Workflowy

Simple, serious, and sophisticated, Workflowy (free to $49 per year for Pro) lets you create nested lists in a quick and responsive Web app. It reminds me in some ways of distraction-free text editors, such as Writebox and Writebox Mac app, which provide an austere workspace so that you can focus and write. Workflowy's possible uses are infinite, although while using the app, I wondered at times how people actually do use it, because depending on their stated purpose, the app may be lacking some key features.

As a to-do list, Workflowy deserves a knock or two for not having deadlines and reminders of upcoming deadlines. When I reached out to the Workflowy team to ask about this missing feature, a rep explained that some users tags to create due dates?that is, they'll create a tag like #12-04-13 and sort by the day's tag to find everything due. The problems with this workaround are 1) it's a workaround and 2) you have to seek out the information, rather than it coming to you, which is how time-dated reminders should work.

Basic Features
To use Workflowy, you simply type right on the screen. Enter new text, and it turns into a bullet point. You can add more bullets, sub-bullets (nested items), as well as a note, which appears directly below the attached item in a slightly different font.

You can mark complete, export, share (via a link), duplicate, and delete any item by accessing a little menu by clicking on its bullet, or through keyboard shortcuts. Click on any item, and it opens to become the top level of the page, similar to opening folders and subfolders in most operating systems. A path at the top lets you back out. See the video below to get a better sense of Workflowy in action.

Workflowy in Action
In testing the app, I created two main sections to start, work and personal, as per the advice in some video tutorials included in the app. By the way, these videos have terrific content, and making them accessible right in the same window as the app was brilliant. Kudos, guys.

Another smart move: the keyboard shortcuts are also built into the Web app, and you can display them in a tight and unobtrusive sidebar at any time. It helped me tremendously to peek over and see that I could mark a task as complete by hitting Ctrl + Enter rather than searching for a menu option.

As I built my list of things to do at work and in my personal life, I found the nesting capabilities solid. Within my personal list, I wrote "Buy produce" and then just created a nested list beneath it with all the fruits and vegetables I needed to buy. Another chore on my list was canceling my gym membership for the summer, to which I added a simple note that appears directly below the list item saying, "Called and left message on April 8."

You can drag anything up or down to rearrange the order of items,? although the on-screen handle that you have to grab is so far away from the line item that it was hard to know at times if I had nabbed the right task until it was in motion. A simple fix (which I hope the developers will implement) would be to move the handle to the left side of the item, rather than send it to the far right.

Freemium
You can sign up for Workflowy for free, but the free version has limitations. It only allows 500 lists or "items" per month, two choices for typeface (a generic serif and sans serif), no options for background theme, and no connectivity with other services.

Pro accounts, on the other hand, can be backed up to Dropbox, contain an unlimited number of lists, and have a range of options in themes and typefaces. There are two kinds of pro accounts: Individual ($4.99 per month or $49 per year) and Team ($3.99 per month per user, or $39 per year per user, with a two user minimum). Team accounts include support for collaborative editing.

One feature reportedly coming to soon to Pro account holders is the ability to edit their Workflowy lists offline?although it's not out yet.

Workflowy's Got Flow
The excellent design of the Workflowy Web app makes it appealing to use and keep using. It's quick and responsive, yet simple and elegant. New users may find they adore the app but aren't sure what to do with it (a perennial problem for one of my all-time favorite apps Evernote, too, by the way). If one of its primary intended purposes is to be a to-do list or task-management app?and judging by what else is included, it is?then it needs to add due dates, reminders, and a calendar view. Workflowy is poised for greatness soon but solid enough to be worth adopting now.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/dLQ4K6yJBuw/0,2817,2417776,00.asp

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