HomeMore Time-Tracker Updates
Updated Sept. 2nd 2005
The two updates are (1) a save status indicator and (2) an improved time-slices view.
The save operation in the Time-Tracker happens behind the scene and automatically. It is so transparent that even when to operation fails, you can keep working with the application without realizing it. This, of course, can cause the loss of information if you navigate away from the application before a successful save can occur.
The new indicator, in the top right corner, will help you feel reassured that your data are safe when its time to leave the application. If the icon shows a black floppy disk, you’re good. If the icon is animated, that means that the save operation is still in progress. You can still work with the application, but you shouldn’t close it. If the animation doesn’t stop, or if you get the red icon, then we have a problem. The server or the database maybe down and your last changes have not been recorded. In this case, you can keep the application open and try to force a save later (by creating or editing a task for instance).
The new time-slices view now shows the duration of each time-slice (an oversight obviously… thanks David). From the comments I’ve got, people are not crazy about the way the clock works. A simpler slider might be the way to go. On the other hand, I have finally tracked down and eradicated (I think) the bug I had with the Javascript / Flash integration, so I’ll give a second chance to the clock. Let me know if you like it or not.
Update - Sept. 2nd 2005 : I added a warning message if you try to leave the Time-Tracker while a save operation is still in progress. This should help with those who reported timers running all night.
Also, I had to work around a bug in IE6 /Windows XP. Basically, creating a date object, translating it into a textual representation in the local language and then converting it back to a date object usually works fine (at least with french and english date formats) but fails with russian regional settings, where it returns NaN (not a number) … go figure. Thanks to Andrey for pointing out this problem.
Update: Comments are now closed on this entry. The discussion continues here: Time Tracker v1.2.
Technorati Tags: Productivity, Time Management, Time Tracker
July 27th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
Back again.
The duration for each time slice is great, makes the interface way more intuitive.
(This in in Firefox 1.0.4)
Few odd things I noticed though: The time stamps for start and stop don’t appear until I alter them with the clock, and even then only the single start or stop time I altered appears. Also (not sure how) I ended up with a timeslice that ended in 1969.
And some UI comments: it struck me as a bit unintuitive that the “ok” button for confirming changes to the time slices was out side of the edit box. It seemed more like a form submission button, than something to confirm the changes I”d made inside that box. Also, why isn’t there a cancel button?
Something else I wanted: the ability to remove time slices on the edit screen. Just a simple (remove) link next to each slice.
Finally, the behavior when clicking on tasks seems inconsistent, when editing time slices. If clicking on the task being edited, the context menu appears, and the click results in the “start timer” option being activated, which does nothing when the task is being edited. But clicking on a different task cancels the editing and starts the other task. (this is with the click & hold context menu, and the one task at a time options)
Can’t wait to see the next version.
July 28th, 2005 at 3:49 am
Update: I tweaked a bit the contextual menu. A click anywhere in the page now closes the menu (as suggested). This doesn’t apply if you use the ‘hold & release’ user preference.
David… Yes, I’ll include the ability to remove time slices.
The cancel option is in the contextual menu. I understand it is a standard practice to show both ‘ok’ and ‘cancel’ buttons together, but on the other hand, I think it’s an option that is not used often enough to warrant a proeminent place in the interface.
The fact that there’s only one button that is alternatively ‘add’ and ‘ok’ might be also breaking some conventions… consider this as an experiment in achieving interface simplicity.
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:55 am
I was completely failing to get this to work. Everything seemed fine accept for one thing. The time never updated. I was about to give up on it when I noticed something. When creating a task the AdBlock banner appeared. Clicking this showed me that it was a Flash file that was being loaded. Seeing as it wasn’t visible I couldn’t click the Flashblock button to load the file. Adding the site to the whitelist didn’t seem to help either.
Trying it in Opera worked a dream though.
Is the reliance on Flash really needed?
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:54 pm
Gold.. thanks for pointing that out.
No Flash is not really needed. I could use a different way to edit the time-slices. I’ll work on that.
August 24th, 2005 at 3:09 pm
I have no chance to login with my first account. I supply the right password and log in succesfully. But all I see is “’s tasks” (name is empty) and I can not change my account. I would like to use your cool application…
August 26th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Time never updates for me (IE 6.0).
Timer runs, but it is still 0h 00m after half an hour.
