Joel, serious question, if you're listening.<p>In the blog post, you mention that these teams are adopting the Lean Startup philosophy of ship early and ship often. Does that mean that you've softened on the "never ever write any code without a spec" dogma from "the Joel Test"?<p>I've personally found that when you're doing tight iterations and continuous deployment, writing old-school spec documents feels, well, old-school.<p>If I can go straight from human conversation w/ whiteboard sketches to working, tested code running on production servers without creating intermediate written documents, I think I'm winning.
Sniffing around the source, looks like a Backbone.js app -- cheers. I'd love to add it to the homepage as an example, if you want to email me a brief paragraph of description.<p><i>Edit</i> For those poking around, check out the top-level "Models" namespace.
So I honestly don't get it. Is this a poor mans bug tracker? A possible re-invention of a bug tracker? (something wacky and different version of a bug tracker to see if it sticks?)<p>I have seen people mention project management a bunch, but the view really isn't about viewing what people are doing. In fact items that don't have people assigned to them still show up. The 10 foot view isn't even that good as they all squares and text. At a glance you can not tell what changed recently, what is late etc.<p>I had to really grimace when it showed the internal team that was using it and one of the stacks was "bugs" and it had the most number of items and was scrollable. ugg Does that scale to thousands of open bugs (or how about just 50)?<p>So either this is for all of those people who have never discovered the overview page of their bug tracker or maybe it is trying an experiment to see if the process of creating a bug tracker for a project is too difficult and here you just click "new project" and blam done and later on you export it to a real bug tracker... Maybe this is all just tricking users into using a bug tracker without them knowing?<p>Anyone get the same feeling?
Oh you US people, I get internal server error when I try to activate account which contains ä character in the full name field...<p>And when trying to change my name from the account page:
Display Name can only contain letters, numbers, spaces, or the following characters: -_'.@+<p>Does this affect the Google account login also, it doesn't work for me either.
Originally posted this on the announcement blogpost, but my comment is still awaiting moderation, and joel is posting here. :-)<p>Several major +1s:
1) Use of Google login, with ability to set a password to log in without that. I LOVE this, and it fits with what Joel (and Jeff Atwood) have been proselytizing for a while about the use of OpenID.<p>2) Awesome, responsive UI.<p>Also a few -1s:
1) No indication about pricing plans. Is this going to cost money one day? EDIT: I see now that you mention in the blog post that it’s free. And the site says "Creating an account is free and easy", but you know how often sites say that but mean "creating an account is easy, but to use our software in any meaningful way you’ll have to pay."<p>2) I had a problem when I created a new board. The UI took a while to respond, during which time I got confused, created another new board with the same name, and ended up with two new boards with the same name.<p>Suggestion: The menu that opens when you click the arrow in the corner of a card should open with right-click as well. This is how assembla’s card board works, and I like it that way.<p>Suggestion: Labels should take one click, rather than two. On the menu row for labels just have six colored squares to click on. Maybe that won’t work so well for smartphone users, but for a desktop, I’d rather save the click.
It definitely has all the trappings of a Fog Creek app:
- The overall UI: built by programmers who dabble in design
- A seven(!) minute video about how _simple_ it is to use. It's easy! Instead of just raising your hand, you mark a light on the corresponding tote board, which informs your manager that you need more information.<p>I hate to be contrarian, but there are many other apps out there that solve this problem much more succinctly. I'm not sure who thought a solution like this is needed.<p>Also: "lemmur"
I showed this to my manager, and he responded:<p>"Holy shit. This is EXACTLY what I was envisioning. This is freaking AWESOME. Since the data is stored outside of [our company], security might have a conniption fit if they found out that we were using this for managing internal project data.<p>I'm certain a tool like this could be highly useful to many other teams..."<p>Can Trello address this concern?
Damn this is pretty similar to the direction my app Wallboardr is taking, except status columns aren't customisable yet.<p>Any thoughts on comparison folks? <a href="http://wallboardr.com" rel="nofollow">http://wallboardr.com</a>
Interestingly doesn't work in IE8...<p>Only found out because I wanted to view the source and it failed in Chrome so tried IE (turned out view source failed because of the load on the server atm).<p>Joel, btw, the favicon's missing, it's explicitly referenced in the source but returns a 404.<p>EDIT: Forgot to say like the look of it, good job.
