Bring Remember the Milk to Your Windows Desktop As A Gadget

In today’s modern “cloud computing” age, it seems like there is a web app for everything.  But, have developers taken it too far?  It seems like the desktop has been forgotten despite the fact that nearly everyone has access to and users a desktop computer daily.  Remember the Milk is a groovy online To-Do List web app and unfortunately they too seem to have forgotten that not everybody wants to login through their browser to manage their tasks.  However, I’m happy to report that a 3rd party came up with a Windows desktop gadget that brings Remember the Milk home in a powerful way.

The gadget is called “I Forgot the Milk” and it’s completely free to download.  The gadget is efficient and small enough to still get the job done without hogging your entire desktop.

Download the I Forgot the Milk gadget from the official Windows Live Gallery.

Making it look better

By default, the RTM (Remember the Milk) gadget isn’t the most pleasing app to the eyes from from an aesthetics standpoint and usability due to its size.  Because of this, the first thing I like to do is Click the Options (wrench) button and change things up a bit on the gadget.

In the options menu you can adjust the width and height in pixels, and you can also change the theme colors.  There are multiple themes to choose from however I’ve found the white to be the cleanest looking on my system.

The RTM gadget, as like most Windows widgets, provides two different viewing sizes.  The compact “docked” view is the default, and it’s rather small.  On the other hand, the “undocked” expanded view is larger.  You can change the height and width of the undocked view from the Advanced Settings button, which will open up a notepad.  Just adjust the numbers in the notepad file and then Click File > Save to apply them.

Adding New Tasks

What kind of widget would it be if you couldn’t add new tasks?  Not a very good one… But not to worry, the RTM  desktop widget allows you to easily add new tasks with a click.  At the top-right corner of the widget is a menu button which will flip the window over to a small 4-button menu.  The first button on that menu will allow you to Add a new task.

The new task window is titled “Quick add task” and gives you the same options you’ll find on the RTM website.  Enter all of the information relevant to your task and then Click Create to add it.  Tasks you create in the widget will be automatically synced to your online RTM account.

Marking Tasks As Complete or Postponed

Updating tasks can be done easily as well.  Just Click on the task and the options window will appear allowing you to mark it complete, postpone etc..

Conclusion

I Forgot the Milk is a groovy free Windows desktop gadget that brings all of the functionality of Remember the Milk to your Windows desktop in an effective and minimalist package.  If you find using a web browser to manage online to-do lists inconvenient, using a desktop gadget could be a proper solution.