Swift To-Do List Blog

We’ve been working hard on new major version of Swift To-Do List for about half a year now, and it’s now just weeks away from being launched! We plan to release it by the late September/early October.

Today, I am very excited, because I will show you some of the new stuff from the upcoming release.

Version 8 brings multiple new incredible features, which can dramatically improve the way you work and organize your life.

We’ve put an enormous amount of effort and innovation into version 8, and we are both very excited and very pleased with the final result.

If you’ve already purchased Swift To-Do List 7 and been using it for some time now, you will be able to upgrade to version 8 with a big discount.

If you are a new customer and purchase Swift To-Do List 7 now, or have purchased it recently, you will get a free upgrade to version 8. (“Recently” means in 90 days before the official release of version 8.)

So, what’s new in version 8?

Well, a lot. The biggest feature are probably subtasks. Just the subtasks alone are well worth the upgrade price.

New Professional (and Ultimate) edition features:

• Subtasks enable you to break down intimidating complex tasks into easily manageable chunks and plan your work better. Subtasks can dramatically boost your productivity, and reduce procrastination. How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The following screenshot shows subtasks combined with item numbering:
  
  
• Hide Until field enables you to hide tasks until a specified date. It’s a “mega-snooze” for your tasks. This allows you to keep your lists short and sweet. Hide things that you don’t have to worry about for now.
  
• Automatic archiving of done tasks after a specified number of days (or even immediately). Keep your lists clean.
  

New Ultimate-only features:

• Renaming of columns/fields: Re-purpose any field, such as Type, Context or Start Date to something different. For example, rename the “Start Date” to “Shipment Date” or “Last Contacted Date”. Or, rename the “Context” field to “Client”. This is the ultimate customization – all up to you!
  
• Item numbering for to-do lists and lists. Task names can be now automatically prefixed with a number, e.g. “1. First task”, “2. Second task”, etc. This gives you a better sense of how much work is left. (“Lists” are also a new feature – read on!)

New features added to all editions:

• List, a new type of tree item beside to-do lists and memos. Lists are perfect for all non-task items. Items in Lists don’t have checkboxes, are not included in the “Tasks to be done” stats, and can be hidden by filters. Very useful for all non-actionable items, such as inventories, collections, recipes, ideas, references, and anything else that is not a task. Organize anything, not just tasks!
  
• Tasks can be now reordered in all view modes. Before, it was possible to reorder tasks only when viewing a single to-do list.
• Reminders are preserved until you dismiss them, so you won’t lose the opened reminders by exiting the program or rebooting your computer anymore.
• Filters can optionally change the view mode when set, so you can create a filter that immediately displays all tasks, then filters them.
• In notes, hyperlinks to tree items (to-do lists, memos, lists) can be created in the notes text.
• You can now use alphabetic sorting of the tree.
• New “Attachments” Options section, which allows you to customize many aspects of attachments, including what happens when you add a new attachment (Embed into Swift To-Do List database? Create shortcut? Ask me?)

Minor improvements

• Improved look and feel of all menus and toolbars, new beautiful loading screen
• New “Days Left” column which displays the number of days until Due Date.
• Tree toolbar has move right and move left buttons added, which allow you to easily manipulate to-do lists, memos and lists
• A target to-do list can be specified for tasks added via global system-wide hotkeys, so you can easily create an “inbox“
• The filters allow you to always filter for done/undone tasks, even when the Status field is enabled
• You can Ctrl+Click a tree item to switch to it and set view mode to “Selected To-Do List” at the same time. That way, you can quickly view just that one list if your view mode is set to All Lists etc.
• The window “Swift To-Do List is doing maintenance of your database” that was displayed when exiting the program is no longer displayed, unless you are running the portable version.
• When searching for tasks by typing (e.g. pressing “a” to find the first task that begins with “a”), you can now press the key repeatedly to cycle through all such tasks in the task-view.
• Improved Import Wizard now displays the original imported value as well, and correctly imports reminders.
• You can specify telephone number or a custom note for Contacts in the Manage Contacts window

What’s coming next in the 8.xx line after 8.0?

Well, A LOT of things. We are just getting started!

All the 8.xx updates will be free for all version 8 customers. And there will be many updates, with lots of new features and improvements.

This means: If you purchase version 8, you will be getting a TON of great extra features and improvements for a long, long time – all for free.

The upcoming new stuff will include:

• Multiple optimizations which will significantly speed up Swift To-Do List and reduce RAM consumption. This is coming very soon (definitely in 2012).
• Finished and polished synchronization and collaboration features, as well as companion mobile and web apps.
• Ability to create entirely custom columns (as many as you need!).
• A full-blown scheduling calendar.
• More types of tree objects, such as spreadsheets or journals (logs).
• Tables for notes.
• Beautiful skins, which will enable you to choose a theme for Swift To-Do List interface if you desire so.
• More tree icons.
• And many other things.

One thing is sure: We plan to outrageously delight you.

Do you want to play with version 8 beta?

We already have a very stable build of version 8, tested by about dozen of people – but there might still be some little quirks that only you might notice.

If you would like to help us make version 8 perfect, please contact us, and we will send you the preview release.

If you have any questions, post in comments or contact us.

PS: Yes, the subtasks are awesome! :-) We’ve made them super easy to use. In fact, I think it might be one of the best implementation of subtasks ever created. Just wait until you try them yourself.

Related Posts:

• Swift To-Do List 8 launched!
• Coming soon: Attach emails, embed file attachments
• New Swift To-Do List 7 Ultimate edition released
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• Welcome to new Dextronet!
• What we are up to in 2016: Swift To-Do List 10 is coming