Topic: Backpack Calendar / iCal Time Zone Issue

Same issue here. The Backpack calendar is completely unusable in my opinion. Events from the G-Cal iCal link show at the end time, not the start time. And furthermore, the times are anywhere from 1 hour to 5 hours off from Eastern Time. Yes, my time zone setting is correct.

This has been posted here for a full year now, so apparently it is not taken seriously by 37 Signals. Poor, poor service.

Jim

Topic: Feature Requests / Auto-Complete Tags

Highrise has a great auto-complete for its tags. If you have already entered a tag and then start to type that tag name again for another contact, a yellow box appears with the existing tag. Click it and you’re done. Nice.

Backpack doesn’t have any auto-complete at all. At least none is showing on my computer in Firefox 3 or IE7.

It would be nice to have that same auto-complete feature in Backpack.

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / Jott + Backpack = mobile bliss

BTW, Jott is no longer free. As a matter of fact, it is kind of expensive now. It IS a nice service, and to give credit where it is due, the developer DID allow completely free use while in beta – I used it free for a year and a half. It’s now $3.95 per month for Jotts of 15 seconds max, and – hold on to your wallets! – $12.95 for Jotts of 30 seconds max.

Jim

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / How to Put "Movie Collector" Data on Backpack?

@Lance:

I understand what you mean. It’s just that I am trying to post it for the family and I am hoping to get most all of the pages for them to see in Backpack, instead of spread out over various web sites – even my own!

@Derrick: You truly rock! The iframe is perfect! I had no idea that I could insert an iframe into a Backpack page. This does it for me. Absolutely what I needed.

Thanks again!

Jim

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Is There a Manual for Backpack?

Very true, but I agree that a nice concise PDF document containing as much as there is to know about Backpack would be great! I have collected a lot of helpful and instructive posts in the Backpack forum, along with any blog posts I could find that offer information about using Backpack.

What would help is one forum topic where users post any really helpful information that they have either come across elsewhere or developed on their own, and post it all in one place. I would be willing to wrap it all up in a single PDF document and post it somewhere for download.

Jim

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / How to Put "Movie Collector" Data on Backpack?

This is truly shameful – I normally dislike “bumping” threads, but after two months without a reply I am really hoping that I can get someone’s attention that might know how I can do this.

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / Re: "Macworld chooses Campfire and Backpack as tools for 'portable office'"

Backpack works OK on Macs, doesn’t it?

I hope so! I am seriously looking at getting a Mac to replace my desktop PC and that woiuld at least be ONE application that I could still use!

One negative that is causing me to hesitate is that I have a few thousand $ in software applications that I use extensively that do not have Mac versions. (I know I can run Windows somehow on a Mac, but that seems to completely defeat the purpose of switching to the Mac!)

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Miscellaneous / Recent formatting changes?

Appears it MAY be on your end. Did you check your system fonts? Are you missing any of the fonts Backpack is using, per Jan’s post above?

Considering the fact that it is doing it in both FF and IE, it sounds like it is either a missing font on your computer, or possibly the font size you have set up on the machine. Check to see if you are using something other than the standard font size by right-clicking on your desktop and then Settings at the bottom. (That’s in XP; if Vista, I think it is Appearance).

I run Windows XP Pro on my desktop and Vista Ultimate on my notebook, and I have not noticed any change at all in font size. A few other annoyances, I’ll admit, but the font size is OK.

Good luck!

Jim

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Problem w/Drag & Drop in Firefox 3

This is different from the previous post about Firefox. As soon as I start to drag any element in Firefox 3.0, my entire Backpack page “squeezes” to the right – to the point where you cannot see the page elements anymore. If I am lucky I may drop it where I wanted it, but most of the time it ends up somewhere else.

Screencast is here: http://screencast.com/t/TyXVyMSv

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Backpack Calendar / Can't Delete Recurring Event

I posted this in another thread but never got a reply. I have Google Calendar synced with my Backpack using an iCal link. However Backpack apparently doesn’t pick up all changes made in Google Calendar.

