One of the pleasant surprises of the previous 0.8.1 release, from our point of view, was the extend to which the integrated feedback dialog was adopted. Already 4 days after the release, I cannot imagine how we ever managed without it.

We fixed most of the new bugs introduced in 0.8.1 and some older ones as well. In total, 9 bugs were fixed and 4 new features added.

The various lists like Inbox, Today, Next, ... are now accessible via the keyboard shortcuts ⌘0, ⌘1, ⌘2, .... The other new features are mostly targeted to users new to Things:

• For each list, we added brief explanations which are only displayed when the corresponding lists are empty. Of course, there is also a close button to hide them permanently. The close button is displayed when the mouse is over the boxes containing the explanations.
• We added a start-up screen that is displayed when Things is opened for the first time. Later it can be invoked from the Help menu, which now also contains an item which opens the Things wiki. The start-up screen contains a graphical introduction that will be most helpful for user that hadn't a chance to take a closer look at our web site.
• The current version has some limitations when it comes to drag and drop:
  
  1. Projects cannot be reordered in the sidebar (will be fixed soon).
  2. To-dos in active projects cannot be postponed or put on hold.
  
  Interestingly perhaps, we deliberately introduced the latter limitation to make Things easier to understand and use. However, we are much less sure about it now and are indeed working on improvements. That might take us a while, however, which is why Things now displays feedback when the user attempts such operations and explains that these limitations are acknowledged as such and will be fixed.

A complete list of improvements is in the Release Notes.

The new release contains 21 improvements and bug fixes. More detailed information about the new features can be found in the articles below:

• Providing Feedback from within Things
• Quick Entry Got Quicker - and Better!
• Dates, Dates, Dates
• Natural Language Input for Due Dates

Things now contains a feedback dialog, making it easier for you to get in touch with us. To open the feedback dialog, choose the menu command Things > Provide Things Feedback.

Using this dialog is a great way to send us your feedback. It helps us to more efficiently categorize your bug reports, feature requests, and support questions. If you want to include images or other attachments, just write a regular email to things@cu... (or click “Feedback” at the very bottom of this page).

However, to keep track of your thoughts or to share your suggestions with other users for discussion, the wiki and our upcoming forum are great places as well.

I'm sure many of you discovered that the Quick Entry Dialog can be invoked by pressing a keyboard shortcut. In the new version, this does no longer bring up the main application window. If you are on Leopard, the Dialog plays nicely with Spaces as well.

Also, the service menu entries for Things are now working again. You can select any text in your current application and go to Services > Things > New To-do Containing Selection as Note/Title. This brings up the Quick Entry Dialog with a pre-populated note or title field. It doesn't stop there, however, since you can assign keyboard shortcuts for these entries as well. Just go to "Keyboard and Mouse" in the System Preferences and switch to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab. Click the + Button and add "New To-do Containing Selection as Note" into the "Menu Title" field:

I use ctrl-alt-shift-space for this, but we are interested in what you are using. Feel free to put your shortcuts into a comment to this post.

But wait, there is more! Many of you wanted to be able to include references to files and mails in to-dos. Starting today, you can do this in one of the following ways:

• Drag and drop a file from the Finder onto the notes section of a to-do.
• Drag and drop a file onto the main application icon in the dock. This will bring up the Quick Entry Dialog with the notes field pre-populated.
• You can perform the above operations using email messages as well (requires Apple Mail 3.1).
• You can select one or more files in the Finder and use the keyboard shortcut you defined before (ctr-alt-shift-space in my case).