Going Old-school tomorrow... Sometimes less AJAX is just better.

Nozbe‘s tagline is: simply get things done and I’m doing my best to keep it that way. A couple of weeks ago I decided to experiment with Nozbe and give it more "modern" feel by adding more AJAX to it than ever before – meaning – no web site refreshing – faster interface, smooth transition between projects.

Well I did it. It took us almost three weeks of trial and error and we launched the faster Nozbe three days ago.

And I don’t like it as much as I would love to.

It looks nice, it feels faster… but it just doesn’t feel right. And I’m not alone in this.

Let me quote some of the feedback I got from my fellow users on our Nozbe forums:

The site certainly looks more smooth, but the new in-line functionality affects my workflow negatively by preventing me from opening parts of my Nozbe page in new tabs… (dCross)

This update eliminates the browser usability model. Back/forward Button navigation is critical for me in navigation, so is multiple windows/tabs (...) I reallly liked the UI the way it was, and with addition of better project/subproject organization, and some time/date elements on actions, you’d ‘really’ have the killer GTD app. (dp1795)

OK, it’s not like I’ve been flooded with "please no! we want the old UI back" messages, but I just liked the old way of loading projects and working with Nozbe better.

So we’re going back to the old-school Nozbe tomorrow morning… with additional features everyone has been waiting for… but more on this tomorrow.

Nozbe will still be even faster!

As far as the speed is concerned, we’ve rolled out two important Javascript optimizations and Nozbe will still work faster than before… but will work the way it used to… the way you love it. The way I love it.

One more note – I created Nozbe initially for myself and for my company – and though I decided to give it to the world and show it to others, I’m still using it every day and I need to feel great when working with Nozbe… and although it took almost three weeks to create this new update and it’s been lots of work… when it doesn’t feel right… it just has to go.

I need to keep loving Nozbe. You need to keep loving Nozbe.

- Michael

P.S. Let me know what you think – post your comments in our forums.

P.P.S. If you are a lucky iPhone owner, please tell me about it in our forums as we’ll be testing Nozbe for iPhone over this weekend.

Technorati tags: ajax, iphone, gtd, getting+things+done, apple, nozbe, web-20, software