I had a recurring event in G-Cal that I deleted two months ago. It no longer appears in G-Cal at all; hasn’t for two months now. Yet it does still appear in my Backpack calendar. And since the event was not created in Backpack, it cannot be deleted from there either. It must be deleted in G-Cal. But it is aleady and Backpack is simply not picking that deletion up!

So I have had to look at that event in Backpack for two months, knowing full well it shouldn’t be there.

How can I get that out of there, other than by just not syncing with G-Cal anymore?

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / List of All Pages' URL's & Email Addresses?

The “All Pages” link is handy once your number of pages starts to grow.

Is there also a list addresses (URL’s) for all my pages? And also a list of email addresses for all my pages?

I was keeping a list of all of these on a Backpack page in a table. However as most users know, tables in Backpack are not the easiest things to maintain, especially when they get large! So I moved it out to OneNote 2007 for the time being, but it is kind of weird to have to start using external tools for tracking my Backpack pages.

I would think it would be fairly easy for 37 Signals to either add the page and email addresses to the “All Pages” view in Backpack. Or at least show this data somewhere in my account.

If there already is such a view and I am just missing it altogether, can someone please smack me in the back of the head and point me toward it?

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Feature Requests / To many lists in to many pages?

@webferret:

My guess is that the separate applications is to make each somewhat affordable to those who don’t want or need all.

What would the combined price be if they rolled all these apps into one subscription? It would probably be way too high for someone who just needs the feature set of Backpack, or Highrise.

Of course the other side of the coin for your question is: Why doesn’t 37 Signals offer bundled subscription packages for those users who DO indeed want to use all of their applications? Having separate subscrptions for all these applications would be extremely expensive—at least for home/personal users. I currently use Backpack (Paid subscription) and a free Highrise account. I would love to add more to my Highrise, but going from Free to any of their paid Highrise plans is a really big jump – and I don’t need tens of thousands of contacts, nor any file storage at all. But just to go from 250 contacts in the free account it would cost $12 monthly to add only another 250. Too cost prohibitive for me!

Imagine if they rolled all together – I wouldn’t be able to afford it at all.

Jim

Topic: Miscellaneous / Trying to get a response from 37Signals support on the limits of Backpack

Deano,

I don’t know where you are located, but this is a holiday weekend in the US. Most likely the moderators are off until early next week.

However I would have expected someone available for support inquiries.

Jim

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Why can't I use strikethrough in textile?

I have also had problems with certain Textile codes. Can someone from Backpack please post all of the Textile codes that are intentionally disabled in Backpack? It doesn’t make sense to direct users there from the Backpack Help pages when you have disabled parts of it.

Perhaps there needs to be a page created/hosted by 37 Signals showing what codes to use for formatting in Backpack.

Thank you.

Jim

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / FF3 display issue in Backpack Newsroom

eatsome,

I haven’t seen that at all in FF2 or FF3. Do you have Adblock or Adblock Plus installed? If so, make sure that you have listed an exclusion for the Backpack domain as follows:

@@|http://*.backpackit.com/

That will stop any blocking on any page within the entire Backpack domain/

Jim

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / How to Put "Movie Collector" Data on Backpack?

I want to put my DVD movie collection on one of my Backpack pages. The collection is in the catalog application Movie Collector by Collectorz.com and the usual format is an HTML export which consists of an Index.html page, a folder of HTML pages with individual DVD details on each, and a folder of images containing scans of the DVD covers.

Looks great and is well-designed and helpful if I click on it from Windows Explorer on my PC to view it in a browser, and also looks just as great if I place all on a web host’s server and view it as a web page.

But I am stumped as to how I can show it on one or more backpack pages. BTW, I also have my music CD and book collections in similar applications from the same developer. I have seen a couple posts here where users say they have the same data on Backpack but I have never gotten a reply from them. as those were pretty old posts and the users are most likely not monitoring them. Unfortunately the forums here have no email notification of replies.

Has anyone here done this? If so, can you please share how you accomplished it?

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Backpack Calendar / Does Backpack Refresh iCalendars?

