DesktopTodo 2.0 Beta

It's been sometime since DesktopTodo v1 is out and there has been some accumulation of feedbacks and ideas that seems to require more involved changes than the normal incremental work. So, DesktopTodo 2 development was started quite a while ago and it is now ready for beta phase.

Most of the feature of v1 has been ported and integrated with the new structure, addition and changes. Also, it can be installed alongside v1 without having to uninstall or upgrade it so it can be safely tested.

You can download the beta here.

Here is the first look of it (you can click the image to enlarge) :

and below with classic win7 and office2010 skin used :

Below is summary of the changes.

Ribbon

The functions are now more accessible and have more useful visual cue. The buttons are not just a means to trigger something but also useful to give information on the current state of data. For example, the panel to manage what kind of tasks is shown is now as below :

 

You can see at a glance from those buttons look, the kind of tasks that is currently shown on the task list. This kind of things are previously buried under drop down menus on version 1.x.

If you care about screen real estate, you can even have more space for your data and streamline the area usage of ribbon as depicted on the picture below :

It is even more streamlined than the previous toolbar/menu.

New navigation bar and more streamlined UI

As you might see above, the navigation bar is now easier to use and look better. You can now switch it to left or right with a click without having to drag it around. You don't need to scroll around too much to switch between navigation type e.g: folder, context, since they now have directly available shortcuts.

Much improved application performance and synching

The application performance and synching speed has been improved significantly. The application will feel faster than v1 due to the newly refactored architecture.

New icons and better visual and consistency

The overall visual of DesktopTodo has been improved. You will find many things are even feel better to look at. The application look and behavior is also more consistent and align better with the Windows OS standard. For example, the windows title now show informative string (currently selected navigation, sync account name) that is consistence accross other places on the OS e.g: task bar, task switcher.

1.5 version will still be maintained until DesktopTodo 2 officially out. However, major new changes and addition will now be scheduled for v2 roadmap instead.

DesktopTodo 2 Beta comes with 30 day trial license builtin. If your trial license expired from 1.x version, you can head over to DesktopTodo group where I occasionally post extended trial license.