In the Oven: Mail Integration and the Anti-Drawer
Here is one last preview post before tomorrow’s release, which will likely occur during the evening hours on Tuesday.
First, a warning to anyone using rich text (colors, graphics, etc.) in the Notes field for any items — tomorrow’s update will transform this text into plain text automatically (in the same way that syncing notes to iCal does right now). This was mentioned as a possibility in the iCal sync release announcement and it is now a sure thing. There weren’t any real controls to allow rich text in those fields, but a right-click allowed it as did copy/paste operations. This technique was even highlighted by my MailTags post a while back as an easy way to link to mail messages. If you are concerned about losing anything of value by changing the format, please let me know and I will post an extended version of the previous release for you to use while you convert your notes.
Having said that, let’s get on to the good stuff.
The Anti-Drawer
Just yesterday, the idea mashup was discussed and this is yet another case. There are very few applications with drawers that don’t make me cringe. TextMate is one of them. Feeder is another. I know many of you feel the same way. Without getting into any drawer holy wars, I can say that I wasn’t happy with the design of the current drawer but had some reservation about using panels or a standard three-paned window.
As a result of a few different feature requests and an odd bit of inspiration from an animation app, I started wondering about a drawer that slid in instead of out. That would solve the window resizing issues of the standard drawer while still allowing the information in the so-called anti-drawer to stay optional and out of the way during a mad box-checking-in-the-context-view binge.
So here it is in the Inbox view:
Cmd-I slides open this new third pane and closes it just as easily. The URL field shown above brings us to the next topic.
Mail Integration
The new integration with Mail works in two ways. If you use MailTags, you can pop open the new ToDo box and assign your message to the @inbox calendar in iCal (created by Actiontastic).
This latest version of MailTags cleverly sends a URL to iCal that will open the individual message from anywhere on your Mac. Actiontastic picks up this URL during its sync so that the link can now stick with your new action or project.
With or without MailTags, you can use AppleScript (inspired by a post in The Hub) to take messages with a prefix like “todo:”, place them in a folder and send them to the @inbox calendar in iCal. Upon syncing, Actiontastic will see this prefix and strip it for you so that your mail subject shows up as the inbox item name and the message content is stored in the notes. Using this method, you will be able to email actions to yourself from just about anywhere.
This use of notes syncing from iCal to Actiontastic (instead of being one way as it is now) was the prompt for the Notes/text change mentioned at the beginning of this post. This will allow two-way note syncing from iCal, which has been requested by quite a few people, plus all of these other goodies. It will also integrate much more smoothly with Actionatr when it is ready.
That’s it for today. I’m going duck into a St. Louis-style Bat Cave and finish tidying up your new release.
Mark wrote:
OK, I just have to say it: I love the concept of the anti-drawer!
Posted on 26-Feb-07 at 6:41 pm | Permalink
owen wrote:
The Anti-Drawer rocks.
Posted on 26-Feb-07 at 7:06 pm | Permalink
Gilbar wrote:
Indeed, the solution of the anti-drawer is very welcomed and looking like a winner. We’ll know tomorrow!
Posted on 26-Feb-07 at 7:18 pm | Permalink
Zach Hale wrote:
I would much welcome an anti-drawer. Great application!
Posted on 26-Feb-07 at 9:39 pm | Permalink
Brab wrote:
Great news about the two way sync.
Will there still be a way to have links in the notes field (even if they are just text of the form (with or without the ‘
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 2:51 am | Permalink
Brab wrote:
Sorry, the links did not make it (the open and close angled brackets were interpreted). Here is an example of a link to EagleFiler: x-eaglefiler://open?recordID=3209&library=~/Documents/EagleFiler/Main.eflibrary (Yojimbo have similar links). These are very useful when dealing with reference documents for projects or actions.
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 2:53 am | Permalink
nathan wrote:
This update looks incredible. This software is quickly becoming my second-favorite thing about being a mac convert (it’s going to be hard for Actiontastic to topple Quicksilver).
Keep up the good work and I will definitely be a paying user come the full version.
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 12:05 pm | Permalink
Terri wrote:
So very excited about the release. Just discovered this app a few days ago and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. Simple, clean, useful. Thanks! I will also definitely be a paying customer.
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 12:48 pm | Permalink
GTD galore .:. eDragonu - the choice of a personal path wrote:
[…] The Kaboomerang people are carefully preparing and slowly unveiling parts of their development. Following the same winning strategy of involving users in their product development, they had two very interesting posts in the last two days. First of all, they are refactoring the “inbox processor” by including some new functionality, while at the same time are asking for name hints for this component. My humble proposal is still “stuffer” as per my comment in the post. And second, there are some very interesting Quicksilver goodies that are cooking in the oven. […]
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 4:09 pm | Permalink
Joel wrote:
“…tidying up your new release.”
You’re a true dev! Thanks!
