My Dream App

I think coming up with a new metaphor that isn’t sticky notes would help push this further in the ranks than it has been. Technical implementation issues aside, there are plenty of times when I would not want a giant sticky to be in my folder. I’d need a nice way of shrinking it down to be less obtrusive, then perhaps letting me roll over it to get the details.

Stick-It is a logical progression of the metaphor Apple created with their original implementation of Stickies. If I can drag a sticky note on to my desktop, why can’t I drag it to a window or a menu item? Stick-It fills this hole If it can be implemented properly on both a per application, document, tab, menu item, etc. level then I would use it in a heartbeat.

I’m with Cabel 100% on this one. Unless the way the UI is done is changed from the original idea, I’m not really sure I would want this on my Mac. I hate when I get a small pile of stickies on my real life desktop let alone my Mac. I’m also super anal about aligning them when they are minimized so my desktop doesn’t look cluttered and all out of sorts. I might be strange that way, but since we’re used to seeing Windows user’s desktops with about a BILLION icons on them, I suspect many people would stick stickies on just about anything in their computer until they couldn’t see a the actual Finder anymore. I like this idea, but its realization needs work to make it something that helps you stay organized without getting out of hand visually.

I liked this idea a lot at the beginning of the competition, but it’s been languishing a bit. Now, “shadownight’s” excellent mockups have brought it back to the fore. Groovy!

(And I still love the idea of putting superfluous visual effects on notes that have been stuck somewhere unseen for a long time. Like a spider scuttling behind the note when it first appears.)

Stick-It sounds like an incredibly useful program if it’s feasible. I can already see all sorts of slick styles for notes added onto documents and windows. There would have to be some way to view all your notes though, the point of real-life sticky notes is that they are in-your-face so you notice them and know it’s something you need to get done.

Stick-It is a modern update to the Stickies apps of old. Forget about their current implementation. Stick-It attempts to recreate how we really use stickies, by allowing users to stick relevant notes all over OS X, whether it is on apps, within menus, or attached on the desktop. Need to email someone? Add a sticky to Mail. Have someone you need to talk to? Place a sticky in your iChat buddy list. It’s just a very intuitive progression of where stickies should go.

I like the concept behind this idea, but actually getting it created is where I stop and say “hmmm”. I can easily imagine a nicely-designed sticky note that you can place anywhere on-screen on any app (and it hides with the app it’s pinned to, etc). I can even visualize a cool sucking animation to close sticky notes like when you close widgets in the dashboard. What I can’t see is it being feasible in terms of programming it from a 3rd party perspective. The core operating system would seemingly have to be tapped into and would need drastic updating with new releases (theoretically). One thing I like about real-life stickies is that they appear when they’re relevant. For example, I could place one on the fridge to remind me to get some milk- or place one on the dashboard in my car to remind me to get some gas… whatever it may be, when I’m in a situation to take care of it, that’s when I see the note. This would translate well by seeing it on individual apps, but they could also stack up and get lost easily if you don’t access the application very often or take the time to keep them in order, which I doubt many people would want to do.

I welcome with open arms any tool that tries to make me more organized! But I have one reservation about this idea — and this is largely a personal problem — to me, Post-It notes are, in a way, the very opposite of organization. They’re 3 inch squares of pastel-packed institutionalized chaos, the paper product demon spawn of Lucifer himself. What starts with one simple Post-It note — “Don’t forget to e-mail Ged!” — quickly devolves into four hundred incomprehensible notes saying things like “magic beans” and “do thing”.

If Stick-It extends Stickies to be attachable to any application, in menus, or hidden, or popping up all over the place, I really worry that it’s only electronicifying the very worst thing about Stickies: that the little bastards show up everywhere. For people like myself who obviously can’t be trusted to handle Post-It notes responsibly, I’d really like to see this idea try to tackle that problem of Stickies being messy, while still keeping the core idea of handy notes that are contextually sensitive system-wide. What about an option for a Dashboard-like layer just for stickies, and nothing else? Or what if the stickies are represented by a simple and unobtrusive icon, and a mouse over or a key press pops them up? Or what if there’s a better visual metaphor for these kind of reminders than large, screen-blocking sticky notes — maybe it’s time to leave the Post-It metaphor behind, like if a subtle bar slides up from the bottom of the screen when you encounter a reminder or note, leaving after a few seconds? Just thinking out loud, but I think this idea is on the right track and could grow into something amazing if you just think a bit out of the 3″ pale-yellow box…

This is an OK idea, but I don’t know how I’d program such a beast — this is the kind of utility that wouldn’t be super-hard for Apple to write, but that would be nigh-impossible for a 3rd-party programmer. Stickies in folders means modifying the Finder, which is Carbon. Stickies in menu items in random apps means tapping into AppKit, which leads us into all kinds of nasty hacks that might not work in Leopard. Basically, the payoff of stickies everywhere wouldn’t be worth the years of effort of writing this app, in my view.