Author: admin

I mentioned that 1.6 is no longer a PPC binary but I just learned there is a bug in 10.5 which causes crashing. I would fix this right now but I my 10.5 testing partition just crashed and my old system disks are not with me either so I’ll need to figure something out.

If any users updated TaskCard to 1.6 on a Mac running 10.5.x I’ll be happy to send you a link to downgrade to 1.5.2 but it’s also advised that you upgrade to at least Snow Leopard 10.6 as TaskCard will likely not able to support 10.5 for other reasons in the near future.

Sorry guys!

This was the biggest release of TaskCard to date withs lots of new features, bug fixes/improvements and probably some new bugs. 😉 Here are the most important of the new features (see the rest in the manual version history section):

• TaskCard is now 10.7 ready which should be out any day now.
• iCal support is finally added after a year of me making claims and actually doing most the work. The system is not like you may expect as events in iCal are synched, not tasks. This is because the task feature is really limited and doesn’t even sync with iOS so I didn’t see the point. There’s more information in the manual on this feature.
• All new GUI for cards, sheets and task/date info windows.
• Cards can be nested within other cards.
• Cards can be dragged to the screen edges to become tabs.
• Reminders and repeating dates.
• Saving/opening card files.
• Renaming sheets within TaskCard (finally!)

In my last post I said there were going to be some other features developed which didn’t make the release since I couldn’t finish them in time for Lion and 1.6 was already getting pretty full. These were: timers, native synching and note cards. Timers will make the next version for sure and synching will be given some serious consideration. Dropbox sync is working well now and actually supports a new “helper” in the preferences for setting it up but the problem of overwriting files still exists. I started on the feature to merge sheet files, preserving the changes in both but I didn’t have time to complete it. It may be the case Dropbox remains the main method to sync TaskCard but I’ll implement a way to merge the changes so it’s safer. iCloud is coming out also which may be an option.

The note cards features may become another app of TaskCard style plain stickies with some other slick features that you don’t see from other sticky note programs, like pages, tabs, and cloud-colloboration with other users. I’m still not sure if I should add this into TaskCard but I bet in the end I will.

This version marks some regressions also:

• I’m very sorry to German, Japanese and French users because I had to remove the localizations from TaskCard, which means all English now. There were too many new additions to the menus/windows and I can’t get help from the previous supporters so I just had to remove them. If anyone wants to help please contact me so and we can pick up where they left off.
• TaskCard is no longer a PPC binary since I don’t think there are any users left and I don’t even have a PPC Mac anymore for testing. I hope that didn’t screw anyone!

Some plans for the future as usual:

• The Archiver. Will allow you to save cards by date into a big grid within TaskCard where you can review past tasks and when they were completed etc… This will be the first feature to break the card-only interface of TaskCard but it seems really important to me.
• Cloud collaboration. Sheets will be able to be uploaded to a server (using Dropbox or your own private server) where other users can download them into TaskCard directly into their sheet browser in real time. This could be used so 2 users could see each others cards as they worked and I bet the system could be tied into the TaskCard Helper nicely so you’d get updates even when TaskCard was not open.

For the first time since releasing TaskCard over a year ago I haven’t released a monthly update. This is because I have decided to take a little break for other project development and spend the remaining time to overhaul some of TaskCards long running problems thus making it more solid (like you’d expect from a 1 year old app).

I was prompted to do this after getting lots of bad feedback on the new Mac App Store basically stating TaskCard is hard to use and confusing. Who knew? But the users have spoken and many of whom may even be new to the Mac and/or computers so I need to review all the non-standard behavior in TaskCard.

The issues being tackled by the next major update (I’m not sure if this should be 1.6 or even jump to 2.0)

