I Love the FORMAT of this Checklist!

[EndoftheTrail]

This list is for travel use — not UL hiking. Ignoring the items themselves… I just really like the format! Very user friendly. I could see adapting and populating this checklist with UL hiking variables. Anyone know of an app that can create something like this? My Excel spreadsheet works very well for me, but it's nowhere as pretty and friendly to use.

Click here.

[Rod Lawlor]

Hi Ben,

That is a very cool site. Why not contact them and see if they would adapt it for UL backpacking. Ideally it would be great to be able to populate the checklist with your own gear, but the concept is great. I also like the ability to be able to save the list.

Rod

[David L.]

Hi everyone,
I'm the guy behind this website, its a project that I've started very recently in my spare time. it warms my heart to know that its being liked and found useful! much appreciated!

I know that the items listed in the final checklist are more for the regular traveler and less for the UL backpacker.
(I admit, that I didn't even know what the term UL backpacking meant, I had to google it :)

I will be more than happy to provide a better solution for you guys, feel free to make requests, and I'll be happy to implement them into this project.

Right now I'm working on some changes that will probably be a starting point for providing a better solution for your community, such as publishing and tagging checklists:
Currently, changes in checklists can be saved, but it is kept private and the user is given a permanent unique URL for the checklist that is not listed anywhere/cant be 'guessed'.
Very soon (a matter of days, I hope) – users will be able to choose to publish a checklist, by giving it a title/tags. the published checklists will be listed in the website for everyone to access.

Which means – that the initial checklist can be used as a template, and any change done to it (removed/added items/categories, etc.) can be saved and published, and other users would be able to use these as templates for their own checklists, and so on :)
So if someone would create a default UL backpacking checklist – other UL backpackers will be able to use it, and keep customizing it for their own needs.

Does this sound like it could help this community?
I'd love to hear more suggestions, if any :)

Ben – thank you for bringing this up here, I've noticed some visits from this website and this is how I've found out about this community.
If you'd like I can take a look at the current checklist that you use for your trips to see how can I integrate the UL backpacking gear into the system.

Happy travels everyone!

David

[Dustin Short]

David, you've just opened up a can of worms! This forum has a lot of very talented yet demanding engineering types.

Here's a link to a list of general lightweight backpacking gear lists. List #3 is the generic and useful to look at, but the others have a better breakdown based off categories. There's a bit of a steep learning curve to figure out what our community is interested in.

More importantly I think Ben is just a fan of the UX and especially the presentation of the final checklist. The decision trees would have to be fairly customized for us unfortunately, but if there was any way you could present our own spreadsheets in your format that would be amazing.

For reference a popular site used by members here is "Gear Grams" (which currently is halway broken in firefox) and the following is an example of a list:

http://www.geargrams.com/list?id=5517

[Carl Zimmerman]

David – Pat yourself on the back. That's pretty cool!

[David L.]

@Dustin:
Thanks for your comments!
I aint afraid of no worms :)
I think that you've forgot to include the link for the list that you mentioned, the only link you included was the geargrams.com one. could you please post it again?

I'll study your needs, and do whatever I can to provide a better solution for this community.
For providing a real solution for you guys, each and every item has to include its weight?
If so, what about items that exists in few forms (different brands etc.) – and have different weights?

Could you give an example for what has to be changed in the current decision trees?

@Carl: Thanks! *patting* :)

[Dustin Short]

I wish I could blame late night posting but it was that late. Here's the link:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/24_hour_gear_lists_2011.html

As for decision trees that's a lot of work to figure out something general that is useful (and depends on what route you want to go). I have halfway talk the talk, but by no means walk it ;)

As a first crack at a design I would consider the following:

1) Expected high and low temps for trip (basically decides whether you take summer, 3 season, or winter gear).
2) Chance of Precipitation (decides whether down or synthetic insulating clothing are appropriate)
3) Duration of trip (overnight doesn't need a change of underwear or socks really, but a weeklong does)
4) Group vs Solo gear (Lightweight hikers tend to hike basically solo even in groups, but if a group is sharing gear than there are considerations)

Hmmm, I just double checked your site and you actually cover a lot of this. I guess when you provide type suggestions (like you do with socks) you could cover more of these concerns. So for insulation in cold/rainy you could suggest Synthetic with an info hover of "Synthetic performs better in wet situations where down loses warmth…"

Also I've noticed that you now allow a lot more editing and adding/removing of items! Actually this is huge! It allows us to customize a lot more. And with the save feature we can return.

Kudos good sir. I think a lot of those changes are recent since this thread was posted.

I'm going to have to peruse your site some more and delve deeper into the customizations you've opened up.

[David L.]

Hi again Dustin :)

Thanks for the kudos!

