The donations have pretty much stopped coming in on tasks and photos. I don’t mind too much, it has been very interesting releasing software under the donationware model. I’ve learned what many other developers have learned: if you want to make money on your software, you can’t give away a fully functional version.

This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t like to see a few more donations come in, I certainly would! As such, here are some of the perks I’m going to be giving to all the kind people who have donated in the upcoming months. Maybe this is incentive for you to make a donation of your own.

In early 2004, I will be putting out Tasks 2.0 on the heels of Tasks Pro (the multi-user version). This is an updated version of the single-user product with a number of very nice enhancements, including:

• RSS feeds of your tasks
• Proper sorting by date in the tree view and lists
• Ability to select and modify multiple tasks at once
• Ability to do return to the screen you were previously on before editing a task (the Upcoming screen for example)
• Ability to do a search within a certain task tree
• All configuration settings and preferences are handled through the application and stored in the database – no more editing the config file
• Tasks now retain their notes area size, if the HTML toolbar was visible, etc. between sessions
• Built-in login and session handling for security
• Lots of performance improvements – almost all queries have been rewritten
• Lots of little UI tweaks and enhancements
• Leaner HTML using more semantic XHTML and CSS

I will be making the Tasks 2.0 beta available to everyone who has donated on the tasks 1.x product. I will also be offering a discount on Tasks 2.0 (yes, this one will cost money – more on this later) for people who have donated.

So if you’re using tasks and haven’t donated yet, maybe now would be a good time. 🙂

This post is part of the project: Tasks Pro™. View the project timeline for more context on this post.