
Show HN: An infinitely nested task manager where progress bubbles up to the top - adriaanmulder
https://discotask.com
======
miki123211
Is the great accessibility intentional? If not, you should know you're on the
right track. The app is basically usable with a screen reader, and that's
something you can't say about most task trackers. If you want to keep it that
way, my hn username at gmail.

~~~
adriaanmulder
That's great to hear! Can't say it was intentional, I haven't honestly even
gotten to my routine accessibility-pass I do on most apps.

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charliesome
The homepage is a white screen with JavaScript disabled.

If requiring JS to render the homepage is a conscious decision made
considering the various tradeoffs, please at least add a message saying so in
a noscript tag.

~~~
adriaanmulder
Will do, thanks for the feedback!

~~~
andybak
> considering the various tradeoffs

Would love to know the tradeoffs. The main page at least is a static marketing
page. Surely a canonical case where the page should render under almost any
circumstances.

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TsomArp
For those that want to see it in action

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs)

~~~
palerdot
This should be in their home page ...

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eliseumds
Developers, please stop blocking zooming on mobile Web pages via meta tags.

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marcosdumay
You mean by this tag?

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-
scale=1">

I imagine the only problem here is the maximum-scale parameter. Is that so, or
are there other ones?

I haven't touched a frontend for a few years. It was the case that this tag
was needed to display anything on mobile (and Google would all but delist you
if you omitted it or used it incorrectly). I imagine things have improved. The
optimist in me would like to think that the tag isn't even necessary anymore,
but I can't trust that guy.

~~~
svnpenn
Yeah, I use this one:

    
    
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    

and "initial-scale" is only needed by Chrome Android AFAIK.

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city41
There's a good number of dead scrollbars on Linux/Chrome:

[https://i.imgur.com/kyT6xlF.png](https://i.imgur.com/kyT6xlF.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/5LJzJsa.png](https://i.imgur.com/5LJzJsa.png)

If you're developing on OSX, I recommend turning on scrollbars to make this
more obvious.

It looks like there's the beginnings of keyboard shortcuts? (like tab and
shift tab) I think for this to really appeal to power users, there should be
very good keyboard shortcuts. And for an app like this, I'd think most users
would be more on the power side.

When clicking on a task to drill into it, I wish it had a focused input ready
for my to type right away.

So far this looks pretty cool. I think it's a good idea, and it looks pretty
promising.

~~~
adriaanmulder
As a vim user myself, keyboard shortcuts are a top priority. Will look into
that scroll bar issue. Thanks for the helpful feedback!

~~~
eyelidlessness
You should generally use `overflow: auto` rather than `overflow: scroll`

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nwrk
100% Workflowy copy / clone

([https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/))

Let see how this pan out.

* “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”, Steve Jobs

~~~
cbsks
Wow. That landing page is bad. I learned that some successful people and
businesses use Workflowy, but I didn’t learn what Workflowy is or why I might
need it. Is the desktop page better than the mobile one?

~~~
akersten
Nope, there's nothing on the desktop page either. I have no idea what
Workflowy is after visiting the site. There's an email list signup, a login
button, and some blurbs about how Twitter and the NYT use the software. But
nowhere that explains or shows what the software is.

Edit: Wait! Click on the tiny barely-readable links in the bottom corner of
the page (at least on desktop) that say "List Maker" or "Online Notepad" (they
both are different URLs, but link to the same page). Then you get an
interactive demo.

After looking at that demo, I think Disco is ahead feature- and presentation-
wise. I don't see any way to do the status tracking/people pictures/coloring
showcased on Disco's landing page in Workflowy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Edit: Wait! Click on the tiny barely-readable links in the bottom corner of
> the page (...)_

Yeah, this looks like the author is too happy doing SEO shenanigans and
multiple landing pages, while forgetting to make the root page useful...

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everyone
I love Trello so I checked it out.. Seems like a really good idea. I would use
it, but I would worry about losing all my shit if it moved to a payed model..
Maybe keep the existing features free always, and only charge for future
features?

Also visually, its white with lots of _almost_ white / grey stuff.. Its really
hard to see _anything_!

