mikeyp.net

Now, when I see an issue that I want to make a note of, I just hit the key shortcut for my 'post to del.icio.us' bookmark, and tag the issue or post with tags that help my sort it later. For example my tags that I use alot are: drupal, active, core, contrib, bug, task, issue, module, myissue (used for issues I have tested, or filed myself). 

This may sound great and all, but how does this help me sort through my issues? Like I said before, enter Cocoalicious. We're gonna get a few screenshots in here to really help this all make sense. 

First, you plug in your del.icio.us account info, and open the program and let it sync with your bookmarks the first time. 

Now this may not look like that much but please consider the power of this interface on the desktop. Start with the pane on the left:

This pane, shows all the tags you have made on all your posts, and how many posts you have made that correspond with each tag. 

As you can see alot of my tags may not make much sense for normal del.icio.us use, but I think they make tons of sense when you see how I use del.icio.us to track my Drupal issues and info.

Click on any of the tags in the list will high light it, and display only posts that match that tag in the list pane on the upper right. Very cool.

Even cooler, you can command-click on multiple tags, and you'll get a list on the upper right, of only posts matching all the selected tags. This is a rather primitive matching, as there is no operator selection other than the AND that is default for multiple selections. This is why I find it easier to break tags into the smallest possible elements, and then filter on those, instead of trying to exclude a set of posts from a larger set.

There are also 3 other tags shown, which are oddly ***, ****, and *****. No, I do not have that much foul language to describe Drupal issues. Rather, these are star ratings that are built into Cocoalicious. When I first started using them, I wondered how Cocoalicious would store my star ratings, and I quickly found out that it was by tags with the corresponding number os asterisks. 

When filtering the list of posts, you can sort based on three columns in the list pane, Description, Rating, and Date. I find the Rating to be particularly helpful when I'm sorting through different issues that I want to work on, but can't decide where to start. BTW, please don't go start looking at your issues to see how many stars I've given them. It's just a personal issues for me, and many times based on whether I think it'll be important for projects I'm working on, or whether my skillset matches well with what's needed to help out with that issue. 

Here's a view of active, core, drupal, issue(s) that I have posted to my del.icio.us account.