Happy Coming New Year!

Yesterday was, most probably, the last update in 2013. We have improved the app vastly, but there are still things that are highly required - like syncing and web version. Will concentrate on them in the near future. Meanwhile, wish you all the best in the coming year, have fun celebrating the holidays!

Influences and Concerns are drag-reorderable now.

Long click on a 'concern' and drag it to a new place within the list. This is in today's update. Also, some fixes with password checking - previously could enter the app through widgets even if the password had been set.
These are main things. Some other minor bugs have been fixed :).

Upd.: There's a small bug with Influences/Concerns - newly added items are not shown immediately, but after leaving the page and returnning back. Will fix it with next release.

What is excessive in habits?

What do you think should be removed completely or simplified greatly in the current version?

Ease of adding to My Achievements

We've received requests from several users to maybe make adding achievements easier, with one-clicks. At first it looks like very logical to do so - to ease all the functionality.

The thing is, we think 'Achievements' section is intended to motivate and support you, remind you of the things you are proud of, things that were not that easy to finish, but those you did. Not like every day actions. Of course, you can be proud of every little action you do, like doing this week's grocery - not joking, doing today's grocery yourself (and finally) might in some cases actually be a heroic action. But for most people it is just a regular action. That's why we keep some extra steps to add an achievement as a protection against mixing them.

For example, my list of achievements has only 2 items since we've added them. One of them is about adding the section itself, which is rather for testing purpose mainly. The other is about a certificate I received after finishing an online course. After the second attempt of trying to. I tried to do this course twice, because couldn't find enough time, put little effort (spent time on Habits :) ). The course is 8 weeks long. So, it took me quite time and effort to finish it and do good enough on quizzes to get the certificate.

The other thing is - you probably have achieved a lot in the past. And you'd want to keep memory of those deeds, too. Adding them is a good idea, we'll see how to implement it in a correct way.

My Achievements

I was in a bad mood once - had some problems at work, some with car, a little more with house and so on. The time was really not fun and I felt like completely lost. Then I thought about why am I like that. Haven't I done anything worthwhile? Aren't there things that I should be proud of? I needed some thing to motivate me. I knew there were, and many of them, I just couldn't remember clearly most of them. I tried to recall the things I did which made me happy at that time. But I couldn't. This is how the idea of the new section in the app was born - My Achievements.

As the first step, we've added the achievements to the goal section. Once you reach a goal, if you are really happy with it and want that happiness feeling to stay for long, write it down to the My Achievements. Later on, when you return to this section, it will make you feel better, give you strength to move further, will motivate you.

To save the goal as an achievement, use top-right 3-dots menu 'To achievement' on the goal page, or, long-click on the goal achieved on the role page and use same 'To achievement' section. Modify the text as you want, choose the difficulty level of the goal, click Add. The goal must be finished for you to be able to add it - can't cheat the system :)

Goals differ from person to person, from roles to roles. In the context of our app, they maybe as simple as doing today's laundry and as big and tough as passing an exam with A grade, maybe after 3rd try. Not every goal is actually an achievement, but rather a general task you do regularly. Because of this, use this section wisely, adding important achievements, so that later, when you return to them, they do motivate you.

Habits. On Ads III.

Since we have promised to add an ad-free version, we think it would be fair to make the app completely free until that time. Thus, we are turning off the Ads with the latest release. Up until the time we make affordable versions for everyone - ad-based or ad-free - there will be no ads in the app. Enjoy :)

Besides that, we've added a truly great feature. It is available from the Goal list on the Role page or from the Goal page). Hope, you'll give some feedback about how much you did like it.

Force close on clicking on a Role

Anyone has this bug? Got few reports, don't know how to reproduce - need the steps. Would be really grateful.

Upd.: Found the bug, it is on the Role page when in landscape mode. Thanks a lot for the reports!

Achievement or Accomplishment?

As a non-native speaker, I don't see a big difference between the two words until I do wiki-searching and googling. If there's something you've done great, something you are proud of, and you want to keep memory of that - what would you call it? Achievement or Accomplishment?

