It has been a while in the making but the folks at 37 Signals pushed out a major upgrade to Backpack last night.At first glance, the changes are subtle - most of the improvements are functional rather than in the design. Of notable distinction is the addition of a search box - a long awaited feature for many.
Behind the scenes, they seem to have addressed the most oft requested features - specifically moving items around on a page or between pages. A quick drag and drop and your lists, notes etc... can be moved around to your liking - very cool.
Other improvements include:
Page Dividers
Multiple Photo Galleries
Improved Page Feeds
It also appears that they have removed the limits on reminders.
A quick list of new features and demo videos can be found on their site here.
I have tried to love Backpack as an online notebook and organization tool but my usage has always been limited - even with a brief paying subscription for access to files, images and the calendar. I just haven't been able to embrace it or commit to it fully.
What would be the killer feature for me would be to have a consolidated list of all todo items - no matter which page they appear on. This is a really nifty feature in Microsoft's One Note and seems a glaring omission in Backpack. Lists are a great feature but as they get added to multiple pages (and now multiple areas of each page) it can be difficult to keep track of them all as to-do items - being able to pull them all together in one area as a master list would be outstanding.
A quick glance over at the newly launched forums does reveal some issues with formatting, print styles, etc... but they have already addressed a lot of those and expect that to continue as they are found.
I am not sure if these changes will address everything and make Backpack the organization tool for me but it is certainly a good start - and enough to make me revisit it and give it another shot.
