

Show HN: My first web app, DailyDo.it - michelle_
http://dailydo.it/

======
blatherard
One thing that confused me was the "Team" link at the top. Having it placed
between "Philosophy" and "Contact" made me expect that it was going to be a
page about the people that made the site, not a signup page about a future
featureset.

Anyway, you might want to make the "team" thing stand out in a different way,
if you're hoping to capture people interested in group features.

~~~
michelle_
Hah, I hadn't thought of that. I agree though, it needs to be much more
obvious if I'm expecting people to actually find it! I'll play around with it,
thanks :)

~~~
eevilspock
Try "TeamDoIt"

~~~
jurre
or just Teams/Groups :)

------
jacquesm
I think you can safely drop the 'aspiring' from your bio, you've made more
progress in three weeks on this than many have made in much longer time-spans.

Impressive, to put it mildly.

What you've made is interesting, but what is even more interesting is how you
managed to do all this in such a terribly short time, I think there will be
plenty of people interested in the 'making of' of this neat little website.

~~~
stfu
I agree with the notion above. Please make some posting on your progress over
these three month - i.e. what tutorials you took and how you reached that
level of expertise in design and coding in such a short time. Very impressive
work!

------
jonmb
You did a fantastic job! Two questions:

1\. What resources did you use to learn PHP/MySQL/jQuery in three weeks?

2\. How are you handling passwords in the database?

------
sparknlaunch12
Like the design. Looks good for first web app. Do you mind sharing some
background? How did you come up with product idea? What technologies did you
use? What are your planned next steps for app?

~~~
michelle_
Thanks! The design started as a themeforest template, but at this point it has
been very heavily modified. I used PHP and MySQL for the backend, and jQuery
for the UI interaction.

I'm a chemistry major spending the summer learning to code, so this is all a
learning experience. It's only been about 3 weeks so I'm happy to have gotten
something functional out of it. I'm really hoping to get some good feedback
from HN.

The about page on DailyDo.it genuinely describes what I set out to make. I
have spent 3 years in university trying to keep track of everything I have to
do; the result is usually a big mess of tasks on notepaper, my whiteboard,
post-it notes, etc. I've tried using online versions, but they all seem so
complicated and messy, which is the opposite of what I want. DailyDo.it is
meant to be as simple as possible - the challenge of maintaining simplicity
was certainly a surprise, but I think it worked out well enough.

As for the next steps, I'm aiming to have the team version
(<http://dailydo.it/about/team>) up and running very soon. This will be a paid
service that allows teams of people to share and collaborate on their tasks.

~~~
gravitronic
Some people take _years_ between learning coding basics and having something
to show for it, so congrats.. in my opinion the ability to ship is equal or
more important than coding knowledge.

------
easy
I like it though I do think that changing the logo from daily to monthlydo.it
and futuredo.it when people select those tabs will cause some folks to forget
your url if they didn't bookmark the site on their first visit.

~~~
michelle_
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely keep it in mind.

------
ZanderEarth32
So, going from zero programming knowledge or experience to this in 3 weeks? If
that is the case, it's pretty amazing. I would never have pegged this as a
'first app'. Great job.

~~~
michelle_
Not quite zero. This past semester I took a course in MATLAB which was fairly
unrelated, but definitely helped me get comfortable with programming a real
project (we did bridge design in the course). I also live with a software
developer who helped bail me out from time to time. DailyDo.it was started on
April 29th, and I worked long days since then to get it up to what you see
now. During the weekend before that I made <http://html5helicopter.com> to get
familiar with JS. I've played around with HTML and CSS before, but always
found the process frustrating and overwhelming when trying to make a whole
website from scratch; this time I started with a micro-framework that helped
me focus on the actual app.

As for anyone who was in my position (limited coding knowledge and not a pro-
designer) I would definitely recommend starting from a cheap themeforest
design and building up on that. Also, start small and focus. The idea of
DailyDo.it was actually conceived last year, but I tried to do way too much
with it, and ultimately it amounted to nothing of value. Just piles of bad
designs and funky, non-functioning UI, never mind getting to code. This summer
I started from scratch (which cleared my mind up), plus I was able to focus on
it full-time, and everything just kind of clicked.