Upd.: modified the title to be a question - because it is a question :) Anyone?

Some reports

We've got a pair of crash reports that some users can't see details of their actions. The bug is related to the 0.7.13.1 version of the app. If you are one of these, please, update to the newest version. Current version is 0.7.13.4.. Besides fixing this particular error, it will provide complete new functionality!

Habits: bugs

- Setting the reminder date fails with FC if you set October 31 or similar (added 10/02/2013, thanks to anonymous crash report)
- Editting action title crashes when using Copy/Paste (added 10/02/2013, thanks to anonymous crash report)
- Sub-actions of recurring actions are not taken into account in the recurrence. Once checked, they recur for all recurrences of the parent action. (added 07/08/2013, thanks to Jay Jech)


fixed:
- (fixed) Done recurring actions on the Week view don't get crossed and marked as done (added 25/09/2013, thanks to Moe)
- (fixed) Due dates/times are messed on Action page (added 24/09/2013, thanks to Matt)

- (fixed) On WeekPlan page, Sunday date is shown as previous week's one. (added 26/08/2013).
- (fixed) App crashes when trying to use CurrentAction Widget, thank you for the report! (added 10/09/2013).

Here's the list of currently known bugs to be fixed:
1. (fixed) On the Action page, when in checklist or project mode, 'Priority / Day / Done' panel is not shown.
2. (fixed) Influence/Concern page - details are not visible when editing.
3. (fixed) Influence/Concern page - when editing, 'Concern/Influence' selector buttons are so small you can hardly click on one to change it.

added 02/08/2013:
4. (fixed) in a Project action 'x' and '+' buttons (clear and add) don't highlight pressing, don't work as expected.

Do you know any other you want to have fixed?

Habits tip.

Small tip.
When you are adding or editting a checklist item or a project item, to clear the input you press the  'X' button to the left of the input (to the right of the current 'five' text in the picture below):

It clears the input of what you've typed or what you've chosen from previously added:

If, after that, you press it again, it will hide the keyboard - a nice, small feature that just makes it more pleasant to use the app:

Habits. Thank you!

Just wanted to say again - Thank You for all the reviews, stars, reports, posts, comments, and letters! Most of the bugs found and fixed are because we receive reports soon after updates, read comments on the blog here and receive letters. And what keeps us working and improving the app are the 5 stars we see in play store and the great words you write. This is a great feeling when you do something that affects (and, hopefully helps!) so many people and you see the results so soon! Thank you!

Habits WeekPlan bug.

Thought we fixed it, but seeing strange behavior on our apps. Do you notice anything wrong for the WeekPlan dates? Like that dates are from previous week?(

Habits. 0.7.13.1

Have started the roll-out of the new version of the app. It has a great new functionality (not full Google tasks sync, though - it is on its way :) ). You will sure notice it and we'll be happy to hear from you about it, here or in reviews on the Play Store. As with most our new features, we find it quite innovative and hope you'll share our impressions, too. It is also kind of 'experimental', so may change its shape a bit in the future, but will most certainly be part of the app from now on.

Besides this we've fixed several bugs (a big huge Thank You! for the reports). We also welcome you to write reviews on the Play Store - this way we'll know better what you liked and where to improve. Or, at least, if you're (like us) lazy printing many letters on small screens, just give us some stars - nothing motivates better to continue with the development as your stars on the market do :)

Habits. Next Action.

We often want to share the next new functionality with you so greatly that we do so not checking everything is ok :). That what happened when we uploaded the new version yesterday. The new update, among traditional general UI enhancements, have added a functionality which many will love - the Next Action. We released it quickly and had not noticed there was small problem. Thanks to you, we fixed shortly after - Thank You!

Next Action.

The new functionality is about your actions ordering. Usually, you place them by priority in the order you want to do.

Current sorting algorithm is as follows:
+ first actions are sorted by square: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 (or, color: blue -> red -> green -> orange);
+ next actions are separated into done / not done;
+ next they are sorted by explicit priority set: A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> 'unset priority';
+ next they are sorted by goal - whichever goal was added first, its action come closer to the top;

This is how it has been working for long, just giving the details. Such system helps you manage your projects/actions by setting the natural order of the actions you want.

