leftcolumn.net

…yes, I’ve added a new feature that lets you create a ‘package’ (like an archive) of one or more projects, including any actions contained in those projects. Once you’ve created a package (it’s easy) you can choose to hide it or share it with anyone! Other people can view the shared packages you’ve made available, preview their contents and then import the package into their own account. 

The potential uses for this are fairly open, but there are two major ways it could be used:

1. By teams of people to share copies of arbitrary project and task information, for example teachers sharing task lists with students. 
2. By individuals wanting to share useful stuff with pretty much anyone, for example sharing recipes or how-to guides. 

You can be selective about who you share your packages with, too: there’s an option to set a password for a package. Packages with passwords set are hidden by default but can be accessed via a special URL. Anyone with an Undone account who knows the URL and the password will be able to import the package, so I’m calling these ‘Semi-private packages.’ Semi-private packages are a bit different to normal packages in that it’s not possible to preview the contents before you import one.

Note that if you’ve made your profile private, no-one will be able to access your packages at all! You can still use packages if you have common repeating mini-projects - say for example ‘Steps for making a web-site live.’ 

When you browse other people’s profiles now, there’s a new sidebar item called ‘Packaged projects’ that shows an indicator of how many public packages the person is sharing. Semi-private packages are not included in this count. This is a link to their shared packages page, which is where you can preview and import their packages.

Packages can contain multiple projects, each with many actions. Note that only a couple of fields are transmitted in packages - action names, project names and description. So packages do not contain tags, start times, or any of the other data. Once you import a package, you have your own copy of the projects and actions it contains, and can edit them as you like.

I’ve also added support for Gravatars. For the uninitiated, Gravatars are Globally Recognised Avatars. You register a gravatar once and then any supports gravatars can display it! The way this works in Undone is that you enable it on your ’settings’ page, and Undone tries to load a gravatar based on the email address you registered with. The Gravatar is displayed on your profile when you are logged in, and will be displayed when anyone else views your profile (your undone profile must be public obviously).

Note that creating packages is currently limited to people with browsers that support jQuery. You need Javascript switched on, and you can check the browser compatibility list for more information. Sorry about the limitation, I’m planning to support other browsers soon. 

Thanks to Paul Left for the original idea of packaged projects!