Projects: coming soon to a runway near you

We're almost done our first cut at what we believe to be usable projects. Initially you'll be able to assign a project on creation and/or when editing an action. You'll also be able to focus by project and, assuming all goes according to plan, restrict the display to only "next" actions.

Of course we're fond of our syntax and single field so we're naturally keen to keep the user experience as simple as possible. Ideally that would involve a syntactic way to add set the project. With syntax comes possible ambiguities so, rather than rush out something that is half-baked, we thought we'd take a more gentle approach.

When creating an action, we're going to keep the single input field for the main action syntax and at the same time give you access to a project name field (and as a bonus a notes field) with a single keystroke: the tab key (⇥). Once you've created your action, the extra fields will automagically hide returning you to the original Zen-like simplicity of a single field.

If that seems a little hard to picture then here's a picture:

No more wondering what's changed

Ever seen "a new version of the application is available..." popup and wondered what changed?

We now have a very simple site change log where we will be posting explanations of what's changed. For those with news readers, there's also an RSS feed available.

Runway gets a makeover

It's been almost a month since I last gave you a status update. Let me begin by saying that by the end of the week we expect to be dropping a new version for you.

Take a look at the image below and you'll notice a number of obvious changes:

1. The most notable change is that we've collapsed the "Todo", "Today", and "Later" tabs. *breath*. OK. We've been feeling for a while now that those tabs were a little clumsy and were going to get in the way of the upcoming "inbox", "Projects", "People", and "Review" tabs.
2. The functionality hasn't disappeared though, it's just become part of the focus panel instead. For the keyboard jockies, instead of using ctrl+t, ctrl+l, and ctrl+0 you can now use ctrl+shift+t, ctrl+shift+s (for soon), ctrl+shift+l.
3. We've also simplified the action editing experience and made the editing of notes part of editing an action.
4. Speaking of editing, we've added a place for you to enter the name of a project. Now this probably isn't what you're used to thinking of as a project. in GTD a project is an overall commitment like "Mum's 60th birthday" which isn't actionable in and of itself. It's a way to group actions that are related in order to achieve some overall goal. Right now there's not much you can do with projects other than record the name but fairly soon we'll have a Projects tab and a whole bunch of functionality specifically related to managing your commitments.
5. The last obvious change is the tips. We've put together a bunch of hints we think will help you get the most out of Runway. These change automatically every minute or so or you can give them a hurry up by clicking on the tip itself. We'll be adding to these over time so you may want to leave them visible but if you find them distracting, you can click hide and they won't return unless you re-show them from your account page.

Besides the visual changes we've also made many enhancements behind the scenes. You can now create actions using Twitter as well as email; there are even more keyboard shortcuts; and we've generally improved the performance of the user interface.

We've also started a series of screencasts to help you come up to speed with Runway as quickly as possible.

We hope you'll enjoy the work we've put in and look forward to delivering even more cool GTD related features very soon.