Now, when working on a set of related actions (usually, sub-actions of the same project or just a list of actions within a goal), what happened when you had just finished an action and checked it as done? You had to return to the goal, then again to the list of actions to see what action to do next? That required enough extra clicking to make you tired :).

So, we tried to enhance this process, first, by letting you go straight to the next action from the goal page - you could click on the Progress bar (where the Do the next text is)  and it would take you to the first action in the list of actions. If you wanted to see the whole list of actions, you just needed to click on the 'Action(s): 5 (view)' label.

Further improving this functionality, we've added the 'Next Action' notion to the Action page:

On the Action page, if you mark the action as done, the app will check if you have a next action to do and will let you go to it by clicking on the appropriate button. This frees you from a lot of extra going back and forward to see what you have to do.

Your next action is usually the action that comes next on the list at the same level - next undone action of the same goal  as current's, or next undone action for the same parent as current's. Habits will check what is next and will lead you there.

The next action feature will feel so natural to you, once tried, that you'll think you needed it all the time. I know it may sound a bit over-confident, but it is how we feel after using it ourselves :).

Navigation.

We've also added the sliding navigation menu to the main program pages. Using it you can quickly go to the Home page, the Notes or the Add Note pages. It will further be enhanced and more shortcuts will be added. The menu is triggered by clicking on the app icon in the top-left corner on those pages (the so-called home button on the action bar)

       

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Finally, we want to thank you for all the feedback you give us, the reports, letters you send, posts you write  - they are invaluable! Thanks to them we can quickly fix the problems, just as we did with this Next action early release - thanks to the error report we received! And we greatly appreciate your ratings on the play store, too!

Habits early access

Experimenting with some elements of the navigation, menu, colors + some nice new features. If anyone wants to try out the new stuff ahead of others in the Play Store, write us :) Traditionally, the number of early accessers is limited to 10.

Update + On Ads III.

This update doesn't fix much in terms of functionality or add any new features. It is mainly about the ads (sure you've guessed :) ).

As we wrote before, some users find the ads distracting and have asked for an ad-free paid version of the app. We'll release such version soon. And, as the first step, we've decided to improve the current version to make them less obtrusive:

+ we've moved all the ad bars to the bottom of the screens, where they are least seen;

+ we've completely removed the ads from the Action and FTF pages - the pages, we guess, used the most;

+ have removed the ad bar from the help screen.

We now think the app is much more useable and some of those you didn't want to see them at all might change their minds.

If you think there's more can be done (besides releasing a paid-version), we'll be happy to hear. By the way, we ourselves use the ad-version of the app, found them distracting and feel better now, too :).

Habits: Action saving on top of the screen

Have modified the Save/Cancel functionality of the Action page - moved the buttons to the top of the screen when editing the action (name and/or details). Now you can save it would first hiding the keyboard. Update is in the store, will be out soon. Enjoy!

On Ads II.

We've received several requests (both here and by email) from the users saying they'd buy a paid version of the app to get rid of the ads. Though the number of those asking is not much relative to the total number of users, we understand that it takes additional effort to write the complaint (that's why we are very thankful for any types of reviews, negative or positive) and the real number might be much greater. Thus, we will consider this option.

We've actually had not thought of making a paid version. That's not because we don't think that every work should be fairly paid for, but because we thought adding ads and trying to make them unobtrusive, thus keeping the app free, would be enough. Seems like it's not :)

Habits update.

Have just updated the Habits, should be out in the store within the next few hours. Main updates are about enhancing the usability.


First, we've done some modification to the Action page. We've moved some of the elements from this page to a secondary screen, which is opened by pressing a special square button in the lower right corner:

                 

                               

Items moved: Goal, Recurrence, Reminder. This gave some additional space for the screen, which was especially necessary when your action was a Checklist. On my phone, I could only see 3-4 check items, which irritated me a lot. As you can see, now there are at least 6 items, which is almost a 100% gain :).