This looks really cool. I'm excited to try it out, individually and with others.<p>Even better that you can immediately sign up and give it a try. As opposed to Asana, which has similar intentions, but is doing a private beta with larger companies only. Yes, Trello is much easier to get excited about.<p>EDIT<p>Some feedback: so far I really like it. It's intuitive. And it has some nice features out of the box that are lacking in other products such as assignment and voting. Assignment allows central authorities to exist, as well as hand-offs between people. Voting is awesome. I immediately see two uses for this: democratizing, and to allow collaborators to vote on what they <i>want</i> to do. The latter being something I've always personally wanted in a collaboration tool. Combining that with a central authority can be very powerful by allowing people to voice their interests, yet keep the project moving and avoid conflict.<p>As for the initial reaction: some of the views are pretty intimidating. Even thought there's <i>only</i> three lists at the start, it is still a little much to begin with. A lot to take in. If you ever implement a "minimize list" feature, that could easily reduce the noise for a beginner while still allowing you to explore all the features when you're ready to.<p>The edit screen has a lot happening in it too, but I think that's less of a problem since it's only visible when actually editing cards and you'll soon be using everything in there.<p>Also, I'm sure it's already in the works, but keyboard navigation will be huge for upcoming power users. Right now Vimium provides that for me, but it'd be great to have it built in.<p>It looks very useful! I'm already having fun with it and I'll try it out on an upcoming collaboration. Is there going to be a UserVoice (or similar) site anywhere for additional feedback? I'll happily leave this and other feedback there.
The idea of "flipping" the card over so you can see lots of details fixes my main beef with Pivotal Tracker: everything is so tiny (seriously, attach a screen shot and try to look at it) and you only get a certain amount of space for comments.<p>This looks like you could have a real discussion on the back of the card.
"vote" is a little weird... Everything about this is pretty intuitive except for that. It's only mentioned once on the summary/info page and in the welcome board after signup there should be a card that explains what voting is supposed to be, exactly. (besides just the ubiquitous like equivalent)<p>I get the impression this started out with "voting" more prominent than it is now.<p>But otherwise, this is really pretty neat. One of the first hosted solutions I've been interested in since I got tired of basecamp.
Looks promising, but two things jump out at me.<p>My first question is <i>where's the API?</i> This is something I plan to use but I will want some way to export the information to non-users, dead trees, etc. (I'd need it anyway for private boards, <i>The boss wants it in excel</i> etc.)<p>I'd also like to question the wisdom of closing the 'public' content off from non-users. <i>Choosing 'Public' will make the board visible to all Trello users.</i> Very closed-web, I don't use Orkut anymore and I wouldn't be on github if it wasn't so visible and ubiquitous. Not a complaint, just food for thought.
I don't like this, it's telling me to go upgrade my browser as punishment for having the wrong user agent. When I'm trying to have privacy.<p>My agent:<p>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7<p>I'm using 6.0.2 browser, however.<p>It's a pretty common user agent: <a href="https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php" rel="nofollow">https://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php</a> Eff does not provide the most common user agents list so I have no idea what's latest user agent to use. Many web statistic collectors also don't mention user agents.
This looks really great. I've been wanting to write something like this for use in our small-ish team, but there is probably really no point if we have this.<p>I would love to see more e-mail integration: someone mentioned mailing in to it to create a card, which could be pretty cool, but probably just as importantly I'd like for it to have options to send us e-mail when cards change. Some people like getting notifications pushed to them via e-mail versus having to check the site.<p>Thanks for writing this!
This is really cool. I like it a lot. But I think "organize everything" is a bit of a hyperbolic catchphrase. It seems to be very task-oriented. It doesn't feel like something you can just throw random ideas, say for a screenplay, into to organize them.<p>Still, as long as it stays free or even inexpensive it might be my goto tool for task management. I'll need to try it. I like that it works on my iPad without much fuss.
Wow, this is seriously great. The one thing that stood out to me (from the blog post) was the wall of 42" Plasmas in the office just for displaying Trello. While obviously not everyone can afford a wall of TVs it really would be nice to have a way that everyone could always see who should be working on / is responsible for what.<p>I imagine a board for "existing modules / features" That has the current "responsible" person for that item.. and a "new feature" board that has an easy way for people to see who is currently implementing said new feature. Though that would overlap somewhat with fogbugz (search for the task and see who it is assigned to) the board would have the advantage of being more high level and still being easily visible after a task is complete.<p>Joel (or FogCreek persons), I'm using fogbugz / kiln at home and for my side projects is there some plan to provide integration with those existing projects? Magically linking based on case numbers? Updatet he responsible person on a card based on who is currently assigned some case number?