• Hidden Commands.  TaskCard features numerous hidden commands (i.e. without menu item) for adding tasks, setting dates, editing etc… which can be confusing. They are stated clearly in the manual but who ever reads those? 😉 In the next version all commands will have a menu equivalent with command in addition to the usual short key.
• Synching. Admittedly not having a native sync solution inside TaskCard has even made me hesitate to use the program at times because I don’t want to worry about changes getting lost between my 2 Macs or data being overwritten. DropBox is now an option which is great, but not ideal. In the next version there is a native sync solution which will merge the contents of sheet files and transfer them bi-directionally on the 2 remote sheet folders you select (your Macs must be connected via network and mountable in the Finder). This means tasks will never get overwritten when transferring sheet files and TaskCard will transfer the files automatically as you work.
• iCal. Yes, this feature will finally be featured in the next version without doubt. This feature also somewhat satisfies the need for an iPhone version since you can now add events in the iPhone calendar app which will sync into TaskCard. It’s not ideal since the 2 programs deal with tasks differently but it’s at least an option if you need to make your tasks mobile.
• Notes Cards. Often times when using TaskCard I have found myself going back to Stickies.app because I just wanted to take some notes. TaskCard is still a sticky note program so in the next version there are real note cards which work just like Stickies.
• Stacking Cards. You can nest tasks together to make hierarchies so why not cards? As a way to help manage clutter of cards you now “stack” cards together like tasks so a single card can contain any number of other sub-cards. The stacked cards are also collapsable like tasks (in fact they behave exactly like tasks) so you can keep cards you seldom use tucked away until you need them.
• Better Task Info. There is a new task info window which is easier to use and has more options including task status which is common in other task managers and notes for each task.
• Better Date Picker. That date picker I put together in the first version was pretty useless. The new one is more complete and easier to use.
• Efficiency. I made some important optimizations to the drawing engine which means TaskCard is faster, more responsive and uses less CPU than before. Also TaskCard will now use 0% CPU when the application is not active where in the past it could use 1-2% just idling.
• Timers. TaskCard now has an option to count the amount of time spent on a task, like a stop watch. This was a popular feature in other task managers so I felt like TaskCard should implement it since it fits the design of the program anyways.

I have had 3 users now contact me and claim TaskCard has deleted their sheets or stopped saving automatically but this was not actually the case after talking with them further.

The problem was that TaskCard since adding DropBox support in 1.5 filters out names that contain – ( or ) characters to avoid conflicts with some DropBox copies which can be made by conflicting file dates.

I should have made the filter more strict as it was a stupid decision to just omit those files without warning (as if users don’t ever use them).

Sorry for the confusion and I will fix this in the next minor update!

There is a new “mini” version of TaskCard available only on the Mac App Store prompted by Apples policy on not allowing trials which I think is unfair to the customers. Apples policy on the store seems to be giving the users little information then pressuring them into buying with a one-click system which can go 2 ways: #1 developers (and Apple) make sales by users who are just curious, and the user in the end loses after they realize the app is not what they want (a trial would have avoided this loss for them). #2 users who may have really wanted to buy won’t, because they don’t feel assured they’re getting what they want due to a no-trial system. Apple is certainly smarter than I am when it comes to marketing so maybe offering a trial/free version is just shooting myself in the foot?

About the app. TaskCard Mini limits the amount of cards to 4 and removed most of TaskCard’s “extra” features like sheets and attachments plus various preferences. I didn’t want to give away too much obviously since TaskCard is already very cheap and honestly the whole project is still an experiment I may pull from the store if it starts to cannibalize TaskCard sales. The iPhone app store seems to have plenty of apps offering “lite” versions as well and the theory is this will attract users to the paid version as free apps tend to get more exposure although I don’t see too many developers doing this on the Mac App Store. I’ll let you know how it goes in the coming week!

The trial version of TaskCard offered on the official web site is fully featured (with card/sheet limits) but is not allowed on the Mac App Store because of the watermark in the lower right hand corner of the screen requesting you to purchase. If you want a more complete tour of TaskCard because you’re interested in purchasing please download the trial but if you’re just wanting to have a simple TaskCard manager for free that gives you TaskCards core feature – bullet lists in sticky note format, than please try TaskCard Mini.

Visit TaskCard Mini on the Mac App Store

There have been some crashing recently in the Sparkle framework which I use for updates when choosing the “Check for Update” item in the TaskCard menu. It doesn’t occur every time with 100% predicability but it’s pretty annoying and could be happening at other checking intervals at startup for some users (possible, but I haven’t had reports). I’m filing a bug report with the developer and hopefully it will be fixed soon.

If you ever get a crash please review the crash report (the window that will pop up stating there was a crash) and check for the lines below which will indicate the crash is related to the Sparkle framework.