We are thinking of moving some more stuff to the right, so, if you think you'd need that additional space, too, let us know we are on the same page.

We've also changed the icons to the new ones, to look more plain.


Next, on the secondary screen, where the items have been moved, we have put everything in a separate panel, with clear title and controls. One small and simple improvement made the usability of this screen much more better: instead of letting user click just the required control as the button, we've made the whole panel clickable - this makes using the app much more pleasant.

All the functionality previously associated with these moved items (like click on goal to go to goal or long-click on it to change) is kept functional.





















We've used same approach on the main screen's Today/Tomorrow buttons, on Goal's Progress panel and some other buttons, so you'll have to notice and like it pretty soon.

Another notable improvement is the ability to mark the action Done/Un-done by swiping right-left on the Week Plan page. This way you can 'finish' an action without opening the action itself.

There are other changes that we won't mention just to keep this post short. Also, we uploaded a broken .apk (application) to the Play Store and noticed that after it had been published. Sorry, if you caught that version - we've uploaded the fixed one as quickly as possible.

New icons.

Came across a tool that creates different types of icons for android apps: ui tools. Decided to refresh the app icons. Hope you'll like :)

Update also brings fixes to some UI layout and functionality bugs.

Habits UI changes.

Just a short note about recent update (v. 0.7.12.0). It adds changes to UI, basically, to the menu and partially to navigation parts. We are integrating what is called an 'ActionBar' pattern in the Android UI and a a Sliding Menu.

ActionBar is a bar at the top of the application screens where you find your most often used actions (previously, menu items) for that screen.

Sliding Menu (in android docs called 'Navigation Bar', I think) is a open-by-swipe left or right menu. It usually contains main navigation points of the app.

We want to move main buttons like 'My Mission', 'My Influence', 'My Roles', etc from the current home screen to the left-sliding menu (the Navigation Bar) and  make the FTF page appear first when you open the app.

On Ads.

As we've wrote recently, we added ads to the app. We know, that for some this is a normal process, for some - an additional irritation. We want to decrease this irritation as much as possible. Thus, if you think that on any page the ad banner hides important functionality, important data or just placed bad, you can propose us a better place, we'll try to move it :)

Habits tip 2.

Short tip about a nice new functionality, just forgot to mention it yesterday, sorry:

You can now copy an action within the same level. The app will create a copy of the action you chose to copy, with the name prefixed with the "Copy of: " text.

"Within the same level" here means that if the action copied is under a goal, the new action will be created under the same goal. If the action copied is under another action, the new action will be created under that same action.

Data copied - action and all its sub-actions, names with details. No recurrence or reminders are copied. Hope you'll like the new feature :)

Habits tip.

Want to share a tip for today's update (yes, just rolled out :) ).

From some time before, you could share the backup files using the
    Backup/Restore > Manage > "click on backup" > Share

sequence of actions. This would trigger a choose-program dialog to choose among the programs that accept file sharing. If you have a dropbox installed, it be in the list.

Choosing the program (dropbox, e.g.) you pass your file to this program, store it in its folder. This way your backup becomes stored in a cloud service. On some other device, or on the same device later on, you can restore to this backup. To do so you have to take the following steps:
   Backup/Restore > Restore > Restore from file system

This will open a similar dialog, but this time you'll choose the file to backup from. So, choosing the backup created on other device and shared with a cloud service (dropbox :) ), you can transfer your data from one phone to another.

There's just one minor flaw - it doesn't copy the pictures, if any, attached to your roles. To have the pictures be shown, you'll have to copy them manually, to the same folder structure (MyHabits/img).

Upd.: This is not the only new functionality in the update)

Upd. 2: To ease the process described above we've added 2 menu functions to 'Backup/Restore':
'Backup & Share' - to create a backup and share it immediately to the dropbox-style app
'Restore from share' - to trigger 'Restore from file system' dialog without going inside the menus.

Habits update.