August 26th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Andrey,
First make sure the task is running (status should show a clock, not ‘zzz..’). Click on the task and choose ’start task’ in the contextual menu if necessary.
If the counter is still not working, please check if you can reproduce the problem in Firefox and check if you have any javascript error (you might need to go in the menu tools->internet options->advanced, check ‘display a notification on every script error and restart the browser). Send me a link with the error message if you have any.
Thanks.
August 26th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
There is another curious thing about this problem.
When task is edited, its duration is shown as NaN, not 0.
And all new tasks have empty start and end dates.
If I edit start date by dragging clock hand, it is set to NaN.
If I edit end date, it is set to the specified time of the January 1st, 1970 or NaN sometimes.
I have enabled javascript errors and there were none.
I have some local problems with Firefox, so I’ll try it later.
August 27th, 2005 at 3:11 am
Andrey, I’ve been able to reproduce this problem and apparently it has something to do with the way javascript handle local time in russian format. I’ll try to fix that over the week-end.
August 27th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I’ve used the Time Tracker for the past few weeks now and have enjoyed it so far. A few times either I forgot to stop the timer (and returned to a timer which had run through the night) or the Timer turned back on. Last night the timer ended on 6.11, but I woke up this morning and it was at 3.45. Luckily I marked the time when ending my project last night. I use Firefox by the way.
It’s nice, and I appreciate the work put into it. But I think it still needs more tweaking. It would be nice to not even mark down end times for backup, just in case the timer keeps running or reverts back to a previous end time. Thanks again.
August 30th, 2005 at 3:51 am
Patrick… Thanks for your feedback. Still looking into this problem. I hope to get back to you (and Andrey) soon.
August 30th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Thanks Cedsav. Perhaps most of it is just me forgetting to turn off the timer. When you try to time things perfectly, on and off, it’s easy to forget sometimes. But hey, I’ll keep using it and be watching for updates!
August 30th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Cedric,
Nice to see some updates on the time tracker. One thing just now though. I added a new task, clicked the start date radio (which was set to the current date/time), but when I click the end date, it defaults to the Unix Epoch (dec 31, 1969)… I can edit the end date, but it’ll take a lot of dragging to get that date to 2005
I suppose that end date radio is just meant for editing a stopped task, perhaps it needs to be disabled when adding?
Also, congrats on having your CSS Zen Garden design featured in “The Zen of CSS Design” book. Picked the book up recently and saw your Monk.
Jay
August 31st, 2005 at 3:44 am
Thanks Jay.. Yeah, it was quite nice of Dave & Molly to include my design in the book…
I’ll include your suggestion regarding the end date on a new task to the update this week.
September 3rd, 2005 at 1:52 am
I just rolled out a minor update. Let me know if you encounter any problem.
September 7th, 2005 at 3:56 am
I’ve been playing with the time tracker and I like it. One request: when looking at completed tasks, it would be great to be able to sort them by Category or perhaps Duration. If I could sort by category, I would use this to track time working for different clients by just making each client a category.
September 7th, 2005 at 9:16 am
Thanks for your feedback Sarah. Sorting should be fairly easy to implement. I’ll include it in the next update, hopefully within a week.
September 7th, 2005 at 10:57 pm
I wrote up a short review on my blog about all the cool new Web 2.0 companies.
I really like the simplicity of the application, now all it needs is an API and a way for me to export my data.
September 8th, 2005 at 10:47 am
I was wondering if you were planning on adding the ability to manually enter dates and times for tasks. I am starting a new project soon, and would love to use this project to track my hours. I need to be able to enter hours for dates in the past though.
September 8th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
Need a way to “cancel” out of the drop-down when you click on a task.
September 8th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Reg, Joshua and Corey, thanks for your comments. There’s no easy way to add dates in the past. You could start and stop the timer several times and go in edit mode to adjust the dates in the timeslices, but it’s quite tedious. I’ll keep that suggestion in mind for future updates
Corey, if you’re refering to the contextual menu, you can close it by clicking anywhere *on the tasklist* (or change your preference to ’select by click and hold’). I have a standing bug in IE that prevents me to make it close with a click anywhere in the page.
As for the ’suggestion’ drop-down which appears under the task and category input fields, it should close whenever the field lose the focus (a click anywhere will do).
September 9th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
FYI, Doesn’t work in the current version of Safari (2.0.1). Clicking on login or register results in nothing at all happening.
