That's the first bit of news. Development work continues on Dynalist, a sort of Workflowy clone with folders. They've been working to get feature parity with Workflowy, and are also promising some enhancements I've been waiting for (see https://trello.com/c/Mb8nYQtc/29-word-count I fiddled with it yesterday, and see some thoughtfulness and polish going into the product.

I think this is the first that I've heard of Dynalist and, signing up, it does look very much like Workflowy.

A couple of questions:

If imitation is a high form of praise, then Dynalist is praising Workflowy indeed. However, is there not an issue with another developer so blatantly copying a competitor? I have a funny feeling about that.

As well, having just got started back with Workflowy,from a more pragmatic perspective, is there any value to giving Dynalist a spin?

My CRIMPing instincts say give it a spin. But, again, being more practical, given that I'm back into Workflowy and, perhaps more to the point, putting a lot of energy into getting my academic routine into better form, it seems unwise to divert that energy elsewhere.

Daly

jaslar wrote:

That's the first bit of news. Development work continues on Dynalist, a
sort of Workflowy clone with folders. They've been working to get
feature parity with Workflowy, and are also promising some enhancements
I've been waiting for (see https://trello.com/c/Mb8nYQtc/29-word-count
I fiddled with it yesterday, and see some thoughtfulness and polish
going into the product.

I like it. It's more of a writing outliner that can handle task lists to Workflowy's task list app that could be used to write outlines.

Though, I kinda wish they copied them a little bit more -- the perma-hoist functionality doesn't quite seem to be there the way it is in Workflowy, which gives it that MaxThink/Brainstorm feel that's lacking in, well, pretty much everything.

Well, Abiword mimicked Word. OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice recreate the feel and functions of MS Office. Windows sought to capture the graphic ease of the Mac. Writemonkey aped (hah) WriteRoom. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to try to emulate what you admire, plus tweaks.

And Dynalist does have some significant functional differences: amomg them inline images, and a folder structure. And while Ctrl-] isn't quite as easy as "click on the button" to hoist - it's close. In fact, I find the Dynalist key commands a little more memorable than Workflowy's.

Check out the Dynalist blog: http://blog.dynalist.io/

Uploads images, now has a very fast nValt sort of tag searching. I shifted over to Dynalist at work, and haven't touch Workflowy in some time. Dynalist is diverging, but I'm finding it very powerful.

A few more thoughts.

I started a new job a few months ago, and found Dynalist - to my surprise, more than Workflowy - a great way to track projects, and "bucket" them into discrete documents (on the left, or File panel). Dynalist had the strengths of Workflowy, but also that extra two-pane tracking.

Understand that this new job doesn't allow me to install software by myself. So to walk in the door and have immediate access to a strong information management tool via a browser was both powerful and useful. As noted in another discussion, this may not be so secure. But ok if we manage the kind of information we're working with. (Tricky, right?)

In the blog link above I mentioned rapid searching for words. The COMMAND that does that doesn't seem to be a basic search, so I'm scratching my head a bit. But Dynalist is evolving, and my request for help on Twitter today (about a change in interface display caused by adjustments to window size) was responded to very quickly and intelligently. Further, I was intrigued by the blog's reference to mind mapping. I decided that it was worth some personal financial investment.

As always, no tool can be everything to everyone. But so far, I find that Dynalist is easy to learn and use, is moving forward, is affordable, allows me to quickly move my data if the company winks out of existence (a zip file backup), and solves real business problems for me.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

If imitation is a high form of praise, then Dynalist is praising
Workflowy indeed. However, is there not an issue with another developer
so blatantly copying a competitor? I have a funny feeling about that.

The source code of a product is protected by copyright and the name/logo/brand is protected by trademark. However the general functionality and appearance isn't protected (unless they have a patent on it, which is thankfully rare). So it generally isn't illegal to copy the functionality and appearance of software. IMHO is good thing that software developers build on the good ideas of others, as long as it doesn't cross the line into blatant plagiarism. Anyway I am struggling to think of any copycat product that has been commercially successful.

Andy Brice wrote:

Anyway I am struggling
to think of any copycat product that has been commercially successful.

May I assist you?
What about Word, Excel, Access, to name but a few. :-)

I appreciate getting word of Dynalist. Looks interesting. I like that you can break up your outlines into separate documents. One issue I've come across is that the folder/document pane does not respond to commands when I'm trying to use Dynalist on my iPad with Safari. Has anyone else come across this problem?

Steve Z.

Steve, I don't find it usable on the iPad - in that respect, it's even worse than the Workflowy app. For me, Dynalist is a desktop app.

Franz Grieser wrote:

May I assist you?
What about Word, Excel, Access, to name but a few. :-)

IIRC Microsoft purchased these companies that made these products, which isn't the same as plagiarising them.

Thanks for the confirmation, Jaslar. That, unfortunately, makes Dynalist a non-starter with me. Perhaps it will come around.

Steve Z.

jaslar wrote:

Steve, I don't find it usable on the iPad - in that respect, it's even
worse than the Workflowy app. For me, Dynalist is a desktop app.