Showing posts with label habits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label habits. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

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?

Sunday, October 13, 2013

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!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

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?

Thursday, September 26, 2013

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:


Friday, September 20, 2013

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!

Monday, September 16, 2013

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?(

Sunday, September 15, 2013

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 :)

Saturday, August 31, 2013

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)



:



















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!

Friday, August 23, 2013

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.

Friday, August 9, 2013

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 :).

Saturday, July 20, 2013

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!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

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 :)

Saturday, July 13, 2013

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.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

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.

Friday, June 7, 2013

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 :)

Thursday, June 6, 2013

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 :)

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

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.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

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.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

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?

Monday, March 25, 2013

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.