Very slick UI, the use cases are virtually endless.<p>How about email integration where you can forward emails to different lists? Is there an API that we can integrate with Mailgun?<p>Use case I had in mind is for a sales funnel (or any funnel) where I can bcc the list corresponding with the stage in the funnel as I am corresponding with a lead and have the email move through the lists accordingly.
It's funny how the tiniest moments can really give you a glimpse of the type of person someone is.<p>For instance, in that demo video, at the end when Angella Kim makes the reference to Jello (in the heat of the moment) was one of those moments that makes me want to just give her a hug and put her in my pocket.<p>Also, this product looks good. I am wondering though, what will this cost and how will I be charged.<p>I hate that it just says free right now...with no indication about how this will be maintained.<p>I would hate to start using this, just to see it disappear in a few months - because it was free only. I know that if they are wildly successful and it starts racking up big bills they can charge for it, but I want to know how will that affect me. I trust Joel to do what's right by early users, but this is a concern I have with new stuff that I don't see a sustainable path.<p>I will probably still create an account, but not knowing whether this can be around, or I will be charged in 6 months after I am addicted is a bit annoying.
I'm using this already. I'm managing 3 clients right now and I already can see the benefits. I can see everything - so will my brother (co-hacker) when he accepts the invite! I'm using this as a to-do list.<p>I'm still going to use this with caution. I do not want to rely heavily on something that I could not afford in the future.<p>Hopefully, the pricing/freemium will not make me back-out.
My first impression is that Trello isn't a (good) product (yet) but it will certainly leverage on Joel's marketing machine.<p>Observations:
The organization information should not be public by default. I haven't found a way to delete an organization (is it there?).<p>The interface is unusable on iPad/mobile.<p>The card pop-up window is hard to use when there's some actual information attached to it. The bird's eye view is confusing and offers little information.<p>Activity log grows fast with information I would not need: voting events, add/remove members, etc. Make two activity logs, one with useful information and one with tracking (investigation) information.<p>In Opera and Chrome the red connection establishing notice appears all the time.<p>The in/out/public permissions are easy to use, but users may actually need more granularity.
Most exciting thing about it is that it's written in CoffeeScript & Node.js.<p>I really do have a feeling the combination of the two is going to be the Ruby On Rails of this generation of the web. And the shift from server-side development to client-side is going to be a huge one.
Seems like a simple Kanban (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban</a>) board. I'm not sure why this is new, there are a lot of options for Kanban out there.
Looks pretty awesome in my 5 min trial. Back of the card is very well done.<p>This will could go way beyond the software crowd to a general organization app..I just hope this thing scales well and they clarify their upload limits and such.<p>Edit 1: I tried their iPhone app and it's very far from their web interface - took me 6-7 clicks just to get to a checklist for one of the items. It's commendable that they have a app on launch though so I am sure they will work out the app interface with time - currently it's an order of magnitude less usable than their webapp.
This is a very good organizing tool. Reasons:<p>- I do the exact same thing, but using post-its. Here is a photo of one of my early methods: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/hEVtT.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/hEVtT.jpg</a>. Later I started using post-its for the tasks, so that they could be resorted.<p>- I was thinking of making the exact same app, by converting by manual process mentioned above to an automated one. Design docs: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/VGtJI.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/VGtJI.jpg</a>. Here is the Adobe Air version of the application done by an intern in a few days: <a href="http://wikisend.com/download/962662/FinalVersion.air" rel="nofollow">http://wikisend.com/download/962662/FinalVersion.air</a><p>- The most important productivity reasons that I noticed AFTER using this method were:
1) Limits to a few projects on my screen at at time
2) Can assign priorities by drag-drop (or unstick and paste)
3) Can see projects and tasks in one look<p>- The point is, that if I had time to develop an app to automate my manual workflow, Trello would have been the exact type of app I would have made, verifying that software development project managers are also going this route.
Seems very similar to AgileZen, but more basic: <a href="http://agilezen.com/" rel="nofollow">http://agilezen.com/</a><p>Seems interesting anyways. Really love the interface.
How is this going to be monetised? I want to use it but just want to make sure we don't get too excited/committed if it's going to cost a lot of money!
Joel, you must have been to one of my clients that have a giant whiteboard of post-it notes doing something similar.<p>I think this might be your best product yet.
would be nice if you could purchase an installable paid version for internal company use. It looks like a step up from pivotal tracker<p>playing with an account now, the drop and drop has a nice little effect on it. Promising!
I tried to solve this using WhoIsWorkingOnWhat.com (hn submission: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979671" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979671</a>). It didn't get much traction. I was obviously a no match to Joel. I am thinking of open sourcing the app when I get some time to clean it up.