Although most of the changes in my BP calendar from G-Cal are eventually picked up/refreshed, I have a couple of recurring events that have been deleted from G-Cal for about three weeks that still show in the Backpack Calendar. Backpack seems to have “adopted” these and won’t give them up! I cannot delete the recurrence aspect in Backpack – it apparently has put them all in a separate and distinct events, meaning that to delete them I would have to delte each one individually—to eternity, I imagine, since there does not appear to be any end date to these events.

Does anyone know of a way I can remove these other than manually deleting them? (I could spend hours doing that, and since they are mistakenly there – they don’t exist in G-Cal anymore – that error may just keep them there not matter what I do)

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / FF3 display issue in Backpack Newsroom

Great! Thank you Ryan.

Jim

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / FF3 display issue in Backpack Newsroom

I just noticed a problem with page rendering in Firefox 3 also, with my initial Journal entry:

Backpack Journal in Firefox 3

Backpack Journal in Internet Explorer 7

Hopefully the 37 Signals gurus are working on this!

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Feature Requests / create a netvibes widget or universe

I was just “googling” for a way to add Backpack to my Netvibes page and found this post.

Has anyone found a way to do this yet?

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: How are you using Backpack? / For Everything!

deus62:

Thank you for that great post! Gave me a few good ideas.

A question first, please: You mention having your Music Collector export file in Backpack. I am also using Music Collector and Movie Collector. How do you publish your export file to Backpack? I know that I can upload files, but the HTML export folders from Collectorz.com programs consist of several HTML pages, a details folder with even more HTML files, and an Images folder filled with jpeg files.

Do you actually have the report(s) showing in Backpack? I’d love to know how you did this.

Thanks again,

Jim

Topic: Backpack Calendar / Is Importing really 'impossible'?

Hi jonezy.

the OP wants to delete the original iCalendar after subscribing to it. I am not completely certain that deleting it will also remove the events from Backpack, but since it is only a subscription I believe it will. The OP wants to literally copy over all the events by “importing” them, rather than subscribing. Sarah is telling him he will lose all the events if he deletes the original iCalendar. At least that is how I’m reading it.

I do believe that Sarah is correct and that you can only subscribe to iCal, not truly import it.

Jim

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Log on from backpackit.com

Quite possibly correct, jonezy. But as someone who has not designed a web site and doesn’t know that much at all regarding subdomains vs. domains and that sort of thing, I have no base of knowledge, nor reference, to find something like that out.

I do know that a lot of web sites DO know immediately who you are and what subdomain to which you should be redirected, as long as you use a “Remember me”-type login. Yahoo and Google both, for example.

Once again, I don’t know the mechanism they use, but I believe it is most likely done with cookies that are read and recognized when you navigate to their respective home pages. Maybe not, though. But they certainly know who I am when I get there.

Thanks!

Jim

Topic: Backpack Calendar / Week Start/Weekend

I have all online and digital calendars set up with Monday as the first day of the week, and I AM in the USA!

I personally have never understood why anyone here is the USA would prefer seeing Sunday as the start of the week. For the overwhelming majority of workers in the US, the term “weekend” refers to Saturday and Sunday. There is no industry here that I can think of that starts their work week on Sunday! Sure, there are companies all over the world that operate seven days a week and have many different shifts running at any given time, but the normal work week in the US starts on Monday, just like the rest of the world!

I have no idea who initially placed Sunday as the first day of the week. If I had to guess, I would say that it is probably a religious holdover from our country’s forefathers, as the US was founded mostly because of the concept of religious freedom, and Sunday is the traditional day of worship here.

But I don’t believe that many people here at all actually consider Sunday to be the start of the week! More of a habit probably.

I would much prefer the ability to make Monday the first day, as I do with all other calendars I use! Can’t be that tough for 37 Signals to make it user-configurable.

Jim

Topic: Backpack Calendar / Is Importing really 'impossible'?

You’re not actually “importing” an iCal calendar – you are copying a URL and then pasting that into Backpack, correct? All Backpack does is read that information every so often (apparently it is currently days) and thus refreshes that information from the iCal source. If the iCal source disappears, obviously Backpack will at any point after that see that nothing is there.

I am not certain exactly what happens after the original calendar goes away. Either it will just keep the information from that calendar but not be able to refresh, or it will blank out all that info once the original calendar is deleted.

Jim