Earlier today we released a new version of the app with some new features. Though it was quite a time after the previous release, we've managed to release the next version after that within the same day :). The latter was absolutely essential since it fixes some serious, and not so much, bugs in the former release. By the way, thanks a lot for your reports with messages - it helped localize the bug in just 2-3 minutes!


This new update (I'll consider it as one update) adds Concern/Influence syncing to the Google Tasks. It will look for a list called 'My Influence' under your google tasks. Within it tasks 'Influences' and 'Concerns' will be looked for. Tasks under first one are treated as 'Influences', under second - 'Concerns'. All other tasks at other levels for the list are ignored.

The sync operation itself is just like the one for Notes - you can see what has changed on both sides and decide what changes you want to take place.


There are some other improvements in the app, which we don't want to describe here, but rather let you yourself investigate them :). Functionality in this area will probably be one of the major areas of future development.


We did fix bugs and made several UI and usability enhancements. Particularly, gradually making the app more tablet-friendly (increased text sizes, spaces, layouts, etc.)


And the last major update is about adding ads. We long tried to avoid it, but eventually had to go in this direction. The reason is pretty simple - the app development is too slow to continue it doing the way we did (only in rare free time). So, we are investigating the possibility of switching to working on this app fully or at least devote much more time. That of course requires some financial support. We tried to put the ads in the places where they would not affect the usability of the app and minimize the cosmetic effect. Hope they will not annoy you much :).

As always, we welcome heartily your feedback, especially the negative one, since it helps us improve the app! And do hope the app helps you increase your productivity.

Habits question

I've got an interesting question/problem, answer to which would affect how the app will be implemented in one of its part. It's about recurring actions and goals.

The great idea is to add a motivational  feedback to the Goal page. The one that would show you how many actions you have already completed in addition to the total actions count shown there already.

When there are non-recurring actions - no problem, we just count the number of done vs. total and show. But, what should we do when a recurring action is done today, but not the next time its occurrence must appear?

There are two solutions:
1. the simplest - ignore the recurrence, count all actions as simple, non-recurring
2. take recurrence into account. This is not so straightforward to implement.

One might think that the right way would be to go with the second solution. But! There's one nuance - suppose there's an everyday action. The action is done yesterday, but not today. How should the indicator behave? Show 100% for yesterday, but 75% for today (numbers are just for example) ? Isn't this behavior confusing?

Upd.: Another similar issue: when you click a goal as 'reached', all its actions should be set as done. But what should we do with recurring actions? Stop recurrence, delete recurrence?

Any advice?

Habits backup to/from file: small but powerful update.

What have changed:

1. Backup/Restore menu 'Rename/Delete' has been renamed to 'Manage'

2. On the newly renamed 'Manage' page you can now share the backup file by pressing on the backup name and on the 'Share' button on the dialog that follows. Programs that accept files as a sharing item will appear in a choose-dialog. Usually, these are programs like Dropbox. When you choose any of them, the file will be sent.

If a file is sent to Dropbox, it will be synced across all the devices you have your dropbox account activated on.

3. On the 'Restore' page there's a big button with the label 'Restore from file system'. Pressing on it will launch a third-party app that can provide you with a file. This can be any program like Dropbox, file explorer, etc. Using this functionality you can restore to a file backed up in step 2 on another device! This way, you can copy all your stuff from one device to another! 

So, it's quite a small, but very powerful update :). This was  proposed by users long ago and I actually don't know why we hadn't implemented it. Now it's here and we hope you'll like it. The only drawback is you can't copy images that you might have linked your roles to, but that's something to think about.

Habits. Notes sync.

Notes sync resembles that of the My Mission - it follows the same approach that all the sync actions are ordered by you, no auto-background note moving/saving that might lead to results not really expected.

When you press the sync button on the Notes page, it will lead you to a 3-paged/tabbed sync page (called Google Notes Sync). Here you can load the notes saved locally (left tab), those saved on google (right tab). The middle tab is used for merging - process of defining what notes have been changed on either side and what should be done with that.