<i>Great</i> app and highly intuitive.<p>The home page clearly explain what the software does, the signup process is really simple and straightforward, and it's free.<p>Once you get inside, you have a <i>fake</i> board which is there to help you get started.. It took me 2 minutes to try and <i></i>understand<i></i> how everything worked. No magic, no complicated features.. really simple and intuitive.<p>I love the "reverse of a card" concept, the small animations when you drag a card, how you can easily "add people" to cards, how an avatar is automatically generated for you (With your first letter and a small icon), and more importantly, how there're just a few well-done features instead of a thousand of useless and over complicated stuff.<p>Furthurmore, it seems that the app introduce the concept of plugins where anyone could potentially incorporate only the features <i>they</i> want.<p>Overall, 10/10, great app!
Does it look a bit more complicated and crowded version of Co-human? <a href="http://www.cohuman.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cohuman.com/</a><p>I'm on the fence, I kinda like both and love neither. Especially so far none of these organization tools helped me to be more efficient. I guess I'm holding them wrong.
You can actually view the live Trello Development board itself here:<p><a href="https://trello.com/board/trello-development/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c" rel="nofollow">https://trello.com/board/trello-development/4d5ea62fd76aa113...</a><p>I'm impressed they're so transparent with their development process.
Played around for a few minutes.. I didn't see a quick way to filter the view to only the non-archived cards that you (or any other single person) are a member of. If you start to build up tons of boards/cards, is there a way to quickly filter the view like this?
Looks similar to Jira's GreenHopper (<a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/" rel="nofollow">http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/</a>), each tracker issue is one card, and you can see what's in progress, todos and what has been done.
From the js source -<p>This application uses other third-party javascript components distributed under appropriate licenses. For more information, see the following files at <a href="http://trello.com/js/lib/" rel="nofollow">http://trello.com/js/lib/</a><p>backbone.js,<p>highcharts.js,<p>json2.js,<p>markdown.js,<p>socket.io.js,<p>underscore.js,<p>...apart from jquery/jquery-ui.
Joel - if you're still reading this thread (it's getting long) - I've been looking for a tool like this for a long time, but the lynchpin for me is the ability to track work hours so I can bill against it. I constantly run into tools that either let me track time or projects but rarely both in a way that works. This web app works well, but without time management, I'm forced to track the very same projects in another system for the sole purpose of billing. Oh what can we do here? At the very least, is there an API where we can add time tracking and billing to this?<p>I hope you'll see this comment!
Since reading the news about the release, I thought I'd try it out on a wee project I'm working on. So today, I tried to remember the name, and guess what? I did. Good job with that. I went to Trello.com, and found out I could just click the login with Google button. Yes! No forms or anything. I'm happy. I'm now logged in and it's taken me a total of 3 minutes to get fairly comfortable and start work.<p>Thank you so much for this service. I hope free accounts are grandfathered in :)<p>p.s - Please make it so that I can invite more than one person per click.
It looks so similar to KanbanTool [<a href="http://kanbantool.com" rel="nofollow">http://kanbantool.com</a>] (intuitive UI, board, easy drag&drop, comments etc.) - but it is much less customisable and powerful.<p>I'm just wondering if Trello is a finished product or do you guys planning to implement real-time updates, notifications, history, more customisation, priorities and any features like KanbanTool has at the moment?<p>And is there enough place on Kanban market for another tool?
So I guess with the top navigation bar of Fogcreek.com having lots of available space, we can expect to see a lot of new offerings from Joel and company?
Can someone confirm a bug or let me know if it's just my browser? (Firefox/XP)<p>View back of a card in the first list. Choose Move.... Try to move it to a specific position (2nd, for example) on another list (in my case, the third/final list). For me, it just goes to the top of the list.<p>Edit: Tried to use this move method (rather than dragging) to shift something from List 3 to Position 3 on List 1. It shifted to Position 2 instead.
Mostly a nitpick, but it'd be nice if the home page had a little <noscript> text for those of us who browse safely and are wondering what it is at a glance or why we should care enough (besides the Spolsky reference) to enable scripting.<p>Anyway, it's pretty slick with the UI. I'm going to check it out for tasking myself, and if I like it see how it works for a school project with others.
What kind of offline support do you foresee? I haven't tried using the iOS app yet...but I'm thinking of the use case where I've cached the current state of the board and want to check off/add things to the board while I'm on the subway, and have it sync automatically when I get back on. Possible, or are there too many moving parts for that to be implemented easily?