I've had many thoughts about letting the user be more specific when setting the trip parameters (exact weather, temperatures, from-to dates, etc.) – but eventually decided to go with the current interface and settings since its just simpler and friendlier to use.
Items that are optional are suggested in each category, for better coverage of the possibilities.

I'm willing to put some time and effort for adding a whole new start-page, maybe as a sub-domain (i.e.: http://backpackinglight.travelschecklist.com) for this community, if there's a demand for it.

some questions:
1. as asked in my previous post:
> For providing a real solution for you guys, each and every item has to include its weight?
> If so, what about items that exists in few forms (different brands etc.) – and have different weights?
2. For simplifying the user experience – could the temperature setting (high/low temps) be replaced with a broader weather setting, such as:
"Hot" followed by sub settings: Dry, Humid
"Cold" followed by sub settings: Below Zero, Rainy, Snowy
3. Duration of trip: will the duration of the trip affect only the quantity of items that you will pack anyway?
I think that quantity is quite individual (some people can wear the same pair of jeans for a week, some can't).
if so, how about this:
after generating the list, each item will be considered as x1, and by adding a +/- buttons next to packable items, the user will be able to change the quantity of any item just the way he sees right for his trip.
nothing will be indicated next to the item if the user didnt change the quantity, but once he did – it'll add an indication for that (i.e: 'Socks x3').
After adding weights to the database I'll be able to calculate the weight correctly, considering the quantity.
4. Group vs Solo gear – I think that since items can be removed from the initial checklist, this kind of setting is not required. correct me if I'm wrong.

What do you think?

By the way – I've updated the website few hours ago. recent changes include:
* The checklist is now divided to few tabs, to reduce the clutter
* General bug fixes + Saving checklists works much better now (had some bugs)

Next version/s will include:
* An undo button, after an item/category was removed
* Publishing checklists, as explained earlier in this thread
* Exporting to excel

I'd love to hear some more of voices in this community regarding this project, a higher demand will motivate me :)

[Jay Wilkerson]

:]

[Gregory Petliski]

Nice! Probably less time consuming than using Adobe photoshop, but I actually do enjoy it :(

[David L.]

@gregory:
I'd love to see an example of your photoshopped checklist.
I think that you can upload an image by clicking the 'Insert image at cursor' button on the comment posting page. If it doesnt work, you can always upload it to some picture hosting service (my favorite one is http://www.imgur.com ) and post the URL after you upload it there.
Thanks!

[David L.]

Hi all!
I've updated the website with some new features that might be found useful by the BPL community:

* After a checklist is generated you can now add item groups of your own
* Maybe the most important feature for this community (since the BPL community needs specific items that might be different than the initial listed items) – every checklist can now be published after customizing it.
After generating the initial checklsit according to the trip's specs – you can now change the list in any way you'd like (add/remove/change items, add/remove groups, change the order of the groups/items, etc.) – and then in the 'Save changes' window you'll be able to choose to publish it (share it with the community). you'll also be able to tag it, give it a description/title.
Once published the checklist will be listed for the public, and users will be able to give it thumbs-up.
* Undos – after removing items/groups – a small window will float on the top of the screen, giving you 5 seconds to undo your delete action.
* Better support for older browsers such as Internet explorer 7-8

I'm still hoping to get some feedback about the questions I've asked earlier on this thread so I can make this project better for this community.

Some changes that I'm currently working on and will be added in the next few days:
* When there is a destination abroad set – a new tab will be added that will include relevant information about the chosen destination/s, such as: up to date currency rates + currency converter, up to date travel alerts from FCO.gov.uk for the chosen destination/s, weather forecast, timezone difference, etc.
*A new 'tips' tab will be added, with user-submitted tips found relevant for the chosen trip specs

I hope that you'll like the new changes :)

David

[diego dean]

Ive recently been on the hunt for a way to organize what i have and what other people need to bring for a group trip. I like the layout of your website but it would need some additional things to be useful for my purposes and since you asked…

I am, and most people on this site are concerned about weight and we need a method to track how much weight is carried. It would be nice to have a field to populate next to each item to show its weight. I also like to keep track of what is spent on each item, so a field to show price paid would be great. seperating items into shelter, sleeping system, cooking system, food, clothing worn, clothing packed, backpack would be great. Then having a pie graph showing what percentage each category contributes to the total weight.

Not sure how this fits int your vision of a checklist and it might not appeal to enough people to make it worth it.

There seem to be quite a few spreadsheet excel type programs for this, but i find the interface very lacking and confusing to use if not familiar. An easy to use, pleasing to the eye app that presents the same information would go very far in my opinion. Id probAbly even pay for it!

[Jeremy Platt]

Hey David,

Nice work with the software. Would you consider turning it into an app? That way the travelling related aspects (weather in other countries etc) would be much handier to alot of people. Again it will definitely need to handle a grams column if you want it to work for UL's. Keep the good work up!

Cheers,

Jeremy.

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