HomeTime-Tracker v1.2
I rolled out a new update to the Time-Tracker tonight. The time-tracker is going through a steady growth of traffic and requests and bug reports were pilling up.
This minor update fixes a nasty bug which caused some of you to lose data. I use the Time-Tracker myself so I’m really committed to making it robust and reliable, but remember this is a beta and it is provided as-is (see the legal info).
The new feature is the export function. If you go to the account panel, you’ll see a ‘Export Key’ link. For now, the only format available is the raw XML used internally by the Time-Tracker. I’ll add soon a CSV (Excel) export format.
The (REST) web service that provide the data is available at this address:
http://www.formassembly.com/time-tracker/srvc-export.php?key=
You’ll have to add your key in the query string.
The deal is that if you write a script or a XSL template that make a good use of the XML data, I hope that you’ll share it with us.
Dec. 2nd Update: I added a stylesheet for print. Your task list should now look better once printed. More updates are on the way.. be patient !
Productivity, Time Management, Time Tracker
November 8th, 2005 at 4:14 am
I don’t see an export key in “My Account”, and if I try to do anything in the “User Account” or “User Preferences” panes, I get:
SECURITY_ERROR: id doesn’t match control code (Time-Tracker Export Service).
/home/formasse/public_html/time-tracker/srvc-export.php line 26
November 8th, 2005 at 4:40 am
Wonderful application. I’ve been searching for something like this for my desktop and now it works online. Ajax is an impressive development.
Could you add vertical re-ordering? This would be really helpful to me and I have seen it included as a pre-fab effect on several AJAX collections.
BTW I lost all the tasks I had going a couple weeks back. Is there a time limit on projects?
Thanks a lot anyway,
November 8th, 2005 at 6:41 am
I don’t get the time-clock to adjust things in “Edit” mode… why?
November 8th, 2005 at 9:38 am
Bryce, maybe you have a pop-up/ad blocker that prevents the flash from showing. You could also need to install/upgrade the flash player. Regarding your first problem, what browser are you using ?
gstrout.. no time limit in the application. I can check the backups if you give me your username.
November 8th, 2005 at 9:55 am
gstrout, actually the problem was maybe on my end.. try again.
November 8th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Ok, the clock not showing up was my fault. I’m using Firefox w/ Adblock and had the “Obj-Tabs” option selected. Usually that just adds a little “Adblock” tab to the flash so that you can select it for blocking, but apparently it breaks your usage. My first posted problem still holds. And the UI of the clock is pretty non-intuitive. The expected behavior would be to “wind” the clock by swirling your pointer around the center of the clock in the direction you desire. It took a while to figure out that dragging left across the clock moved the time forward and dragging right across the clock moved the time backward. That’s the opposite direction that I’d intuitively expect, even on the non-intuitive linear time scale. Having a clock that can be manually adjusted is a cool trick, but its UI needs to be more intuitive.
November 9th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
Hello
This is going to be great i have to track all hours worked but how do you get icon for desktop so i can press it and go right to the sceen
thank you
November 9th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Charles, this functionality is not available (yet), but I suppose you could bookmark the site and drag your bookmark to the desktop. This way you should be able to start/stop tasks in 2 clics.
November 10th, 2005 at 1:40 am
Your GUI design is annoying. You take the top 2-3+ inches of my screen with your title and all of that and leave the bottom half for me. I am constantly scrolling down. Very very annoying. Please reduce some of that or provide a screen that is easier for me to manage my tasks.
Generally, I like the site. Would like to see icons instead of the menus on the timer. Partly because they end up off the screen (half of it anyway). I’d also like to see some more ways to display the tasks. People who are into this type of tool needs ways to manage what they see beyond whether it is closed or not.
Otherwise, like what I’ve tried so far, but I’m not sure I could use this habitually with the current annoyances.
Thanks,
Kevin
November 10th, 2005 at 2:35 am
Very nice tool! I’ve been using it for the past week and have been very impressed. Got a bug report, though - I haven’t been able to get into the site all day. Is something wrong?
November 10th, 2005 at 3:02 am
Kevin, thanks for being annoyed, you have a valid point regarding the layout. I’ll keep it in mind for the next redesign.
Jeff.. try again, let me know if you still have a problem.
November 10th, 2005 at 8:14 pm
This is my first day using Time-Tracker and I have some questions:
1) Do you have any plans to allow entries to be saved by date? I would like the ability to recall all of the entries I made
on a specific date.
2) Do you have any plans to add a print feature?