I couldn't log in with my Google Account (approval with G worked fine though).<p>Anyway, I created a regular account and my initial impression is very positive. I feel a little disoriented and the "See all boards" could be a lot better (make the boards and their relationships easier to figure out visually). Will use this for a while to see if it will grow on me.
Amazing! I'm starting to use it today, most todo/list/project apps suck, this looks really good -- so far =:)<p>The only thing I don't like is that there is instantly a member added to the first board "Trello" - which makes me wonder if somebody is looking at everything I post on the board -- and makes it seem less private/thrust worthy.
I was pretty skeptical after my hate-hate affair with FogBugz but Trello's design, marketing and OOBE are far and away the best in the category. I need to use it more but it just doesn't have whatever Pivotal has that scares away non-devs at first glance. Joel, this is definitely my favorite Fog Creek product yet.
The only thing I don't like about this is that my company won't own the data if we use it. By own the data, I mean, be responsible for it entirely, without any outside entity having anything to do with it, whatsoever.<p>Other than that, looks awesome. I hope there is a standalone installable version of this somehow, some day ..
Nearly freaked out when I saw this as it's very similar to something I'm working on but, on closer inspection it's just a surface design similarity.<p>Glad to see positive reaction anyway, sometimes seeing a product that's like to the one your working come out isn't a bad thing, it just tells you your on the right track
Thought it might be fun to have an open board for this thread.. <a href="https://trello.com/board/hacker-news-board/4e70123412dcf45f5f05cb80" rel="nofollow">https://trello.com/board/hacker-news-board/4e70123412dcf45f5...</a> I hope this works for sharing.
Getting an internal server error when trying to signup (after filling out the signup form and clicking the "Create New Account" button on the signup) ... <a href="http://cl.ly/020I2N0Q3d143L2f040a" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/020I2N0Q3d143L2f040a</a>
Few things I am really digging from a design perspective -<p>1) The slight tilt of an item in the process of doing a drag and drop of tasks<p>2) The modal boxes for adding invites, viewing task details etc.<p>3) The scrollbar on the right(Activity) pane. (Was digging around in the css, is this done in Javascript?)<p>Well done!
Any plans for adding multiple lists per column (two at 50% height, etc)? That would be the only thing I can do on our current Kanban board that I couldn't do on Trello.<p>I really like the app though, it's like a distilled, get out of the way version of Jira.
Just signed up - great so far. One request: make the back of the card resizeable to variable width, or have a preference to make it fit-to larger area within window. Wrapped c++ stubs look even uglier than regular c++!
Love it! It's basically a todo checklist app with a completely rethought interface...and general enough you could use it for everything from software development to portfolio management to sales pipeline review.<p>Great stuff.
Great! This is exactly what I was looking for a long time for our content generation and feature implementation workflow. Idea board => Doing board => Done board. Thanks, Joel!
When signing up, the verification email does not content a link if viewed in text mode. My email client is configured to show the text portion of the email when it's available.
Have used it for a week and absolutely love it. It would be even better if they could add offline access so I didn't have to worry about having internet access all the time.
I have a number of small business clients who have been looking for something exactly like this. I'm going to be telling each of them about it the next time I see them.
Feature request: reorder boards. I'd like to use this to manage our software project, and I can imagine a ltr task progression, but then boards have to be features.
Hey, cool, a nice looking Kanban board! (The ones I've seen to date have either been pretty ugly, or too many features for what I want. This one looks just right)
I've been trying to find software that fits how I use index cards as a to-do system. This is perfect!<p>The only thing that would make it perfect-er is an Android app. :-)
DoS'd right now. More info about trello on the blog which is still up:<p><a href="http://blog.trello.com/launch/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.trello.com/launch/</a>
is it just me or does the background music make this demo seem like a movie preview?
seems like Joel is about to meet his long lost brother, who at first, completely ruins his life, but in the end makes him learn a lot more about himself!
Since everybody seems so enthusiastic about it, I thought I would also leave my not so enthusiastic opinion for the sake of broad feedback.<p>If i should be honest I didn't like it so much. It felt too cluttered, the interface has way too many visual elements for my brain to process in efficient time. It's also missing more obvious visual indicators such as color or shapes. The list look all the same, they don't even have different icons identifying them, only the the name. That will do it but it's not the ultimate visual indicator.<p>As a person that barely uses the mouse, I don't find this so practical, it's click after click after click, but I guess that problem affects almost every web application out there.<p>I might be too focused simple/minimal things, this tries to lay information in a rather complex data structure, which in practice it means a lot of mental exercise before you get the info. I believe many like it, not me, give me a search box and a list of results every day.