After quite a bit of work a new version of DorisDesktop is ready, you can download it here.  While in beta the app will be free.  My plan is to make the desktop version of Doris the most full-featured of all the ways of accessing Doris, it’s where all the new ideas and feature requests will be tested out.

In general I’ve become a bit fed up with web apps, mainly because you have to learn substantially different interfaces with each one.  Desktop apps, especially on the Mac, not only get around this shortcoming, they also allow you to link in directly to some rich resources you use every day:

• your Calendar
• the Address Book
• your Email
• photos and docs

Managing these items on the web is possible, but it’s always more painful.  A desktop app provides the best experience and can sync with the cloud and be just a single click away.

What is DorisDesktop?

It’s just a desktop app that provides an additional, hopefully easier way to get to all the tasks stored in your online Doris account.  It’s main advantages are:

• it launches fast
• it runs in the background and is only one click away
• being on the desktop, you’ll be able to better integrate task management into your existing workflow

What’s new in this version of DorisDesktop

• drag and drop to re-order tasks now works properly (same for groups coming soon)
• you can easily add notes to your tasks
• you can drag URLs from your browser into DorisDesktop and they becomes tasks
• security is improved with passwords now saved to the Keychain
• the login workflow is improved
• the app is globally available from its icon in the menu bar
• interface improvements for adding and deleting tasks
• see the CHANGELOG for the full list of changes, and note the API has been updated

What’s not working yet

• currently you can’t drag & drop to re-order groups
• nor can you drag tasks into different groups, this is planned for the next release
• one-click access to bring DorisDesktop to the foreground no matter what you’re doing – to get this working I need to do some more work to be able to record keyboard shortcuts

Bugs

One bug I’ve discovered is if you drag to re-order, and in the process drag your task outside the task list, eg, into the groups list, the app thinks it’s a URL, I’ll fix this for the next release.  Also, in some cases the task list and note description doesn’t update properly, this will be fixed.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are supported for all the basic features:

• <spacebar> to add a new task to the current group
• <enter> to edit the current task
• <backspace> to delete the current task
• <cmd> , to launch Doris’ prefs, currently where your can login

Feedback

As always I’d love to hear your feedback, either here in the comments, at Uservoice, or just shoot me an email to support@dorisapp.com.  I’ve updated the Doris Uservoice account with the tasks that have been completed.  According to their overview my feedback isn’t looking too bad.