November 10th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
First of all this is great. I tried the bookmark icon and it worked.
now jdkircpa you can print the page from the computor using file to print I did it yeserday.
thank you
November 10th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
The autocomplete feature is really really slow on my computer and i onlye have one action entered before, so it would be nice if you put a checkbox to disable it per user, otherwise I wouldn’t use it because its sooooo slow. Everything else is great!
November 11th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
Nice work. Very handy.
But I’d like to see a feature to reset the timer to zero.
November 11th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
Hi,
I just started using the time tracker. Thank you for providing it to the public. I just have one suggestion. Is there any way it can be set up so
that when the browser is closed and the timer is on, then the time will automatically shut off? Just a suggestion
regards,
Eric Pedron
November 12th, 2005 at 12:38 am
Eric: If such a thing was implemented, it ought to be a preference. I prefer the opposite behavior.
November 12th, 2005 at 3:26 am
Eric, this is technically not possible. When the browser is closing I can’t initiate a connection with the server to save the timer state.
November 12th, 2005 at 3:33 am
Luis & Markus.. Thanks for your suggestions. I’ll implement them in the next update (coming next month probably).
November 12th, 2005 at 3:36 am
jdkircpa, if you are asking for a filter by date, I may add that functionality later (if more people request it).
November 12th, 2005 at 6:21 am
I want a filter by date that shows the time logged within a particular date/time range. This means that when a task has time logged over different days, only the time logged during the specified day would show for that task.
I want a filter by category.
I want a printer-friendly view of any page.
November 14th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
I tried this out at home on Netscape / Win2k, and liked what I saw. Now I am at work though, and I can’t manage to log in under Safari 1.3.1 on MacOS X 10.3.9 on my Powerbook, as the login box never appears for me to enter my details!
November 14th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
Mike, the Time-Tracker doesn’t work yet in Safari.
I’ve actually solved all the technical problems I had with Safari, I just need to find a few hours to rewrite some code…
November 14th, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Re: Safari - Good work, look forward to having it on my PowerBook.
Is there any way to sort the entries? It would be nice to at least be able to sort the tasks alphabetically,
and even better to be able to group them.
Thanks.
November 15th, 2005 at 12:56 am
I do I use the clock to change the end time under the edit function?
November 15th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
Hiya,
Cool little application you’ve built, and pretty handy. My only complaint so far is that the beginning and ending times for tasks are vey hard to edit. Maybe a little more straight-forward interface would be easier to use.
Thanks for all your work on this project!
November 16th, 2005 at 1:29 am
Concur with the prior comments about the clock applet. Manipulating the time is very cumbersome. Perhaps a digital entry instead?
November 16th, 2005 at 4:23 am
Smurf:
I disagree. I think that the analog clock UI would work well if done right.
All:
Anyone else having problems with the export key showing “not yet available”?
Cedric:
Any word on when we’ll get csv export support? or the xml export working for me? Another thing that would be nice is to have the focus go to the task box after clicking “Add Task.”
November 16th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I like the idea of time tracker, but…
2 rants:
1) Time tracker keeps loosing my account info: I cannot log in anymore, after I logged out for the first time. Keep getting
random messages in the sense of: ‘unknown user’, ‘wrong password’. Really really bugs me.
2) Time Tracker interferes with oddpost. When Time Tracker is open, I cannot upload an attachment anymore.
Both things brings me on the verge of never ever using time tracker again…
November 22nd, 2005 at 1:55 am
To answers Geert message.. there’s no interference between the Time Tracker and Oddpost, or any other website for that matter. That’s just technically impossible.
November 22nd, 2005 at 2:44 am
PLEASE have a digital clock entry.
Additionally, I believe its essential to have a duration timebox. What if one forget to time in for certain task. It becomes necessary to enter in the information directly!
November 22nd, 2005 at 8:00 am
I like the way you can edit the blocks of time.
Though if I have stopped and started a task several times I end up with a serious of blocks with 0 time against them.
How do I delete one of these blocks. because I can no longer see the ones that the time is against.
November 22nd, 2005 at 8:00 am
I like the way you can edit the blocks of time.
Though if I have stopped and started a task several times I end up with a serious of blocks with 0 time against them.
How do I delete one of these blocks. because I can no longer see the ones that the time is against.
November 23rd, 2005 at 12:57 pm
WHEN I PRINT THE DISPLAYED PAGE OF TASKS. IT PRINTS THE HELP EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT OPEN.
