Thursday, November 26, 2009

Perpetually and Continuously Under Construction

Since I submitted to ADC2 I haven't written much code for aList, but I've been using it almost daily.  And frankly, there are some things about it I don't like much.  So, I've undertaken a redesign of the interface. The features I like (the way the voice recognizer results are handled, the fact that list items can be archived and used again, the fonts and colors and text sizes) will all remain.  But, I'm going to change the main interface.  Instead of an expandable list, this main interface will be a simple list of list names.  Clicking will move to an expandable list with the categories as the groups and the items as the children.  The ability to "flatten" the list and display the entire list as simple items will remain as well, but you'll just get to it from the expandable list.  This will allow the options menus (or a button bar) to be much smaller and include some convenient commands.  This makes so much sense I can't believe I didn't do it this way from the beginning.  I'm sure it doesn't make sense to you since you've never used the app, but I'm sure you'll like the results better than the current way of doing things.

I've already made a few improvements to the text entry (which is the weakest point of every list app I've tried, aList being no exception).  With the new code you can bang out a bunch of list items and have them all appear in the same category with only one tap.

So, the bottom line is that I won't have in on the market for another little while.  Sorry to the two or three people that are eagerly waiting the release.  I'll get there.  Hopefully before Christmas.

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