On Google tasks notes are saved under the list 'Notes'. All the tasks under this list accounted as notes. When you press Load on the Google tab on the Google Notes Sync, these notes will be loaded to the tab. You can view any particular note on any tab - click on an item in the list and it will lead you to the Note page.

After loading the google notes (if they exist), you can run the merge - the program will step through all the notes and try to find out which of the notes have been changed.

A note might be in any of the several states: local new - new note on the device, not synced to the google. The action for such note might be - to sync it with google (i.e., copy it there), do nothing or delete it. Similarly, a note might be a new one coming from google. Same set of actions can be used for such note.

A note may be modified after being synced previously. For example, modified on google. In this case you can copy updated note from google to local storage, restore google note with the local version, or do nothing :).

Convenience filters on the top of the page: you can view only those notes that have been changed in any form - press the Updated text button. You can view only those In sync. Or, you can see them All.

Finally, a note may be modified both locally and on web. The app doesn't try to be too smart, so it doesn't really do the merge or anything. It just sygnals you the situation and let's you take the action.

Pressing on the Apply button will do the sync operation - save new local notes to google, update local storage with new items from google.

Habits. My Mission sync.

Let us describe the new functionality we've just rolled out, after several months of "silence" :). The main parts are sync of the 'My Mission' and of the 'Notes' sections with Google tasks. First, will talk about Mission syncing.

If you're reading this, you probably know that google provides a small but neat easy-to-use online todo list integrated into their mail and calendar. They provide an interface for third-party apps to integrate with, which means they let other apps to sync users' lists to local devices and back. We've started our work in that direction, posting the results recently.

Google tasks represent a list of list of items. You can create lists, give them names, then add tasks to those lists. For 'My Mission' storing we've chosen the list called surprisingly :) 'My Mission'. Within this list we search for the task called, again, 'My Mission'. We use this task to sync your local mission statement with.

Starting from current version of the app, when you enter the mission page, you'll see an additional button in the form of two half-round arrows:

Pressing on this button will lead you to the sync page.

The sync page consists of 2 horizontally scrolling pages (tabs), one for the statement stored locally, the other for the statement stored in the Google task mentioned above.






















You can load both separately. You can Edit both in place and save them separately - one locally, the other to Google task. As we think, this is a very simple but at same time very powerful.

First, you have two places where you can have the statements. You can compare one to another, use different text in similar meaning. You can edit them separately and save them to different places, or you can completely replace one with the other.

But, the most important thing about all this is that You are in control of what needs to be saved and where. The app doesn't decide for you which version is actual and which should be saved (some other apps did that automagically in the background, often leaving me without valuable information).

Upd.: we are getting error reports, thank you, they'll definitely help to fix the issues.

Upd. 2: Uploaded the fix for the FC when trying to save local Mission statement to google when there's no list 'My Mission' on google. Thanks for the reports!

Habits update

Have just released new, 0.7.11.1 version of the Habits app. Contains the sync capability with Google Tasks - for 'Notes' and 'My Mission' section. Since Google tasks have a structure a bit different from that of ours, we have to invent some kind of mapping. In case of 'Notes' and 'My Mission' it's relatively easy, so we decided to start with them. The mapping for Roles > Goals > Actions is not invented - any suggestions are highly welcome.

Many thanks to those who give the feedback for the current and future features - your help is invaluable!

We'll describe the sync functionality a bit later in more details.

Early access

Will be uploading new version soon, if everything goes fine, with the, I'd say, prototyping functionality of syncing 'Notes' part of the app with the Google tasks. But, before doing so, we want to try a so-called early-access distribution - will give away from 5 to 10 versions to those who want to try the functionality first. It is still in the process of implementation and not everything works smoothly, but works already. So, if you want to try it out, write us at ksasdk@gmail.com.

No special requirements, just to be in the first 5th to 10th. Ok if you are first to fourth :). If you want, you can share your feedback with us, and even influence how the final functionality will look like.

Wanted to share

A few months ago I came across a great blog whose author writes about productivity among other things. I didn't know much about this guy before seeing a link to his blog. And, actually don't know much now, too. But, his posts are great, take a look here!