todo.txt on the web
A few weeks ago I finally ended my love/hate relationship with Remember the Milk and switched to todo.sh, a bash script for managing your tasks. That probably either sounds really crazy or really cool to you. Obviously, this post is for the latter group.
I mostly got sick of RTM’s speed. It’s not necessarily their fault: it’s an inherent flaw in using a web app. By using Dropbox with my todo.txt files, I can keep my todo lists in sync on multiple computers and not get stuck waiting for a webpage to load every time I want to add a new task.
Plus, todo.sh is also very flexible: you can create plugins to make it do pretty much anything you want.
But the web access is handy. Especially on my phone (a Palm Centro) and my iPod touch. Being able to quickly add tasks whenever and wherever you think of them, and to be able to consult your todo list “on the go” is a crucial feature. One of my Macs is set up as a web server, so I decided to build a simple web app for interacting with my todo.txt file that would work well on both of these devices. Today I finally got it all working and put it on github.
Here’s a screenshot:
It’s been a fun little project so far: I’ve learned some jQuery and also a bit about how git works.
Obviously, this isn’t for everybody. There are lots of great web-based todo applications like Remember the Milk as well as native Mac apps like Things, OmniFocus and The Hit List. For me, however, this is working pretty well.
(The readme file on github has installation instructions, if you’re interested.)