Today, I am very excited, because I will show you some of the new stuff from the upcoming release.

Version 8 brings multiple new incredible features, which can dramatically improve the way you work and organize your life.

We’ve put an enormous amount of effort and innovation into version 8, and we are both very excited and very pleased with the final result.

If you’ve already purchased Swift To-Do List 7 and been using it for some time now, you will be able to upgrade to version 8 with a big discount.

If you are a new customer and purchase Swift To-Do List 7 now, or have purchased it recently, you will get a free upgrade to version 8. (“Recently” means in 90 days before the official release of version 8.)

So, what’s new in version 8?

Well, a lot. The biggest feature are probably subtasks. Just the subtasks alone are well worth the upgrade price.

New Professional (and Ultimate) edition features:

• Subtasks enable you to break down intimidating complex tasks into easily manageable chunks and plan your work better. Subtasks can dramatically boost your productivity, and reduce procrastination. How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The following screenshot shows subtasks combined with item numbering:
  
  
• Hide Until field enables you to hide tasks until a specified date. It’s a “mega-snooze” for your tasks. This allows you to keep your lists short and sweet. Hide things that you don’t have to worry about for now.
  
• Automatic archiving of done tasks after a specified number of days (or even immediately). Keep your lists clean.
  

New Ultimate-only features:

• Renaming of columns/fields: Re-purpose any field, such as Type, Context or Start Date to something different. For example, rename the “Start Date” to “Shipment Date” or “Last Contacted Date”. Or, rename the “Context” field to “Client”. This is the ultimate customization – all up to you!
  
• Item numbering for to-do lists and lists. Task names can be now automatically prefixed with a number, e.g. “1. First task”, “2. Second task”, etc. This gives you a better sense of how much work is left. (“Lists” are also a new feature – read on!)

New features added to all editions:

• List, a new type of tree item beside to-do lists and memos. Lists are perfect for all non-task items. Items in Lists don’t have checkboxes, are not included in the “Tasks to be done” stats, and can be hidden by filters. Very useful for all non-actionable items, such as inventories, collections, recipes, ideas, references, and anything else that is not a task. Organize anything, not just tasks!
  
• Tasks can be now reordered in all view modes. Before, it was possible to reorder tasks only when viewing a single to-do list.
• Reminders are preserved until you dismiss them, so you won’t lose the opened reminders by exiting the program or rebooting your computer anymore.
• Filters can optionally change the view mode when set, so you can create a filter that immediately displays all tasks, then filters them.
• In notes, hyperlinks to tree items (to-do lists, memos, lists) can be created in the notes text.
• You can now use alphabetic sorting of the tree.
• New “Attachments” Options section, which allows you to customize many aspects of attachments, including what happens when you add a new attachment (Embed into Swift To-Do List database? Create shortcut? Ask me?)

Minor improvements

• Improved look and feel of all menus and toolbars, new beautiful loading screen
• New “Days Left” column which displays the number of days until Due Date.
• Tree toolbar has move right and move left buttons added, which allow you to easily manipulate to-do lists, memos and lists
• A target to-do list can be specified for tasks added via global system-wide hotkeys, so you can easily create an “inbox“
• The filters allow you to always filter for done/undone tasks, even when the Status field is enabled
• You can Ctrl+Click a tree item to switch to it and set view mode to “Selected To-Do List” at the same time. That way, you can quickly view just that one list if your view mode is set to All Lists etc.
• The window “Swift To-Do List is doing maintenance of your database” that was displayed when exiting the program is no longer displayed, unless you are running the portable version.
• When searching for tasks by typing (e.g. pressing “a” to find the first task that begins with “a”), you can now press the key repeatedly to cycle through all such tasks in the task-view.
• Improved Import Wizard now displays the original imported value as well, and correctly imports reminders.
• You can specify telephone number or a custom note for Contacts in the Manage Contacts window

What’s coming next in the 8.xx line after 8.0?

Well, A LOT of things. We are just getting started!

All the 8.xx updates will be free for all version 8 customers. And there will be many updates, with lots of new features and improvements.

This means: If you purchase version 8, you will be getting a TON of great extra features and improvements for a long, long time – all for free.

The upcoming new stuff will include:

• Multiple optimizations which will significantly speed up Swift To-Do List and reduce RAM consumption. This is coming very soon (definitely in 2012).
• Finished and polished synchronization and collaboration features, as well as companion mobile and web apps.
• Ability to create entirely custom columns (as many as you need!).
• A full-blown scheduling calendar.
• More types of tree objects, such as spreadsheets or journals (logs).
• Tables for notes.
• Beautiful skins, which will enable you to choose a theme for Swift To-Do List interface if you desire so.
• More tree icons.
• And many other things.

One thing is sure: We plan to outrageously delight you.

Do you want to play with version 8 beta?

We already have a very stable build of version 8, tested by about dozen of people – but there might still be some little quirks that only you might notice.

If you would like to help us make version 8 perfect, please contact us, and we will send you the preview release.

If you have any questions, post in comments or contact us.

PS: Yes, the subtasks are awesome! :-) We’ve made them super easy to use. In fact, I think it might be one of the best implementation of subtasks ever created. Just wait until you try them yourself.

