Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Backpack on the go

Does 37signals have a plan for supporting mobile devices? Its a little ironic that a service called “Backpack” has such poor mobile support. One currently has to choose between the /mob page that clearly has not been looked at by developers since it was launched, or clever CSS hacks. Backpack is a dream on a desktop web browser, but I spend about a quarter of my time these days away from the computer, with just my iPhone in hand. Working with Backpack pages on mobile browsers is not a good user experience, and this ultimately limits its utility.

Better support for such devices would be most welcome.

Topic: Feature Requests / Page archiving

It would be nice to be able to archive a page that is no longer in use, but is still valuable. Could this be done by a simple XML export of some kind?

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Update status inaccurate for writeboards

Thanks Sarah!

Topic: Backpack Calendar / iPhone

It seems strange that there is no /mob page for the calendar. Its rather awkward to use Backpack on the iphone with no calendar access. Is 37s working on a mobile version of the calendar?

Topic: Feature Requests / Time stamps on files

I notice that notes have a time stamp option. I think this would be even more useful for files, as it would allow multiple users to be able to identify if a newer version of a particular file has been uploaded.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Update status inaccurate for writeboards

I have writeboards that I created a few days ago, but on the Backpack page in which they are embedded, it says “Updated less than a minute ago.” This never changes, no matter how old the update is.

Topic: Backpack Calendar / Sync solutions?

Has anyone come up with a syncing solution for Backpack Calendar? I’d love to be able to add calendar items from ical when offline and have them sync with Backpack. Something like BusySync does with Google Calendar.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Once-a-month reminders

How does one set up a reminder for, say, the last thursday of each month? It looks like I can set up a reminder for a particular date each month, such as the 20th, but its not clear how to specify a particular day of the week.

Topic: Feature Requests / Expiring trash

It would be nice to be able to set deleted items to expire (i.e. disappear) after some period of time. This could be a simple setting with a few options like “never”, “on logout”, “after 1 week”, “after 1 month”, etc. At present, periodic maintenance is required to go through pages with more deleted items than remaining items.

Topic: Feature Requests / Is it possible to create a Reminder by sending an email?

Its easier to organize them from within Backpack, for sure. It would still be nice, however, to be able to fire off an email with “remind: 8am Take out the garbage” in the subject line and have it added to your reminders. Just easier in that respect.

Topic: Feature Requests / SMS Provider Requests

Just wondering—are SMS providers still being added? I noticed that there has not been an update in many months.

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / Recommendations for Backpack Dashboard widget?

Not really. There is one widget that is almost 2 years old now, and it is pretty limited (only sees the first list on a page, etc). It would be great if someone came up with an updated one.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / verbatim text not working

I am trying to store useful snippets of code on a BP page, and have tried using the

 markup to do so. However, it does not seem to work. IT looks like textile still tries to interpret the snippet. Here is the code I am talking about:

=CONCATENATE(YEAR(F2), '-', IF(LEN(MONTH(F2))<2, '0',), MONTH(F2), '-', IF(LEN(DAY(F2))<2, '0',), DAY(F2))

is there no *true* verbatim mode?

  

Topic: Feature Requests / Better parsing of search results

It would be great if search results were returned in their true format. So, for example, if items from a list are returned from a search query, they actually show up as list items, and not just some concatenated text.

Topic: Feature Requests / SMS Provider Requests

Please add Vodaphone New Zealand:

Topic: Feature Requests / Is it possible to create a Reminder by sending an email?

I dont think Backpack was designed with GTD in mind. That said, this would be an excellent feature, since I am not always sitting with Backpack in front of me, but I do almost always have Gmail open and ready to send mail. While they are at it, adding calendar appointments would be terrific also. Its just a matter of associating an email address with the reminders and calendars page (just like standard BP pages), is it not?

Topic: Feature Requests / Hierarchical Lists

Not sure if this is a new request or not, but it would be nice to be able to have hierarchical lists; that is, multiple levels to lists, by indentation. This would make outlining much more powerful in BP.

Topic: Feature Requests / Having an UNDO when deleting stuff

++1

Backpack cannot be used for anything mission-critical until it gets some sort of restore or undo capability. I just nuked an important note accidentally, and now its gone forever. The result: I’m moving all of my BP stuff to VoodooPad until this changes.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Page rendering issue

Here is what the upper right corner of my pages look like in Safari 3:

Topic: Feature Requests / Tagging

I just saw the tags in Highrise on the product blog. Wow—these would be great in Backpack. I think it would increase the general usability of the product, in terms of the number of uses for Backpack.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Ghost checkboxes?

Not sure what the deal is here:

I didnt check these, nor did they move to the checked items list. Running Safari 3 (but not for long, perhaps).

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Forum keeps forgetting me

This is pretty annoying. If this isnt a bug, then I’m not sure what the “Remember me” box is for.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Can't move list items into an empty list

I gave it my best try but it does not work for me, at least not on any WebKit browsers (Safari 3, OmniWeb). As you can see, no matter how slowly I move the item, a space never opens up. Is this a Mozilla-only trick?

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Can't move list items into an empty list

I noticed that you can’t take an item from a list and drop it into another list that does not currently have any items. I tried several times. I had to add an item, then it worked. Bug?

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Page resizing

Would it be difficult to write some custom CSS to override this? On pages with a whole bunch of lists, more than 50% of the frame is white space—looks kind of silly.