Universal ToDo List
Problem:
It seems like there’s a new to do list app released every day. Don’t Forget the Milk, Backpack, etc do a great job and I use them for sharing with clients. The problem is, these are rich web apps which only work with Javascript turned on, and AJAX at that. Forget the poor Windows Mobile user who’s stuck with the inferior IE or Opera browser that doesn’t support XMLHttpRequest.
I was a Treo user, then a Blackjack user, neither of which supported AJAX and barely handled Javascript. I needed an app to help me keep track of things, so I figured I’d build it myself.
Solution:
I started with a bare bones to do list, just a few checkboxes and the database being updated. Then added different sections, navigation, and finally some AJAX. I tried to keep it simple and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. In fact, I use it every day.
My Universal ToDo is a lightweight web app running on php with a mysql database with a sprinkle of ajax to make things fun. It loads fast on slow EDGE connections and degrades gracefully on non-AJAX browsers. I’ve also optimized it for use on an iPhone and even included a neat-o apple-touch-icon for those of you on 1.1.3 and higher firmware.
Of course, it works perfectly well on any normal browser. I use it with my wife to send grocery items from her while I’m at the store, she updates on her laptop and I can see it on my iPhone. We’re never running out of milk again!
Update 3-8-08: Seems there were a few little bugs in the v1 release. First off, apostrophes weren’t stripped out correctly, so putting in the work Fry’s brings up Fry\’s. Which is fine if that’s where you want to shop, but didn’t sit well with me. Secondly, now after adding a new category, the list of categories updates to allow you to choose the new category. Finally, made little progress indicators when you update or add items, nothing special just a little javascript value change in the input button, but it works. Links to download are all updated, so get the new version up top. Oh, and make sure you’re running PHP 5, doesn’t play well with PHP 4.