Community Feedback = Superior Product

Tasktop just announced the Spring 2008 release of their product, built on the Mylyn Framework. One of the great things about Tasktop is that if you don't use the Eclipse IDE you can still take advantage of the Task Focused Interface from Mylyn.

As Mik noted in his blog posting, the most exciting thing about this release is that the team were able to respond to all of the community interest for additional email integration. Gmail integration was one of the most requested features in Tasktop and this release now supports Google’s Gmail as well as generic IMAP.

The Gmail connector let’s you tag an email with your label of choice (for example “Tasks”), causing the corresponding message thread automatically show up in your Task List. You can use this in conjunction with Gmail’s automatic labeling. For example, I have all email prefixed with “task: ” automatically labeled, which means that I can create tasks by sending myself email. I also have Google News Alerts automatically labeled, which means that instead of inbox clutter I have a tasks corresponding to each alert subject and with a click can open the corresponding thread. You also get all the other benefits that you expect from Tasktop for working with Gmail, such as offline access for the email tasks you collaborate on. Yes, you read right, Tasktop now gives you offline access to Gmail.

Since one of the most dramatic benefits of Tasktop is focused web browsing, we have had several requests to provide support for browser add-ins from those switching their default web browser to Tasktop. Some add-ins still sense to use in the external browser, for example, if you want to inspect a page with the Web Developer Firefox add-in, you can easily do so by suing the Open in External Browser action in the Tasktop browser’s Send to. menu button. But the browser extension that we’ve had the most request for is del.icio.us bookmarks. Tasktop have created an early access program for early adopter to download the same weekly releases that developers at Tasktop use. The current weekly release of Tasktop includes early access bookmark support for del.icio.us. Also check out the new features such as the Notes view and the Community feedback page.

James is a DZone Zone Leader and has posted 231 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website.