September 9th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
I’ve been playing with the time tracker and I like it.
Search Feature ?
Calender to show pick old months/years data ?
Thanks for your project
September 9th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
found one more feature
Please see if its possible for this ,
can u include in future versions to include full date with time.
Thanks for your project
September 9th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Hi, I was confused by the task entry. It not directly obvious that the script is saving the form data instantaneously. Internet users are used to the web.1.0 way where tey needed to press “submit” … how can it be made clearer that when they enter the data it is saved instantly?
September 9th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Stuart. I’m aware of this. The problem is that Safari doesn’t (yet) have a scriptable XSLT engine, but I still hope to be able to support Safari in the near future.
Sri, can you elaborate on your ‘full date with time’ suggestion ? Thanks.
Carsong… good point. I suppose it needs a more expliciting message somewhere like.. ’saving in progress’
Thanks for your remarks.
September 9th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
This utility put my processor at 100% the entire time the site was open. My entire computer 1.8 GHz w/ 1024 MB RAM was completed bogged down. Cool idea, but too ineffient to use.
September 9th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Brandon, can you tell me a bit more about your config ? Is this a Mac ? and what browser are you using ?
Thanks.
September 9th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
Great Website. Would help if we could somehow export this data and if you could add some Tomboy like features.
September 9th, 2005 at 10:57 pm
Love the tool so far. It would be nice to have a rounding feature (to the closest 5, 15, 30min) as I do not bill by the second. Other than that AWESOME work.
September 10th, 2005 at 3:47 am
Thanks guys. As for the export data, I’m curious to see what you think would be most useful.. XML (custom schema), Excel, something else ?
September 12th, 2005 at 9:04 am
After I choose “Select in the contextual menu with hold and release” in options, I found out that I am not sure about how to cancel the menu. Will there be any cancel button on the contextual menu? or else it seems that I have to manually click over other place to close the menu, as I suppose it should be automatically closed when I released the mouse while not placing my cusor over any of the menu.
September 13th, 2005 at 7:09 am
For export data, my first inclination would be .csv format. It’s simple, straightforward, and won’t require me to learn anything new.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
could u see if its possible to have a small text box for each duration of whole task time.
so that sub tasks can be added in time completed .
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:16 pm
I would like to be able to switch active task in one action, i.e. I want to have only one task running at a time and don’t want to have to stop one task then start another. Just lazy I guess!
September 26th, 2005 at 2:44 am
Awesome little app! I would like to use this for my own internal usage. Is there a way to get the source code for this script? What license is it under? THanks for such a great interface!
September 26th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
Hi,
i have enter in the web as anonymous user and i apreciated some things.
* I think that is important add the end time information of each task on the main tasks list.
* I Think that is important add some search filters like “by category”
* Task search funcionality (with advanced option like “by category”)
this web Is a great idea.
September 26th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Looks great. Great work so far.
I’d like to be able to enter a small note for each time entry, to be able to specify more details than I want to have in the name of the task.
-Gene
September 26th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
A couple more suggestions…
- Allow the user to edit the duration (instead of just the start/stop time)
- Implement the editing feature with an editable text field instead of moving the hands on the clock (that interface is cool, but just not as usable as a simple input field)
September 28th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
I saw the xml after I hit register. I use firefox 1.0.7. After filling in the form i used the enter key to submit form. this returned an xml of my user account details.
September 29th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
I can’t seem to control the clock. Trying to drag the hands just makes them move forward fairly randomly, maybe a digital clock interface would be easier? I’m using Firefox 1.0.6
October 3rd, 2005 at 2:39 am
Hi,
Love it.
It would be much more useful if you could integrate some tracking functionality for time managment. For example, how much time did I spend excercising, playing video games, etc. this week. If people begin to use your product for the longer term, it might be useful to be able to see these metrics over time. How much has my weekly video game playing time declined with the start of the new academic year? These capabilites would seriously differenciate you from similar offerings.
Also, it would be awsome if you could SMS this service to notify it to begin or halt timing different events.
Yep. I’m just your regular business savvy nerd.
Let me know if I can offer any other help. Or if you’re not already starting your own venture maybe we can work together.
-Rio
October 4th, 2005 at 12:53 am
So much feedback it’s hard to keep up with. Sorry if I can’t answer to all of you personally.
