Initial screen is too cluttered.

Also, the [edit] text could definitely be replaced with a hover or a tool tip.

For the color, delete, duplicate, move button bar, it could move somewhere else less obstructive, maybe lower right corner of the entire story row.

Lines removed, [edit] as you suggested.  Toolbar still to be done, but in our backlog.

Any further thoughts on your previous points about the high level summary and ID column?

Matt

Thanks for that feedback, it's greatly appreciated, and you've got some nice ideas.  We're always looking to keep improving the interface and usability, so we take every suggestion seriously.

Let me address each one:

* Remove unnecessary buttons, such as make [edit] only visible on hover.

[MO] That's a great idea.  We have some ideas to reduce all the icon buttons under each story and theme as well into one with a roll over for the tools you can access to simplify things.  We'll work on both those ideas in a coming release.  However, if [edit] is not there, it can also be confusing for new users who don't realise that you can edit these fields as they are just empty.  We'll need to fiddle around to find the right balance.

* Lines in the story

[MO] Ok, that's a fair point, we've had them there since the beginning to try and show that these are separate editable fields, but in reality that's probably not necessary and simply clutters, so we'll fix that too with the point above.

Also, you next comment which says you would like to see the story as just one continuous sentence, this is unfortunately not possible unless we merge all 3 fields into one long bit of text, which is an option we're considering introducing.

* Cursor icon for moving

[MO] The reason that is there is because you can drag the cursor, but more importantly you can move a story to a new theme if you click on the move icon.  A lot of people found it impractical to move stories between themes and asked for a simpler way.  When we consolidate the icons (my first point), this will all become simpler, so we are aware of this. 

* ID column

[MO] That's a tricky one, a lot of people use these IDs to keep track of which stories they have agreed with clients, discussed with the team, or placed on the board.  I'm not sure how we're going to solve that one too easily without undermining needed functionality for a lot of users.

* High level summary needing acceptance criteria or comments

[MO] The backlog view is just that, it's not a high level summary.  When you start working with sprints, then a concatenated view is shown with far less information.  What do you need a high level view for?

* Colour, delete, button bar moving

[MO] As above, we're going to consolidate this into two buttons, one for colour, and one for actions to move, delete, duplicate or assign to sprint (new functionality).  That should hopefully do the trick.

If you have any further thoughts (or don't agree with anything above), please do shout.  We appreciate the feedback.

I've addressed two of your suggestions:

• The lines between the user story field have been removed
• [Edit] is now almost invisible and comes alive on roll over