Microsoft's Listas

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Posted by Lucas
Aug 17, 2008 at 03:12 AM

I’ve been following discussions here off and on for a couple years. I realize the focus isn’t usually on web-based outliners, but I just came across Microsoft’s Listas, and I figured it deserved at least a mention here (or did I miss a previous discussion of it?). Anyway, it’s still primitive, but at least it is more sophisticated than the other web-based outliners out there (iOutliner, for instance). It’s not billed as an outliner, but it is indeed one. One hopes it will be further improved, and/or that competitors will offer comparable but superior alternatives. (I must say I find it rather surprising that, according to Google, less than ten websites mention both Listas and iOutliner—I would think that web-based outliners would be of growing interest.) Thoughts?

http://listas.labs.live.com

Posted by dan7000
Aug 17, 2008 at 03:22 PM

Thanks! I hadn’t seen listas, and it’s a pretty fun entry. As you said, it’s an online outliner - here are some features:
- rich text in outline items
- can also paste images and hyperlinks into outline items
- lists can be public editable, public readable, or private
- you can tag a list or an individual item. Tagging an item isn’t that helpful though, because clicking a tag only gets you a list of lists that contain that tag - it doesn’t seem possible to get a list of items that use that tag.
- put a check mark in front of any items to create a task list.

There is also an IE toolbar that allows Evernote-style clipping from web pages directly into listas:
- copy a link to a webpage into your “my favorites” list
- copy a short web clipping into any of your lists (anything bigger than about 10 lines will give an error).
- navigate to your lists

So far, though, this can’t replace a bookmark manager like delicious or even evernote, because 1) you can’t tag a bookmark right when you add it; and 2) you can’t find a list of web links that share one tag; and of course 3) the toolbar doesn’t work in firefox.
And it can’t replace EN as a web clipper because it only accepts very short clips (and only from IE)

Here is a listas list someone created of the reasons they think listas sucks (note that some items, such as the inability to import images, are no longer accurate, but the “barnacles” issue is definitely true): http://listas.labs.live.com/user/topcat31/lista/b77fbbe8-79f9-45e6-8b09-42fc58f9a7d3

Posted by David Dunham
Aug 17, 2008 at 04:59 PM

“Listas was designed for IE 7 and Firefox browsers only”—is that in the list I can’t access?

My other complaint is that it needs a Microsoft login; I have none (and really don’t want to create one).

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