The biggest concern I have is that TaskTop wants to be the default browser?! Uh, for someone who does webapps and uses Firefox, Firebug, and related plugins quite heavily it will be interesting to see how that works out. Also, there are some wonderful plugins like ScribeFire and Del.icio.us bookmarks that may be tough to live without.
At first we all thought that this was a crazy idea too, but bear with us :) Here's an excerpt from the
reply to this question on my blog:
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Regarding Firefox add-ons, we have to figure out whether to prioritize the support of Firefox and add-on embedding. While most of the world doesn’t, all of us at Tasktop used to browse with Firefox. What we realized is that there was no critical add-on we were using for daily work that couldn’t be provided by some OS widget or other mechanism. There are of course all of the fun add-ons and useful things like the Web Developer toolbar, which is why we made it so easy to pop into Firefox when needed (far right button on browser -> Open in External Browser). For core things like del.icio.ous
we plan on providing direct support.
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Note that setting Tasktop as the default browser is optional, and that even when set it will only be your default browser when it is open. But frankly, for me going back to a plain browser would feel something like like making me go back to working in Emacs. Emacs was great, but once you get used to having structure navigation and integration, you realize how much time is wasted on constant searching and tab/session management. So we're going to continue pushing very hard in this direction, and Eclipse is unique in that it provides us a platform for both the native OS integration and the open source tools and component model needed to make this happen.
I'd also like to know how the plugin and rcp versions differ.
The plug-in version will only install into Eclipse and has a some programmer-specific extensions. For example, the Navigator view can show source code projects connected to CVS or SVN. The RCP version differs in that it provides a simplified Eclipse-based application. For example, we did away with the Perspective switcher that Eclipse uses, simplified the menu bar and instead of following Eclipse conventions for where and how things are installed follow Windows conventions.
I think that it's great that you guys are heavy Eclipse/Mylyn/Tasktop users; how about some best practices? Perhaps something in a blog would be nice, or even a series of more informal Camtasia videos (which are very good ways to communicate, BTW).
I agree, and we will soon prioritize improving this messaging and publishing best practices. While we've tried hard to give this tool an incremental learning curve, it has taken us a while to become become expert in this way of working and collaborating, and we would really like to compress the novice-to-expert transition for others adopting the tool.
Watch the Tasktop blog if you're interested in for best practices and tips.
Thanks Mik and team for making this product. It's something I've been looking for for a long time, and can't wait to start using it in earnest.
Thanks for your feedback Josh! Regarding the Bugzilla credentials setting bug you noticed, that should be very rare and will be fixed in the Feb. 19th update. We're excited about continuing to improve and extend the integration to make it accessible to more and more people. If you and others are interested in support that's not there it would be great if you could fill out the survey for what you would like to see added:
http://tasktop.com/support/survey/integrations.php