I think I just used the word "focus" three times in this post. That's the key.
:)

~~~
xriddle
Not to take anything away from such a great accomplishment ... but i find it a
little odd that you failed to mention your live-in boyfriend is a coding
ninja. Either way ... hats off to you ... and keep it up.

<http://nathan.ca/2012/04/html5-helicopter/>

~~~
michelle_
In the post you're replying to I said: "I also live with a software developer
who helped bail me out from time to time", and I linked to the
html5helicopter.com page which links to that blog post. I wasn't trying to
hide anything and didn't mean to be misleading. I'm sorry if I caused any
confusion. Nathan helped teach me to code, but DailyDo.it is my own creation.

------
nitingarg
Few suggestions from Interface point of view.

1.Firstly i would suggest move the task-input field to top instead of bottom.
It would be much more intuitive . 2.Take the logo out of whole task window if
possible. It's kind of distracting as of now. 3.Kill color from background and
make it neutral. Give attention to task area as much as possible.

~~~
pedalpete
I agree with nitingarg. The input at the top is going to be easier for most
users to understand. You seem to have a LOT of wasted space at the top, so use
that.

I think the problem with the background is that it's messy. You could go with
a solid color. Textures are very popular right now and could go well with your
design for a clean look. The 'about | team | philosophy' stuff really belongs
at the bottom.

As far as login/register. I'd put a login panel (username/password) with a
sign-up button on it. Don't make people go to another page to do that.

Congrats, great work. Out of curiousity, how long did you spend learning?

~~~
michelle_
Thanks, I'll take these suggestions into consideration. One of the hardest
parts about putting together the app was finding a balance between power usage
and first impressions. Having used it for the past few days while developing
it, I've found the add-task at the bottom to be effective, but it's great to
hear other opinions from people who aren't as accustomed to the app as I am.

~~~
doubleconfess
I'm going to disagree with them and say that you should trust your instincts,
especially if your instincts led you to such a beautiful and intuitive app.
Frankly, there is alot of group-think in UI design these days, and I think we
need more people out there that are willing to trust themselves and not go
with the principle of "lowest common complaints".

If you are building something to make money, then sure go with lean startup
principles and A/B it to death. If you are building something as an act of
creation, or as a tool that you want to use, and especially if you are
building something that has been done 1000x before, trust your own insights
and not those of strangers on a talk board.

Being different (not arbitrarily different mind you, but insightfully
different) is a huge and uncommon differentiator, and can led you in amazing
directions if you stay true to it.

GO WITH YOUR GUT!

------
sundeep_b
You made the dot in the logo jump! It doesn't jump for monthly and future
though. It's amazing how much you have learnt and put to use in such less
time. I'm jealous too! Plus the design is simple and gives a pleasant
experience.

I have used many to-do lists and liked the way you stated that this is not a
to-do list, but a do-it list. This gives a feel that the task won't remain
undone. And of all the to-do apps I used, I realized later that the ones I
have stayed with for longer times are comparatively better looking than the
ones I never cared to give a second visit. So, good looking site is a definite
plus.

Good luck.

~~~
michelle_
Haha I originally added that as a joke but it grew on me. I'm glad you liked
it! I appreciate your kind comment, and I've always felt the same way about
to-do lists: they never get done. I hope that my app can help people be
productive. :)

------
bdunn
This is great! I hope you're planning on at least charging for the "Team"
feature.

Project management / todos / time tracking / and so on are often chided as
being oversaturated markets. The fact is: lots and lots of people need these
things, they can help increase people's income and happiness, and there's no
"right" way to do it. Todo list apps are one of those arena's that can do very
well financially if you target the right kind of user.

(Even if this really never makes you any money, and considering this is what
you've been able to do without much real world experience, you will have no
issue finding work.)

------
dragonbonheur
Excellent! Great design! What languages/technologies did you use?

~~~
michelle_
Thank you! I used PHP and MySQL for the backend and jQuery for the front. :)

~~~
xdialog
Did you use a PHP framework to write the AJAXy stuff? Something like
backbone.js?

~~~
equilibrium
I'm also curious.

------
will_work4tears
Beautiful site, love the simplicity of it, nice on the eyes.

