo clicks I can click on a done item to create an alarm for tomorrow.
> What does that mean? An I changing the status from done to not done? Of
> course the done status is not changed so it seems like an inconsistent
> state.
>   

I haven't try so I can't swear but I think that if you set a reminder on 
a "done" item, this item will turn to "now" and pop up in your now 
section when the reminder comes off. At least, it works like that for 
"later" items.

> 7. What is the difference between triage status done and tick status ticked.
>   

We don't have a "tick status", do we? Anyway, an item can be triaged 
without having had an alarm/reminder set to it.

> 8. When I started Chandler I am sure I saw a now triage status item in the
> done section. But now I see that the triage button is a duplicate of the
> sort by triage column heading.
>   

Chandler puts items in the Now section sometimes to bring them to your 
attention even if their triage status is not Now. For instance: if 
someone edit a shared item and set the triage to "done", this item will 
show in your "Now" section so that you know it has been updated (the 
theory being that the Now section is where your focus should be). That 
being said, I don't know of any reason to have a Now item in the Done 
section. Looks like a bug.

> I would really like to see Chandler succeed. I really want to find a program
> that can manage time and tasks (and hopefully email)
>   
This is our shared ambition :) So thank you for sharing your thoughts 
with everyone here. This is very helpful.

Cheers,
- Philippe
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