~~~
amflare
100% this. I'm wary of getting too invested in this with no guarantee that
I'll be able to keep my stuff if I choose to not pay on whatever arbitrary
date that is pushed.

~~~
adriaanmulder
I’d be weary too, that’s why I’ll be adding import export soon, and I’m
leaning towards never charging for single users. No promises though since I
don’t know what kind of expense that will be for me. This is a bootstrapped
product.

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turtlebits
I like the concept and would absolutely try it out, but it requires too much
clicking.

There is no keyboard navigation at all, not even closing modals or selecting
items in the dropdowns. Being able to navigate through the tasks and expand
with the arrow keys would be awesome.

~~~
adriaanmulder
Based on the HN feedback, keyboard navigation is a top priority :)

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Kwantuum
Is this really doing something complicated enough that I need an account for
it? And why would I ever want to make an account with no demo or any idea of
what this thing does and is about aside from _two_ vague sentences?

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huhtenberg
Some random nits:

1\. Adding an item - when pressing Enter to create it, the resulting (static)
text moves 1px down and left relative to where the edit field was. It's a
smaller thing but annoying.

2\. It's possible to add empty items, so holding Enter down will create a long
list of nothing.

3\. There's no easy way to delete items, e.g. erroneously created ones.

4\. There's no easy way to edit items either. This appears to require 3 left-
clicks at least - 2 too many.

5\. Text size and spacing is too large and non-adjustable. The thing with ToDo
lists is that you'll definitely want to cram as much items on the screen as
possible.

6\. Adding a brand new label is somewhat confusing, because, apparently, the
label first needs to be created and then, separately, assigned. This is not
obvious, nor expected.

All in all though (and ghost scrollbars notwithstanding) it looks nice and
simple, but the UX needs a bit of polish.

PS. The name is not very memorable. Perhaps consider changing it while you are
not too far in with the current choice?

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zjs
It would be interesting to be able to visualize dependency relationships.

It's easy to see what's blocked, but being able to identify blocking tasks
that aren't yet in progress is important.

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iudqnolq
Does this look like org mode to anyone else?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It does, because it's an outliner with a progress bar and some tagging bolted
on top. It does look nice though, in a way non-Emacs users might appreciate. I
can entirely imagine myself - from the alternate reality where I didn't know
about Org Mode - using this for personal projects.

But enough with the criticism. I like how this looks like a nice, self-
contained product. And I love that the author understands that tasks are
subdivisible to more than one level. I'm really, really fed up with the usual
issue trackers and project management tools we use in this industry - all of
them limit your tasks to one, at best two levels.

(I wish someone one day would recognize that tasks don't form trees, but
directed graphs; Org Mode, being an outliner, doesn't handle this, but I'm
surprised no other tool seems to handle it either.)

~~~
useragent86
> (I wish someone one day would recognize that tasks don't form trees, but
> directed graphs; Org Mode, being an outliner, doesn't handle this, but I'm
> surprised no other tool seems to handle it either.)

Does org-edna help any? Although it doesn't help with viewing them as graphs,
it may help with making TODOs act like graphs.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Haven't used it yet, but skimming the documentation, it does seem to look like
half of the picture. The other half would be a way to get a critical path
analysis out of it, and somehow visualize everything together in a way that
makes it easy to notice where you have slack or underutilization.

------
zyang
I have used workflowy off and on. After trying disco I like where it is
headed. However it's missing a few ux touches that workflowy does really well,

\- keyboard shortcuts \- subtle animation when navigating nest levels \-
ability to add deep nested items while in top level view

Looking forward to see the next version!

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caycecan
I really love this as it might obviate Trello - I have two details that might
add to the experience.

Drag and drop functionality to move bullets and lists up and down so that
points aren’t locked into the order you input them in (exactly how Trello
works)

Support for link recognition (any link will auto underline and become a
working web link)

~~~
caycecan
I also would like to be able to make a single point blocked by multiple
points.

~~~
adriaanmulder
Me too, I will probably add this in the future. In the meantime, you can kind
of get around this by creating subtasks of the task that is blocked by more
than one thing, and each subtask can be blocked by a different task. The
benefit of this is that you end up being more explicit about what is causing a
task to be blocked.

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mariocesar
This is bundled with [https://parceljs.org/](https://parceljs.org/)

It's great to see a nice project using it!