I appreciate the remarks on the interface. Fine-tuning is important, everything should feel and react as one would expect. I’ll be working on it. Export options should be coming soon also.
To Ian, that option is already available. Go to your account and select the ‘Allow Only One Running Task’ preference.
To Rio, Stats are on the to-do list, along with some pc/mac widgets to start/stop tasks from the desktop. The SMS idea is great… though probably not doable for a while.
October 4th, 2005 at 3:59 am
Nice job on the TimeTracker! I like what I see so far!
October 5th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Great tool, I was looking for something exactly like it.
Thank you so much.
What about adding exactly what time you worked on something. Like expanding the items and seeing the details, when you stopped and when you completed items.
Also An option for a printable details, like for my boss…ha..
thanks again.
h
October 7th, 2005 at 12:27 am
I have the same problem controlling the hands on the little clock that Mike reported on 29 September (I’m using Firefox 1.0.7 on Mac OS X 10.3.9). The flaw is serious because it means there’s no way to correct mistakes in time entry.
Other than that, I love the app!
October 7th, 2005 at 5:44 pm
I’ve been using the time tracker for a few days now. After logging into time tracker, I only saw 1 entry instead of about the 15
that were there before rebotting. I checked the show completed checkbox, but still the other entries didnt’ show up. The total
run time turns looks like it summed up all of the entries into the first task that i created.
Also, I just want to make sure http://formassembly.com/blog/feed/ is your rss feed for time tracker. While I got feed items for the related comments feed,
there was nothing there for the /feed/ url. I don’t hit many wordpress blogs, and I know that the comments are a seperate feed from the main
entries, so I just want to make sure that I’m subscribed to the right feed.
Thanks,
Dwayne
October 7th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
The analog clock idea is neat, but in my Firefox browser it is completely useless - the minute hand moves in the opposite direction of the mouse, just as it does for Mike and Abe, apparently.
October 8th, 2005 at 12:42 am
The Flash clock thingy doesn’t make its use immediately apparent to me, and it goes in whatever direction it pleases when I try to actually drag it, too. Other than that, this is a great thing! Keep up the good work.
October 8th, 2005 at 3:19 am
Alright, I hear your complaints
I’ll kill the clock and provide a simpler date input..
Dwayne, the feed address is http://formassembly.com/blog/wp-rss2.php. I should check these links in the WordPress footer. I’m not sure they’re working.
As for the disapearing tasks, I don’t know what happen but I can check the database backup if you send me your username.
October 8th, 2005 at 10:26 am
FYI, Time Tracker doesn’t work in Safari 2.0.1. Clicking on the Anonymous Account link does nothing.
October 8th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
great tool and useful!
The only problem is it consuming too much CPU time (say 90%) in my Firefox 1.07, make it almost impossible to do any other thing at the same time.
October 11th, 2005 at 9:42 am
Stuart, Safari is not yet supported (mainly due to lack of scriptable XSLT processor in this browser)… You should get a better error message though. I’ll look into it.
number5, someone else also reported this CPU issue, but I wasn’t able to reproduce it. Are you on a PC? Can you email me your username (cedric at formassembly.com) so I can check it out ? Thanks.
October 16th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
It ate a few (two) of my tasks a few days ago, which had me confused for a while. I can’t provide any details on what I did to make that happen, because I don’t remember, but I thought you should know. They had been tasks for 40hrs or so - they were defintely saved, and I came back later, opened the page - found they had just disappeared.
October 16th, 2005 at 10:58 pm
The focus should be in the task textbox whenever the add task page is loaded. Pressing enter should save the task. The need to use a mouse should be minimized.
October 16th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
Nishith, good remark about the use of the mouse. I added it to my to-do list. Thanks.
October 17th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Please make it possible to edit the times in a form.
October 18th, 2005 at 11:27 am
Among them was a half-starve nurse-maid moss-oak and his sun-glow, who had often scooped the abolitionists might as well tesselated to his persequar and stigmatize his horse or wheat as to keep slave-holders out of their semi-publicity property.
free cingular ringtones
October 19th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
Hi,
Great app/idea. I am testing it, with a mind to use it for my business.
A couple of things. Would be good to have a “forgot password” link, as I already forgot my primary account (random).
Also would be good to ask for confirmation before deleting tasks - I accidentally have deleted a task while trying to pause it.
-Jeff
October 21st, 2005 at 12:28 am
The times for the 2 tasks I was tracking that were around 1:10 went to 1 min and 3 mins.