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x946b5f30 misaligned_stack_error_ + 0
1 com.alchemistguild.TaskCard 0x00021213 SYSTEM_DO_WRITE$LONGINT$POINTER$LONGINT$$LONGINT + 51
2 com.alchemistguild.TaskCard 0x000215d0 SYSTEM_FILEWRITEFUNC$TEXTREC + 48
3 com.alchemistguild.TaskCard 0x0001c8dd SYSTEM_DOUNHANDLEDEXCEPTION + 93
4 com.alchemistguild.TaskCard 0x0001c988 FPC_RAISEEXCEPTION + 88
5 com.alchemistguild.TaskCard 0x00038be7 SYSUTILS_RUNERRORTOEXCEPT$LONGINT$POINTER$POINTER + 1799
6 com.alchemistguild.TaskCard 0x0001e338 FPC_BREAK_ERROR + 72
7 org.andymatuschak.Sparkle 0x001aa506 load_dsa_key + 22972
8 org.andymatuschak.Sparkle 0x001ab97e load_dsa_key + 28212
9 org.andymatuschak.Sparkle 0x001ac5da load_dsa_key + 31376
10 org.andymatuschak.Sparkle 0x001ac533 load_dsa_key + 31209
11 org.andymatuschak.Sparkle 0x001a24ca 0x19e000 + 17610
12 com.apple.Foundation 0x93e7e56b -[NSURLConnection(NSURLConnectionReallyInternal) sendDidFinishLoading] + 84
13 com.apple.Foundation 0x93e7e4dc _NSURLConnectionDidFinishLoading + 133
14 com.apple.CFNetwork 0x93993453 URLConnectionClient::_clientDidFinishLoading(URLConnectionClient::ClientConnectionEventQueue*) + 197
15 com.apple.CFNetwork 0x93a0ab88 URLConnectionClient::ClientConnectionEventQueue::processAllEventsAndConsumePayload(XConnectionEventInfo<XClientEvent, XClientEventParams>*, long) + 306
16 com.apple.CFNetwork 0x93985ab8 URLConnectionClient::processEvents() + 94

Firstly, I really must apologize recently for all these bug fixes and problems, I must need a break from work. 😉

1.5.2 is once again another bug fix update which I consider critical as it fixes the evil freeze when changing sheets that I thought I fixed in 1.5.1.2 but that seems to not be the case! I don’t know how I missed that as it causes freezing constantly after using undo/redo.

Since DropBox support was added officially TaskCard now needs to keep better track of changes so DropBox doesn’t over-transfer sheet files and as of the last version deleting tasks and undo/redo didn’t trigger the updating which could have lead to data lose! Sorry guys, it’s fixed now.

Also worth noting is moving cards to empty sheets no longer crashes which was annoying for new users.

Hopefully TaskCard is getting stable now for the Mac App Store and I can focus on new features, which there are LOTS of. I badly want to get the iCal sync ready for release but it keeps getting pushed aside for bug fixes and adding smaller features that most users need. Not to mention an iPhone version which is gravely important as users have actually stopped using TaskCard because they have no way to take notes when they’re not at their Mac!

I’ll make another post and let you all know where the interesting development is going once I get settled and bugs go away. 😉

Finally after many users complaining about freezing I believe I have found the problem and was able to fix it. The issue was related to the new undo-support and changing sheets which caused a freeze very predictably. Needless to say all users are highly encouraged to download this new version! If you bought TaskCard via the Mac App Store you will have to wait a good week before Apple approves the update (ugh) or you can contact me and I’ll send you a fixed via directly via email.

Also worth mentioning is a significant number of users since the opening of the Mac App Store have been reporting random crashes and general total-melt downs of TaskCard. Since I have not been able to reproduce any crashes on my system I’m starting to believe these news users are confused by TaskCards “Hide/Show like Dashboard” feature which causes TaskCard to fade if clicked in the background. The feeling is new users are accidentally clicking in the background  and shocked to see TaskCard vanish before their eyes!

I will therefore be disabling the feature  by default (for the Mac App Store version only) as before the release into the store I never got any complaints. From what I’m learning about the Mac App Store many users are very new Mac users and that feature is not normal (except for Dashboard) so I can understand why they’re are confused.

Thank you everyone for reporting – I really appreciate your time and input!