~~~
adriaanmulder
Overall pretty great experience with parceljs :)

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data_scientist
Really nice! I would love to add all my notes here, but I sometimes needs to
include images, and this is a blocking feature for me. Any plan to include
that?

A really nice to have would be to have inline Latex mathematical formula, but
it may be too specific for your app.

~~~
adriaanmulder
Thanks! Definitely will be adding file uploads.

Not planning on adding Latex anytime soon though.

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get-logname
Nice privacy policy.

~~~
mariocesar
I actually like the candide talk, commonly you have two options. 1. Invest a
good amount of time researching and making sure to write a privacy policy that
match the your goals for the site short term and long term. 2. Copy one and
hope for the best.

This third option is nice, is honest, it's not a lie, and makes clear to the
end user who is responsible.

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dx034
I generally like the idea but I'm not sure why you need the full name at sign
up? There's no need within the product to have my full name. Also, it requires
at least two words which is not necessarily the case for all names worldwide.

~~~
adriaanmulder
Full name is just for a better autocomplete experience when writing comments
and assigning tasks. Also interesting that some people have one word names,
I’ll keep that in mind!

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Chirono
One piece of feedback: please don't require unique usernames. You already have
a unique email address, and it's a pain to have to remember another unique
username for another site when the first thing I try isn't available.

~~~
adriaanmulder
you don’t really need to remember your username. Log in with email password
and you can see your username from the profile screen. I added usernames as
the method for team organizers to invite you to their team. Had I gone with
email I’d be collecting the email addresses of people who didn’t sign up for
DiscoTask, which I don’t really want to do.

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tharax
There is no clickable link in the password reset email.

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useragent86
Another site that shows a completely blank page when first-party cookies are
disabled.

It seems like an epidemic lately. So much JS in the wild just stops cold when
some cookie or LocalStorage permission isn't available, and that failure
prevents some other JS from running that unhides the page or runs a CSS
transition. It doesn't seem like long ago when most sites at least showed some
content when cookies were disabled, but that's beginning to feel like the
exception.

~~~
huhtenberg
Expecting first-party cookies to work is a reasonable assumption on site's
developers part. Blocking these is rarely well-justified, so supporting this
case is largely pointless.

Session cookies is a perfectly fine option that eliminates the need to pass
the session id in each every URL. Sticky cookies are also something that most
people will actually _want_ because it helps improving the UX on the site on
return visits. If you don't want either, in principle, clear them. This can be
trivially automated in a wide variety of ways.

* That said, I agree that the site rendering shouldn't depend on the cookie access. But it's almost certainly an oversight of not testing for a marginal case that vanishingly few people have. So loudly moaning about it looks very odd - you are complaining about something that nobody needs. Just like a website not rendering well in Lynx.

~~~
useragent86
Not all browsers, on all devices, make it trivial to set cookie permissions so
flexibly. And, as I said, it's not just about cookies, but also about
LocalStorage and such APIs--which, historically, if not presently, do not
always behave as desired with regard to clearing data. Forgive me for not
wanting to grant all sites the permission to use them automatically.

I'm sure that, to many such webmasters (may I use that term?), I am indeed a
nobody. Still, the Web is worse for it--a significant regression in usability
and compatibility. Feel free to ignore my "loud moaning"\--maybe the OP will
appreciate the bug report.

~~~
huhtenberg
A bug report would've said - The site doesn't render if the first-class
cookies are disabled.

The way you phrased it was different, both in spirit and in intent. Hence the
"moaning" qualifier.

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svnpenn
I dont think a hierarchical structure is the best way to handle something like
this, as deeply nested items might also be depended on by elements from other
branches.

Better would be a relational structure.

~~~
wool_gather
Cross-branch blocking seems to have been accounted for, as seen in the demo
video [someone else linked][0] in the thread:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs)

[0]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934075)

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majkinetor
Open source/core or instant turndown.

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xyst
Is it just me or is this JIRA for managers?