Related Posts:

• Swift To-Do List 8 launched!
• Coming soon: Attach emails, embed file attachments
• New Swift To-Do List 7 Ultimate edition released
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• Welcome to new Dextronet!
• What we are up to in 2016: Swift To-Do List 10 is coming

Coming Soon: New Swift To-Do List 8 with subtasks! is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Online synchronization

Update on March 29, 2011: You can synchronize Swift To-Do List with Dropbox.

This is the most important feature. We plan to ship it in 3-5 months. Is is our #1 priority. Online synchronization will allow you to easily sync Swift To-Do List databases between computers through our secured cheap tower server with just 1 click (or automatically). But not only that…

Companion web-app (Swift.me)

You will be also optionally able to access your tasks online using a web browser via our new www.swift.me service. It will be a companion web-application that will allow you to view, add and edit tasks, and more, of course. It will be faster than our current Swift To-Do List Online service. We will support encrypted https:// protocol for maximum security.

Mobile access (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, iPad, and more)

The Swift.me web-app will be accessible from various mobile devices, including iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and iPad. You will be able to view, add and edit your tasks, and more.

Simple team collaboration

Because the online synchronization will have a conflict-handling, it will be finally possible to use Swift To-Do List in a multi-user environment. At first, the team capabilities will be very basic, but we will quickly add per-to-do-list permissions settings and other useful multi-user features.

Sub-tasks

You can now move tasks up and down. Sub-tasks support will allow you to also move tasks right and left.

This feature has been requested many times and we’ve avoided it because it is fairly difficult to implement, and we were afraid that it would complicate the program too much. However, we now have a way how to add support for sub-tasks with only minor effort on our side.

It will be possible to turn the sub-tasks support on/off as needed. If you do not care for sub-tasks, you will be able to hide their support altogether. However, it will be just extra two toolbar buttons (Move task right, move task left).

We still need to figure out how will the sub-task behave (eg. What happens when you check a parent task – should all sub-tasks get checked too?), but it will be probably configurable in Options.

Database merging

You will be able to use the online synchronization on two different databases to merge them (join them into one). Joining two databases is currently not possible, and we know that some of our users will welcome this possibility.

In-line editing

This is another feature that you’ve often requested. We plan to add in-line editing support this year.

In-line editing will allow you to edit tasks directly in the task-view, without having to open the Edit Task dialog. We’ve yet not decided the final design of this feature yet, but it won’t make the program more complex.

Update on May 11, 2011: We’ve added in-line editing in Swift To-Do List 7.30.

Calendar and scheduling

After we ship all the above features, calendar (with intra-day scheduling) will be the most important feature to add next. So it will be very likely added this year as well.

Simple time tracking

We are also thinking about including a simple time tracking, so you can measure how much time you actually spend on your tasks.

Update on March 27, 2011: We’ve added time tracking in Swift To-Do List 7.26.

Your thoughts and feedback

So what do you think? Let us know. Post your comments below or email us.

Related Posts:

• Swift To-Do List 10 with scheduling calendar released!
• What we are up to in 2016: Swift To-Do List 10 is coming
• Introducing Swift To-Do List subscription plans
• Swift To-Do List app for iPhone and Android released!
• Beta testers wanted for attachments sync
• Coming Soon: New Swift To-Do List 8 with subtasks!

What we are working on (Online sync, mobile access, sub-tasks, and more) is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

We are planning to release version 7.10 of Swift To-Do List in about a week. It will come with interesting new features.

Attach emails from Outlook (or other email programs)

Many users have requested this feature, and we listened! You will be finally able to drag & drop emails from Outlook (and other email programs) into task notes/attachments area in Swift To-Do List to attach them. This will store a copy of the email right in the Swift To-Do List database. You will be able to double-click it to open it again in Outlook (or other email program that you use) and reply to it, etc.

But that’s not all! Because we’ve made this feature very flexible, you can also attach calendar items, tasks and contacts from Outlook. You can also attach many different things from various other programs that have good drag & drop support (eg. many Microsoft Office programs, like OneNote).

Embed file attachments (= store files in Swift To-Do List)

Currently, all file attachments are shortcuts only. Therefore, these attachments don’t work if you carry your task database to another computer. Well, the version 7.10 will allow you to store files right in your task database (the .stdl file). This will make it easy to have all the relevant things in one place – tasks, notes, and now files attached to your tasks!

The biggest advantage is that if you carry the database to another computer, you still have the attached files readily available. Also, if you lose the files – you will have their copy in the database.

Other new features

We are also working on many other new features and improvements. I will talk about them later. The most important one is easy online synchronization (coming in 2-3 months). Feel free to send us your feature requests – we are always counting votes to prioritize our work.

Related Posts:

• Coming Soon: New Swift To-Do List 8 with subtasks!
• How to attach emails from Outlook to tasks (Video)
• Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more
• Overcome procrastination with new Swift To-Do List
• What’s New in 7.25: Import Wizard, better Batch Edit, more
• What we are up to in 2016: Swift To-Do List 10 is coming

Coming soon: Attach emails, embed file attachments is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog