Hi all,

We just announced the beta release of our web-based collaborative outliner.
You can read the announcement here: http://thinklinkllc.com/blog/18
And check out the outliner at http://thinklinkr.com

I'd like to particularly encourage you to try collaborating on an outline with someone. The happiest surprise of our alpha was how well collaboration works with an outline, as opposed to a free-form text document or a spreadsheet. The structure really leads to great exchange of ideas.

I'd love to hear your feedback.

Regards,
Vishu Ramanathan (@uhsiv)
cofounder thinklink llc | http://thinklinkllc.com

Thanks for sharing this new outliner with us.

Many things work very well. Congratulations.

A couple of things didn't go right (after just a few minutes of using it):

1- Printing shows collapsed items
2- Documentation and video makes references to columns, but these are apparently not yet enabled
3- Only 1 item at a time can be selected (i.e. moved, copied, etc)

Excellent start!

p.s. Web site is no longer responding. I guess too many users are watching the video... (Ah! the joys of on-line work!)

Another small problem: It doesn't run under Internet Explorer. So much for being universally accessible!

I didn't see a hotkey to move an item up and down among its siblings (e.g., in Ecco, alt-up or alt-down move an item up or down. All in all, though, it looks very good and I am going to give it a try for my daily task list.

Well, the launch seems a little bit premature to me. I could not find the column feature they discussed in their video. Why tout a feature when it does not exist?

And, I am no fan of their feedback mechanism. I have no idea how much information Get Satisfaction collects or publishes about me, so I have no interest in signing up with them. Perhaps an internal feedback form would be a bit more customer friendly?

I wish them well, especially in light of Google Wave's recent release.

--Ken

Ken -- why such a negative review ? You are aware, I assume, of the lack of offerings of this kind, right ? This is a pretty smooth web-based single-pane outliner. To me, the collaborative aspect is just a plus. Wave, from what I know, is not an outliner, so the comparison doesn't make sense. Sure, mentioning the planned availability of the column feature and maybe having a different way of gathering feedback would be suggestions, but it would only be fair to give a balanced review. This is a nice performing editor reminiscent of Mac outliners, which is now available to anyone.

ndodge wrote:

Ken -- why such a negative review ? You are aware, I assume, of the lack of offerings of
this kind, right ? This is a pretty smooth web-based single-pane outliner. To me, the
collaborative aspect is just a plus. Wave, from what I know, is not an outliner, so the
comparison doesn't make sense. Sure, mentioning the planned availability of the
column feature and maybe having a different way of gathering feedback would be
suggestions, but it would only be fair to give a balanced review. This is a nice
performing editor reminiscent of Mac outliners, which is now available to anyone.

I am sorry if my comments seemed negative to you, but I find it in less than ideal form to announce a key feature in your introduction video and not have it anywhere in the program, even in a basic fashion. Thus my comment on the announcement being a bit premature.

As far as lack of offerings, there may be few single-pane outliners on the web, but there are many alternatives (not necessarily exclusive single-pane programs) that I have seen over the years, so this program's feature set offers me little, with the exception of the columns.

Yes, Wave is a communications tool, not an outliner, but I see its real-time collaboration as a place where documents like outlines can be shared. Perhaps single-pane outlines cannot be shared at present in Wave, but something similar is bound to show up if it becomes what Google thinks it will be. And that could be a game-changer for many web-based programs, both good and bad.

I wish the developers no ill will, and hope they do well. I would probably enjoy using an outliner with custom columns. I just found the announcement/video to be a bit premature, and personally have little need for a single-pane outliner. YMMV.

--Ken

ndodge wrote:

You are aware, I assume, of the lack of offerings of
this kind, right ? This is a pretty smooth web-based single-pane outliner.

I would not say there is a "lack of offerings of this kind." In fact, this space is getting pretty crowded right now, with most of the offerings looking a lot like this one and offering basically the same features (single pane outline with collaboration).

http://www.thinkfold.com/
checkvist.com
http://listas.labs.live.com/
loosestich.com

etc.

Don't get me wrong. I want to encourage this developer - maybe this can be the best of these offerings, and maybe it can become something with unique strengths.

Hi everyone and thanks for your feedback. I appreciate your voicing your opinions. Don't worry Ken, I didn't take your thoughts negatively. You're right that in our beta some things might be 'less than ideal', but we don't believe in making the perfect the enemy of the good and we're really proud of the in-browser outlining experience we've been able to create.

Columns: The thing I'm hearing most loud-and-clear is that you want columns. We decided to go live without columns under the theory that you should release as soon as you have a minimally viable product. This does not mean that we are not going to do columns, just that we felt there was a lot of value in an outliner even before columns were included. We got rid of the placeholder buttons but we did not re-record the screencast and, as someone else pointed out elsewhere, we also forgot to take out the shortcuts from the help. Columns are really important to hard core outliners and hard core outliners are the most important advocates we have, so we really appreciate the feedback.

Get Satisfaction: This was supposed to be an upgrade from a simple form that just sent us your feedback. The idea is that get satisfaction provides a forum where all thinklinkr users can interact and grow a community. I'm starting to thing that idea was completely wrong because people are reluctant to post their opinion on some new site. To the extent that's true in this group, feel free to just email me at vishu@thinklinkr.com

Moving Nodes: To move nodes up and down, I use cut and paste. You may not have even realized that was an option because it's a web app, but it works. It operates on the entire tree. If you still want a keyboard shortcut for just moving up or down, let me know. It's certainly not out of the question.

Multi Select: The fact that only one item can be selected is a limitation of the single-state selection model as opposed to omni's different levels of selection. It simplifies the outline that you either select a node or you don't, but it makes it harder to select multiple siblings. That's not to say we will never do it, just that we may need a little time to think of something clever.

Internet Explorer: We really care about making the application be as natural as possible even though it's running in the browser. We want you to forget you're on the web and just think about outlining. There is some pretty serious javascript that makes that go and we also use some advanced HTML. Our normal process is to make it work in all other browsers and then go back and spend a lot of time making it work in IE. We didn't do that this time for a couple of reasons: 1) there are already free browsers for windows that are able to run advanced web applications with no additional work by us 2) Google's strategy for wave seems to be to get IE users to install Chrome Frame. If they can get enough adoption with that, thinklinkr will work fine in IE too. But for now Chrome Frame is in developer preview and it's not ready for our IE users. So we're stalling. If IE is the only browser you have, we're sorry.

Finally, Wave... As a geek, I'm really excited about wave. I'm also excited about it as a consultant who is sick of email. But real time collaboration on an outline is way more awesome than real time collaboration on a document, spreadsheet or new-fangled email. I shouldn't have to tell this group how great outliners are for organizing thoughts & when you add real-time collaboration so that you can get your colleagues speaking your language it's really amazing.

Thanks for all your comments,
-Vishu Ramanathan (@uhsiv)
co-founder Regards,
Vishu Ramanathan (@uhsiv)
cofounder thinklink llc | http://thinklinkllc.com
makers of http://thinklinkr.com

Vishu,

Thank you for taking the time to further explain your program and launch. I truly had no ill will towards you or your product and I am glad that you have no hard feelings. Actually, I was quite excited about the possibility of columns, and I think the let down of them not being in this release left me a bit disappointed.

Regarding Get Satisfaction, I am not totally opposed to their service, I just want to know if my e-mail address is going to be made available to the public. I try to limit my profile to spam bots, so I avoid sites that publish addresses if possible. but, I understand the convenience of having such a site for customers to share thier feedback.

I do wish you well, because while I agree with Dan that there are alternatives out there, I have not found one that best suits my work style.

If possible, please keep us posted as your program progresses.

--Ken

P.S. My one feedback item was a request for an Undo button.

Ken,

Undo button or undo functionality? We do support undo & redo with the normal keyboard shortcuts (we think that's pretty cool). I'm kind of a keyboard shortcut kind of person, so it's possible I overlooked the benefit of an actual clickable button.

Get satisfaction is pretty reputable and I would be very surprised if they violated their privacy policy and my trust by exposing my customers to spam and any other garbage. Not that you have to sign up for them, but I did and I have no evidence they did anything untoward.

-Vishu

I guess I was unable to find the Undo Button. I did not think to try the universal Undo command (CTRL-Z).

Regarding Get Satisfaction, I will give them a second look.

All the best,

--Ken

dan7000 wrote:

would not say there is a ?lack of offerings of this kind.? In fact, this space is getting pretty crowded right now, with most of the
offerings looking a lot like this one and offering basically the same features (single pane outline with collaboration).
http://www.thinkfold.com/
checkvist.com
http://listas.labs.live.com/
loosestich.com

Thanks for posting this list. In my opinion thinklinkr has an interface more like a desktop single-pane outliner than any of these other tools. It supports quite a few hotkeys (and yes, I think having a hotkey for moving items up/down would be wonderful, if it is not hard to implement). It has an uncluttered interface. Personally, I didn't think the other tools had a smooth feel to them. Thinkfold has been a promise for a long time, looks like it is still in private beta at best.

Thanks ndodge. That has to be the most nicely-worded feature request I've ever seen. "Keyboard shortcut for moving items up and down" is now at the top of our development list.

-Vishu

ndodge, yesterday's release added a keyboard shortcut for moving items up and down within a hierarchy.

ken, I've been inspired by your note about wave to try to drill into comparisons between thinklinkr and wave: http://thinklinkllc.com/blog

Thanks again everyone for checking out http://thinklinkr.com

Regards,
-Vishu

Vishu Ramanathan wrote:

ken, I've been inspired by your note about wave to try to drill
into comparisons between thinklinkr and wave:
http://thinklinkllc.com/blog

Vishu,

I was thinking of Wave as mostly a long-term threat, but your post was good to read (especially since I have yet to get a handle on posting and navigating in Wave). If everybody who held a meeting followed your suggestion of sharing an agenda outline in advance, I think the potential increase in productivity and reduction in wasted time might actually be measurable. :0

All the best,

--Ken