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 7:22 pm | Permalink
Richard Alden Peters wrote:
Is it evening yet?
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 10:33 pm | Permalink
djp72 wrote:
so excited
Posted on 27-Feb-07 at 11:30 pm | Permalink
Ragnar Freyr wrote:
Yeah me too! I am actually staying up for this! lol
Posted on 28-Feb-07 at 12:21 am | Permalink
Ben wrote:
Here in Asia is already wednesday noon… I’m excited… come on Jon!
Posted on 28-Feb-07 at 12:21 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
@Everyone:
The new release is out. I put it up about an hour ago in the side nav but took a little extra time to put together a blog post. I hope you like it!
Posted on 28-Feb-07 at 12:37 am | Permalink
Ben wrote:
Hooraay! Thanks for sticking to the schedule, Jon.
Posted on 28-Feb-07 at 12:53 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
@Brab:
There isn’t a way to link directly from the notes field at the moment, but this may be a possibility in a future release.
Posted on 28-Feb-07 at 11:20 pm | Permalink
Georgia wrote:
I’m loving 0.9.2, Jon.
And just to clarify, the new version of MailTags allows you to assign a message not just to @inbox, but to *any of the other Actiontastic contexts you have synced with iCal*. Incredible!
Posted on 02-Mar-07 at 10:33 am | Permalink
epskionline wrote:
Jon, I just discovered your app tonight, and I haven’t read GTD in a while, but this whole integration with iCal you introduced with this update doesn’t make any sense to me. In other words, I don’t understand the feature. I suppose if I used iCal, it might help, but I’ve been looking for strong reasons to start using Apple’s built-in apps and have yet to find them. If whatever you’ve done here is that compelling, I’d give it a shot, but perhaps you could explain it so it’s a little easier for us n00b’s to understand. (I’m a big fan of the apps that provide screencasts… well, not the apps themselves, but the fact that they walk you through features visually and talk you through what they’re doing)
Posted on 07-Mar-07 at 2:45 am | Permalink
epskionline wrote:
Ah, I see the problem. I didn’t actually look to see what MailTags was. Yipes. I’m going to have to either commit to Mail and iCal or miss out on some interesting features, eh?
Posted on 07-Mar-07 at 2:47 am | Permalink
MailTags - 2.0b8(Beta) « Setting Contexts wrote:
[…] MailTags also plays nice with Actiontastic - which I will illustrate with some screenshots later today. […]
Posted on 08-Mar-07 at 11:33 pm | Permalink
JBob wrote:
I have a bit of a problem getting the Mail-iCal-Actiontastic flow to work good. I assign a new todo @inbox for the email in mail.app. Everything works, and the new To-Do is added, with the URL. When syncing actiontastic it also appears in the inbox, complete with URL. However, when I process my inbox, the action looses the URL, meaning that I have to first copy the URL, process that one action, go to the action and paste the URL, go back and process the next etc. Very tedious. Isn’t the URL supposed to stick with the action when I process it?
Posted on 14-Mar-07 at 10:03 am | Permalink
Jon wrote:
@JBob:
Yes, the URL should stick with the actions when they are moved around, but there was a bug in the 0.9.2 version that caused problems with this. 0.9.3 has fixed the issue, and I am sorry for any confusion that this may have caused.
Posted on 16-Mar-07 at 12:10 am | Permalink
Tfoster wrote:
Love the new release. One thought. Some people (like me) just want to see their todos on a single calendar in iCal, rather than having a calendar for each context. Could you set up a preference to establish all todos within one Actiontastic iCal calendar? I find the 10 some odd calendars that have been added to iCal distracting, but I would like to see my deliverables for each day on my calendar without the tie in to context.
Posted on 18-Mar-07 at 5:11 pm | Permalink
menesis wrote:
I’d rather had the drawer, just because it is a drawer in iCal
Posted on 22-Mar-07 at 10:30 am | Permalink
More on Mail Integration w/Actiontastic « Setting Contexts wrote:
[…] For more information, click this link. […]
Posted on 28-Mar-07 at 9:51 pm | Permalink
Gordon Vaughan wrote:
Hi Jon, found your site via Twitter. The anti-drawer looks interesting. After reading about drawers years ago as one of the great new features of OS X, I was really disappointed with the way Apple actually implemented them.
It’s basically Peeves #4 and 5 of
http://allthings.blogsome.com/2006/03/27/my-own-ten-peeves-about-the-mac/
Maybe the anti-drawer will be a good answer (not going to assume anything until actually tried out!).
Gordon
Posted on 04-May-07 at 1:04 am | Permalink
Cameron Incoll wrote:
Re the anti-drawer - if it is not a drawer, it must be a shelf! Either way, it works for me.
Loving this app - I’m with nathan on this, hard to topple quicksilver, but this is a pretty close second.
Posted on 13-May-07 at 8:18 am | Permalink