Many of us use Astrid to help us be the people we want to be. Some of us use Astrid to augment our well ordered life and keep our mind clear of the pesky details until they are actionable. Others of us are forgetful, lazy and easily distracted and rely on Astrid’s lovely face and snarky reminders to keep our life on track.
Astrid 3.3 introduces one more tool into our tool chest to help all of us. A 4×4 widget. Below I will share some of the other great things coming with Astird 3 but you are also welcome to download it at http://bit.ly/d8JGk4. We do ask one little favor. Please report issues (bugs/improvement requests etc) in comments of this post. This will help get ready to go for the upcoming market release.
This widget will be part of the power pack and includes the following features.
- Choice of one of 4 widget colors
- Choice of list / filter to appear on the widget
- Add tasks from widget
- View List in Astrid from widget (press the header)
- Go to task edit/timer view from the widget
- Complete / Uncomplete task directly from the widget
- Optional (but highly recommended) Astrid encouragements
Overall we are very proud of this widget but there are a few features/fixes that we hope to add before the market release:
- Ensure complete compatibility with Android 1.5
- Add toggle to a calendar view (to view events/appointments)
- Add more encouragements
- Slight formatting changes
- A 4×2 version
In addition to the widget 3.3 will also include the following improvements:
- Updating title, notes or due date of an task now updates the corresponding calendar event
- Ability to set default reminder settings for new tasks
- improvements in synchronization
- Task time tally can now go up to 999 for those really long tasks
- Corrected swipe in direction for filters list
- made swiping a bit faster
Download it (http://bit.ly/d8JGk4), enjoy and give us some feedback.
Thanks again for using Astrid and helping us make Astrid better!
32 Comments
I liked the new widget but 4×4, it has a lot of functionality but is a bit too much in some cases. I sugest that you also create some other widget sizes like 4×2 or 4×3 to give some space for other widgets or application shortcuts even with less functionality, like the current one.
I don’t see tags in most tasks in app (only in edit mode).
So far this version seems to be working well. Clicking on the arrows on the top to navigate the list is not ideal. Could you add the option for a scrollable widget which would work in Launcherpro or ADW? Other than that I have not run into any problems. I like being able to jump to the timer start screen from the widget. Looks about ready for release to me.
One more thing…it would be nice to be able to combine two different tags/lists in the widget.
The fact it is totally transparent is basically unacceptable. It clashes horribly w/ my background and makes some text very difficult or impossible to read. At least some translucency is a necessity, though it would be nice if it was adjustable.
Adam,
Have you tried the different color widgets? We will explore different levels of transparency as some reasonable default settings but I get what you are saying.
Brandon,
You can combined two different tags in the widget through the custom filter. The customer filter doesn’t fully support lists though which could be improved. Without the Astrid dialog the arrows move to the bottom which makes it easier to access. I would love to make it swipe scrollable but that isn’t easy to implement in Android. HTC seemed to use some special tricks to enable this in their sense UI.
Pretty sweet.
I’ll second the launcherpro scrolling feature request, and also suggest moving the scroll buttons to somewhere else. Maybe att the bottom of the list, or one at the top and one at the bottom.
The arrow buttons on either side of the tag make it seem like they are used to switch tags, not scrolling the list like they do now… I’d really like to be able to switch between shown tags in the widget though!
Maybe make it possible to select more than one tag at widget creation, then let the buttons on top switch between them?
The scrolling via the little arrow buttons is terrible.
Vertical touch scrolling would be a lot nicer.
I dont know how to select/switch which tags should be displayed in the widget.
The checkboxes are too big, the result is that the widget displays a lot less entries than the famous Agenda widget, its number one competitor.
I have a major RTM issue I ran into.
None of the tasks I have marked as completed on my phone have been marked completed in RTM since August 24th. Still occurring in beta build.
I also had some duplicate recurring tasks which I noticed after I installed the beta. I have since deleted the extra ones and things are fine. I will do some more testing with various situations regarding sync tonight for you.
RE: Scrolling
Check out Android Agenda Widget. This widget scrolls through items perfectly. I know its not an option available in vanilla android, but for the many people who use custom launchers this is available.