Don’t know why it did that, but i’d say that ’s a pretty healthy bug.
October 21st, 2005 at 2:34 pm
Hi,
The application is useful for managing time and we can see the time spent.But the main problem is its taking too much of the cpus memory.
Running any other application is too hard.System at times get stucks.
-Sharath
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:21 am
The Roll back for the clock does not work in IE - but it works fine in firefox. (Should be a place to enter start and stop times with the 10-key).
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:45 am
This is a great application, but I find that it’s not reliable. I was tracking a single task that was up to more than 2 hours. I just checked back (to start doing more work on this particular task) and the time was back to 28 minutes! This happened once before as well. I can’t rely on this to keep track of my time right now, but if you can get this fixed it is a great application of the AJAX principles.
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:30 am
Don, thanks for trying out the Time-Tracker.
Can you send me your username and a few informations regarding your configuration: browser (IE/Firefox/other?), plateform (Windows/Mac?) and especially your OS regional and language settings (in Windows XP that’s in the configuration panel).
My guess so far is that the Time-Tracker is not able to compute the duration of one or several of the recorded time-slices, maybe because of a mix up in datetime formats….
October 25th, 2005 at 12:21 am
Interesting idea. I’m using it right now. Can you add some functionallity or setting for the display format, please? For example instead of displaying 28 hours, display 1 day and 4 hours. Other idea: support ISO 8601 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
Thank you,
LS
November 3rd, 2005 at 1:22 am
What’s with that clock interface for selecting time? It didn’t work very smoothly for me, sometimes moving backward was necessary to get it going in the right direction. What might be better is a slider bar with hour markers even though it’s not as pretty. Same with day due date. Just my two cents.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:17 pm
I love the program. However, I had a major issue yesterday.
I had a full day’s worth of tasks eliminated yesterday. Everything was saved and snoozing. I logged out of the system
b/c I was taking my PC to a meeting. When I logged back in later, all of my tasks were eliminated except for one, and
the one still standing had the timer still running from a few hours earlier (even though I know I turned it off when I left).
Is there a way to recover these lost tasks? I imagine not, but thought I’d ask. Thanks.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:20 pm
If you click on 9:00 and drag to the right to 3:00, the clock goes backwards. If you go from 3:00 to 9:00, it goes forwards.
November 3rd, 2005 at 9:54 pm
I also had the problem with tasks deleted. I entered about 30 tasks, and now there are only 5. Using IE 6.0.
November 4th, 2005 at 3:21 am
I just found this site and it has the exact interface I was looking for in this type of application. Even though it’s been mentioned a couple of times already, I’d like to chime in for an exporting feature. If I’m going to use something like this it’s critical for me to have access to the raw data in some form. CSV sounds like a good idea because it’s so simple on your end and it’s so universally supported among applications.
November 4th, 2005 at 3:22 am
I’d also like to chime in that I find the clock interface awkward as well.
November 4th, 2005 at 3:23 am
(and I’m a different Greg from the Nov 3 Greg above
November 4th, 2005 at 4:18 am
I agree with some of the previous posters. This app is great and all it needs now is a an API for me to extract my data if I wanted.
November 4th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
Cool app, just tried it for first time, but having oneheckuva time trying to move those clock hands. They act like magnets that change polarity randomly. How about allowing direct input of time as an option?
thanks-
November 4th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Nice script, two quick comments.
One, you should be able to set the start time.
Two, you should allow people to download this. It’d be cool to see how other people could extend it. Just pick a licence and put together a tarball.
November 5th, 2005 at 12:00 am
I agree with the input of times. Another “feature” I’m running into is that I’ll stop a task, log out,
and then come back a few hours later only to find the clock still running! Otherwise I love the app.
November 5th, 2005 at 1:17 am
loved it until i logged out from one computer and then logged back in only to find all the tasks that I had worked on today had disappeared. I didn’t see that microscopic save icon and thought that if I had an account it would automatically keep a record of the tasks.
Now I have to try to remember the time I spent on this stuff since I bill by the hour and was hoping to use this to streamline my billing.
A little warning to new users about this would have helped.
November 5th, 2005 at 1:42 am
It’s nice, but I’m unable to set up the start date by turning the clock. I need editable text box or pull down pallete.
November 7th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
The discussion continues here: Time Tracker update.