HomeTime-Tracker Updated
The version 1.1 beta is out. There are several interface changes, a few new functionalities, some bug fixes and of course some new bugs as well.
Thanks to Tom, David, Jay, Mari, Kaniz and the others for their feedback. Not everything has been taken into account yet, but here’s the short list of what made it into Time Tracker v1.1.
Improvements
- You can now adjust the time of the start/stop events.
- Most of the interface buttons are now regrouped in a contextual menu.
- You can set user preferences:
- visual effects [on/off]
- starting a task stops all other task [yes/no]
- contextual menu behavior [click/hold down]
The visual effects are based on the script.aculo.us library, and to the credit of its author, Thomas Fuchs, it was a breeze to integrate.
The clock adjustment functionality relies on the Javascript / Flash integration kit. It is still buggy and you should use it with caution. Make sure it display the right time before you start dragging the clock’s hand around (you may have to wait a little bit after selecting a date).
As always, your feedback is appreciated.
Technorati Tags: Productivity, Time Management, Ajax
July 21st, 2005 at 6:53 pm
Hurrah! An update! The change list seems good, and I like the time adjustment. Few problems though:
It seems a bit unintuitive to try and make the context menu go away. When I click away from it I would expect it to disapear, but it only vanishes if I click on the task list, and not on the surrounding white space (which seems like a more intuitive way to get rid of the context menu).
Also, it seems that the category column is just displaying the task column again, rather than the category. I’ve tried renaming the column, but it never updates. Renaming the task column however updates both the task and category column.
And I do miss being able to start/stop tasks by clicking on them, it was an excellent interaction mechanism, and made jumping around different tasks very fast. Having to click, visually reorient to the context menu, and select the right option, seems like a step backwards for the user interface. Perhaps you could have something for each task listing to click on/click off the timer, like the old behavior, and have the rest of the task lsiting bring up a context menu on a click. Perhaps the status column would be good to apply the old behavior to. Although that seems very far from the task name, so I’m not sure if that would be the best option.
Also, the “starting a task stops all other tasks” is a great preference, glad you added it.
July 21st, 2005 at 8:20 pm
David, thanks for your insightful comments.
You’re right about the menu behavior.. I’ll correct that asap. Note that you can still start/stop the task with one click if you check ‘Select in the contextual menu with hold and release’ in the user preferences.
I fixed the category/task name edit bug. Thanks for pointing that out.
July 21st, 2005 at 9:36 pm
More feedback.
The time editing interface feels a bit cludgy. The custom interface widget (clock) just doesn’t fit with my expectations, particularly when paired with the pair of timestamps to indicate timeslices. I would have expected to find a list of durations, with spinboxes for days/hours/minutes.
Also, the current listing of time slices is a but difficult to glance at and understand. Darting my eyes back and forth to compare the hours and minutes of each, and the presence of seconds, makes it more effortful to determine the duration of each slice than I would like. Although I’m sure at some point I’ll be glad for seconds precision, perhaps that would make for another good preference.
Listing the duration of each timesplice, in a more prominent font, next to each start/stop timestamp would make it easier for me to use, in my opinion.
July 22nd, 2005 at 2:08 am
Hey!
After update (21/07/2005), show error in page. IE and FireFox.
tks!
July 26th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
Hi!
problems i’ve found lately:
1- the adjustment of the starting time with the clock is a bit odd, I would rather prefer to have a slider or something, because i never remember wich direction i have to drag to make the time go clockwise…
2- Yesterday I logged off and when I logged on today the only task running has disappeared… (using firefox)
July 26th, 2005 at 7:23 pm
NOTE: I am using Firefox and I haven’t tested with other browsers.
Before I close my browser, I stop the timer for my task and when i come back the next day it shows that it was running all night. I’ve tried to open a new task and leave that running so that it won’t mess up my time on the main task, but to my surprise the task that i didn’t want incremented, did. And the one that i had started, stopped.
Just letting you know, I’m not sure if that is the functionality you were going for.
July 26th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Luciano and Mario.. I’ll investigate this. My guess is that the save operation in the background failed or didn’t have time to complete before you closed the browser. I need to show a ’saved status’ or something.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:22 pm
First of all, thank you Cedsav for this amazing and useful application. I always find it difficult to give effective timelines, I’m sure that wont be the case anymore
Some observations:
1. State not saved :
I had the same problem as Mario and Luciano. Last night before wrapping up I stopped the timer, But when I opened my tasks today the timer was still running. Timer did not stop. And the tasks that I have marked as done were also not saved.
2. Clock
I’m finding it a little difficult to get the date and time correct by moving the clock handle. It would be easy to type in to the time field rather than using that clock. It looks nice but was not useful.
Nice to have:
To be able to sort the tasks based on Date, Category, Status or duration would be a nice.
Once again thanks for letting us use this little gem.