Sorry for the multiple comments but I found three more problems
1. I created a new task which repeats daily in RTM but in Astrid it does not show the repeat option is set. I just tried creating 4 different repeating task in RTM and some were set to repeat and some were not. I am not able to find any reason to explain what the ones that worked had in common.
2. When creating a task in RTM the reminders do not follow default settings. I have no reminders set for all tasks set on the website.
3. Seems like every time I try and create a repeatable task (1 day in my case) astrid crashes right after I save the task. Looking through the logs I saved it has to do with the repeats.RepeatDetailExposer and a plural resource ID. I can send logs to you if that will help.
I have htc magic with cyanogenmod 6.0 (froyo 2.2). With latest astrid version the widget is always 2×2 even if I ask for 4×3. Now I try the beta 4×4 widget and it works. Even in the beta the standard widget is always 2×2
Brandon,
Multiple comments is fine. Thanks for the input. We will see what we can do.
Warmly,
Jon
Mario,
We haven’t done a ton of testing on mod versions. Right now with the beta we have the 2×2 and the 4×4 powerpack widget. Am I missing something?
From a user:
Beta without opacity is too light, can’t see list
Me again. Got a crash when doing the export tasks. The log says something about leaked window and the activity is backup.tasksxmlexporter.
I looked into the repeated task syncing problems and it looks like on RTM it created two tasks. One had a repeat set and the other did not. Astrid probably syncs randomly to one of those tasks which explains the inconsistency.
In my beta I have only 4×4 powerpack widget. I downloaded it yesterday so I suppose it is the latest. The standard widget always worked in all sizes, now unfortunately is always 2×2.
BTW: In cyanogen 5.0 (android 2.1) all widgets were working perfectly
My problems with sync and duplicate tasks may have to do with restoring the application using titanium backup. The task data may have been on my sd card already and duplicated. I have gone through RTM and removed all duplicate tasks and removed all cache and astrid data from my phone. I will do some testing and let you know. Is there a better way to troubleshoot this other than blog comments?
New Astrid user here — it’s GREAT! I’d like to chime in on a couple of comments. I love having the 4×4 widget but agree that touch verticle scrolling would be preferable to the arrows (it’s just much more intuitive and aligned with how other 4×4 widgets behave).
Of much more importance to me, though, would be a less transparent background. Having so much of the wallpaper show through really does make it difficult to see the priority coloring and read the text. I’ve tried all the color options and find it to be the case with each of them.
Thanks for being so open to user feedback and for such excellent communciation about your development! And thanks for a great app!
No forget to update language translations from launchpad. Some languages are now better translated.
Greetz!
When do you expect 3.3 to be released on teh Android Market. I ‘need’ the new 4×4 widget, but can only download through the AM.
We are hoping to release 3.3 later this week. We are trying to finish the the 4×2 widget with the power-pack as well.
For some reason Astrid Crashes when I try to enter the task summary (doesn’t crash pressing anything else), making the app impossible to use. This is on a Motorola Milestone XT720 with stock android 2.1
Isaac,
Can you send a log to support AT todoroo.com?
To send a log do the following:
download logcat from the android market
reproduce the error
immediately open logcat and send the log to the email above
if you can mention what you were doing and what version of Android/Phone you were using.
I really haven’t experienced any bugs with this version. I would like to see Google Task integration ASAP though so I can use Astrid as my primary to do app instead of having to have both Astrid and Google Tasks. Also it would be nice to have the option for scrolling within the widget, similar to how Pure Calendar has integrated this feature with LauncherPro,
Hi! I’m new to Astrid but so far, I love it!
Noticed an issue with the widget and due date. Yesterday, I created a task and set it to be due tomorrow. Today, the widget still says “due tomorrow” but if you click into the task, the due date is correct (today, 9/8).
It would also be a nice to have the option to display tags in the widget.
I’ve been having trouble with the functionality after marking a task complete in the 4×4 widget. all tasks below the widget stop displaying properly in the widget, but still exist within Astrid’s screen.
I think the arrows are too small. When clicking the up arrow I end up accidentally checking off tasks that I have not completed.
AWESOME!
What happened to this? I love the new google tasks sync, but still eager to have a full screen widget. The beta never worked for me.