THIS “FEATURE” IS NOT REQUIRED BY ME
November 24th, 2005 at 12:41 am
i like the concept, but for this to be truely useful for me i would need to have a more advanced way to categorize things and group them together. and then some kind of way to view and manage the categories (like an archives). also the clock goes crazy when you try to change the time. It’s not allowing me to go backward in time, and even when going forward its very hard to control. oh and whats will all the radio buttons used as links? i don’t quite understand that. anyway, i think this has great potential and i am eager to see improvements.
November 24th, 2005 at 11:57 am
Nice work, I sometimes get errors when setting the time for new task. It might be because my locale is japan. so the date format is maybe wonky for you. check it out.
November 26th, 2005 at 1:18 am
I am a software developer from open source world. I liked the whole application. Its simple to use and effective.
November 26th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
App. looks like it’s got real potential - it’s the kind of thing I’ve been looking for. Couple of points though:
1) The clock for adjusting the time totally sucks from a usability point of view. A+ for eye-candy, F for usability.
2) There’s a heck of a lot of wasted real-estate taken up by the whole ‘TimerTracker Beta’ logo, etc. Might we worth looking how how that could be effectively slimmed down.
Keep it up, I’ll be keeping an eye on the app for improvements.
November 28th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Nice job. Finally a tracker without the suffistication which so often just takes more time then it tracks
One question though… I already am a member but I seem to have misplaced my password. Is there a way to retrieve this?
November 28th, 2005 at 6:23 pm
I like this….one thing in particular that I like is that it’s possible to keep multiple tasks running at the same time. I didn’t realize that at first but I often have a main task that I’m working on and then want to track parts of that task or maybe just do something else. It doesn’t have a lot of error correcting built in that forces me to do a lot of extra work.
On the negative site….that time adjustment thing doesn’t work for me. Just manually modifying the time would be better…there is some advantage to blocking the manual changing of time too so I’m not sure fixing the adjuster is a huge deal.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
I figured out how to adjust the clock. To go backward, click-drag from 6 to 3 to move it back about 15 minutes. Within that area, the adjustment seems to work ok. I just shoved the time back to 11:45 for a task I stared but forgot to log the start of.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:41 pm
The top of the DEC calendar graphic is missing.
December 3rd, 2005 at 1:53 am
Everyone else seems to be enjoying this app, but absolutely nothing works for me - not the registration, not the login, not the preview, nothing!
I’ve tried it in both Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2.0.2 running on Tiger, and nothing (and yes, I do have JavaScript enabled).
December 3rd, 2005 at 2:07 am
Hi Stephen,
It doesn’t work yet with Safari, but version 2 of the Time-Tracker will support it (coming out in a couple weeks),
I haven’t tried yet with Firefox 1.5, but it should work with the prior version on a Mac… will check that out.
December 5th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Application seems decent, but the Clock UI suuuuucks. The attempt at being ‘intuitive’ is cute, but it just doesn’t work. Maybe a digital clock with a slider or something? Or even the current analog clock with a slider.
December 5th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
Great idea and a great start! Here are a few features I’d love to see added/changed:
(1) As others have noted, the clock UI needs improvement. I’d be totally happy with just dropdowns for each field.
(2) It would be great if there was some kind of summarization for categories. For instance, if I have 5 open tasks in the “Customer 1″ category, it would be nice to see a total time for all 5 tasks together (I’m adding this manually right now).
(3) It would be cool if “archived” tasks were grouped by day. So, rather than list every since archived task, I just have a list of links for each day that I have archived tasks in.
Thanks for the great little app! (Working fine for me in FF 1.5 on my Mac OS X)
December 7th, 2005 at 6:29 am
Great app. It would be spiffy it it totalled your tasks for a day.
Looking forward to using it again tomorrow.
December 7th, 2005 at 7:19 am
Excellent application. I will keep coming back to use the program and check on the progress you are making. I am also curious to see where you take this program (ad supported, annual fee, open source, etc.).
It also took me a great deal of time to figure out how to use the clock interface. I am sure you will come up with something better soon.
I was able to download my data and open the xml file in Excel. I was not able to summarize my task duration data because the duration field is in the format xxh xxm and is treated as text. Is it possible to have the exported data use a numeric format (total minutes) so that we can summarize our tasks in other programs until you build in more summary and reporting functionality?
December 7th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Hi,
I really like the Time Tracker! I’m using it a lot to manage my jobs.
Then I create an Extension for Firefox! It’s very simple. Just open a Sidebar with the Time Tracker URL inside. Very useful.
If you apreciate, I can send to you guys to share in your site.
tks.
Nicholas
December 7th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Nicholas, yes please send it in ( cedric at formassembly . com). I’d lov e to see it.
December 9th, 2005 at 12:08 am
Eden, check out this for your Excel question.