~~~
michelle_
Thank you :)

------
zafriedman
Amazing dude! You have naturally good taste for design which helps too, but to
do the full stack in such short time my hats off to you.

~~~
brianfryer
dudette*

FTFY

(source: <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=michelle_>)

------
underwater
Nice work. There are a few things I find strange, but other commenters have
covered most of them.

I love being able to drag around the notes on the "future" tab, it makes it
easy to cluster tasks without lots of UI overhead. However I don't see why I
can't do the same thing with today's tasks. I also can't send a task to the
future tab and vice versa.

------
aplh
Great work. You may want to consider switching the "Add Task"-div with the
"Daily/Monthly/Future"-div. So that the "Add-Task"-div is aligned in the lower
left hand corner. That would be way more intuitive for me. Another great
feature would be rearranging the existing tasks.

------
ameyamk
Bug: If you add a task to "today" and then switch couple of times between
monthly and future tabs, and come back to "today" tab - task is gone! If my
task tracker drops my tasks I'd be very worried! But good effort overall

------
jason_shah
Awesome work. I just registered.

In the UI, it would be helpful if a user's email address is shown in the top
right or somehow otherwise provide (obvious) confirmation that the
registration worked.

------
Kilimanjaro
I just closed HN to take a nap when I saw the last tab in the browser, played
with the app, and came back to tell you good job. I like the mix of simplicity
and beauty.

------
antidoh
Very nice, immediately understandable and therefore immediately useful.

I would add a "today" button in your calendar popup, so a task can quickly be
moved to today.

~~~
michelle_
That's a really good point - I'd like to add that. For now, today should be
faintly highlighted on the calendar popup, but I agree that a more obvious
"today" button would make it easier. You can also carry forward all unfinished
tasks to today on the Monthly view, if that's your intention.

------
tomjakubowski
Great stuff, one suggestion: clicking the label for an item should
check/uncheck it, like in a properly marked up form (using the "for" attribute
of the label tag).

~~~
michelle_
I had it like that for a while, but ran into problems once I introduced the
double-click-to-edit functionality. Thanks for the suggestion though; I'm
still working on improving the user experience. :)

------
qntmfred
was expecting an adult friend finder clone

------
billpatrianakos
I don't care how overdone to-do lists are, I never get sick of them. Putting
this together in 3 weeks is impressive considering your background. The UI is
really what makes it. Todo lists are really straightforward from an under-the-
hood perspective which is probably why everyone makes them (myself included).
That's why I think the design is really the most important part of it and you
nailed it. I've been developing professionally for 2 years now and before that
I was coding front end stuff since I was 10 and you totally put me to shame in
just 3 weeks. I think you have a real talent and a great eye for design. Plus,
from what I understand, you're a chemistry major and I'm assuming you don't
plan to code professionally. All that considered, you're fucking awesome and
I'm actually jealous. Good job.

~~~
rhizome31
I'm jealous too :) I've got about ~10 years experience in software, half of it
working on web projects. I posted my app yesterday hoping for feedback and got
exactly zero upvotes and zero comments. The lessons I'm taking from this:

1) get people to interact with the app straight away (aka. lazy registration)

2) keep words away from the homepage, they can go in the /about page

3) get a design

~~~
billpatrianakos
I think design is the most important thing. It's your first impression and you
have to make it a good one. If there were a website that cured cancer but it
looked ugly upon first glance people probably wouldn't stay on it long enough
to figure out what it does or sign up to try it.

Lazy registration is also a good idea probably. I never once built anything
that used any registration and I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure how it
works. I'm sure 5 minutes on Google would get me going though.

------
robwgibbons
Great job. You've made a great app here :)

Only one suggestion for usability -- autofocus the "Add a task" input on page
load, so the user can begin typing without an extra click upon arrival (think
Google.) I think this convention works well with any app which expects text
input as its immediate feature

~~~
michelle_
I've had some thought on this. The issue that I see with auto-focusing is
people who use backspace to go back in the browser. If I steal focus then
they're just stuck there, mashing on backspace.

As a compromise I implemented arrow key functionality. The down arrow focuses
the input field when you're on the Daily tab. The left and right keys also
scroll between days/months. I realize that at this point there is absolutely
no indication of those features on the site, so consider it an Easter Egg for
now. :)

