0.10.6 update details

There are several things changed.

On the Week plan weekly actions:

• The layout has changed a bit
• Before the current update an action could be marked as done by swiping the action left or right. This was very counter-intuitive so we've modified it. Now you can do/undo the action by simply clicking on the tick.
• More information has been added about an action - day set, priority

 

On the Main page:

• The layout has changed a bit
• Pomodoro section has been decoupled from the next action. They say the pomodoro is helpful when tackling your procrastination - it helps you get into the focused mode faster. Doing so you should concentrate on the abstract process of working rather than on doing a concrete action - this is easier for your brain.

On Action page:

• 'Details to actions' now parses lines, too. I.e., if you have a text separated by new line, you can split it into subactions by end-of-line.
• Checklist items can be drag-n-dropped by 3-dots at the right of the item. There's a small bug with overlaying, but it will be fixed in the next update.

On all the pages

• The left menu is modified slightly so that the Home / Exit buttons are at the top of the menu now. This is not final - if the new layout is not better, we'll revert modify again.

There are also some bug fixes and other improvements on some other pages: for example, long-press on FTF and Actions didn't work; an action can be checked as 'done' from notification now; etc.

Some status on current development

At the moment, the main development is going around adopting google tasks to our app. We need to find a way to map 2 level tasks structure (lists and tasks) to our multi-level hierarchy: role / goal / action. As said before, we'll map all the lists to roles with the same name, except for special lists called 'My Mission', 'My Influence' and 'Notes'. Currently we are working on the syncing and merging the roles part.

The web app had been started, has since been paused because of lack of time and resources. We'll return to it as soon as we finish the google tasks sync part.

The max count / planned amount of recurrences idea is evolving, adding some new stuff with every update.

The overall enhancements and various improvements within the app never stop, so while concentrating on big goals, we do various smaller actions, too.

And very many thanks to all of you who use the app, point to bugs and deficiencies, give us feedback and just simply support by words! All this comes as a great motivational force to continue working on the app.

The BUG has been caught

At least we think so. But, we had already thought so several time in the last 2 days, so if I were you, I would not count on that 100%. As you probably undersand it, one more update is out there: 0.9.3) So, if you have given us 1-2-3-4 star ratings, it's time to review and give the deserved 5 stars!

New Action UI page

+ Looks like we've localized the crash point - will release today later

Action page got a different face. There are lots of changes. These are some of them:
+ no 'Edit' and 'Save' buttons - everything gets saved when you leave the page (auto-save)
+ right-side menu has been removed, features from there brought to the page itself into a collapsible panel.
+ checklists and projects are now added in-place on the page
+ reminder setup made much more pleasant with several setups (like in Google Keep).
+ action notes are visible on the page, no matter if it is a complex action or a plain one.
+ and more

As you remember, the best way to say you liked it is to rate the app here in the Play Store

Checklist items UI change

There are some changes to the checklist items now:

• They are one-liners now: when you press enter on the keyboard, they get added. I.e., enter on the keyboard has same effect as the + sign near the text.
• Drag-n-drop is by long-press now. Before current version (0.8.4) you could drag an item and move it up or down by three-dots at the right of the item. The problem was it was difficult on some devices to catch the required drag-able margin, so some users complained about this. Now you just need to long-press on any place on the item to move it.
• More room for already added items while adding new one - this was on of the worst things about this page: when you were adding, you couldn't see already added items and the one you've added the last. Now we show 2-4 already added items when adding. And when you press the + or enter buttons, the list is auto-magically scrolled to this last one. Much better UI experience.
• The items are dismissable by swipe. Just like on many applications out there, like gmail, to delete an item you just need to swipe it off the screen in either directions. After that, you'll have about 2-3 seconds to undo your delete. Again, much much better UI experience.

The other update was about fixing adding photos to the Role page - when the photo/picture was in some remote gallery, it usually failed. Now it's fixed. Thanks for the reports!

Hope you'll like the changes as much as we do and support them by rating us on the Play Store - nothing keeps us stay awake at nights enhancing the app better than a good, old 5-star rating out here!

FirstThingsFirst/Actions page important change

An important change introduced with the update, currently rolling out staged (20% lucky users will get them first), to the First Things First, Actions pages and the First Things First widget (aka Habits / FTF Squares): the filters you apply on these pages are persistent now.

What does this mean? It means, they are saved between visits to these pages - when you go back to android home screen and back again, or when you switch between the pages within the app. And, the FTF widget will reflect these filters. E.g., if you set filter for #day: Saturday(as on the picture below), the pages and the widget will show actions for that day:

This makes the widget and the pages more consistent with each other. Furthermore, it should help you concentrate better on these pages. We think this is not fully finished so some changes will most certainly come. But the general idea - to have filters persistent and for widget to reflect current FTF/Actions pages, also most certainly, will be preserved.

Also, the common left sliding menu is added to two more pages: Week Plan and My Roles.

First Things First widget

Will look like this:

Together with Quick the widget and application icon:

Squares are selectable, scrollable. Clicking on a task you'll go to its details, clicking on a square (if you manage to hit it :-) will lead you to the FTF page.

This is the initial version, some enhancements and adjustments are to come. Staged rollout is on, first 20% of lucky users will be able to try it out within the next few hours.

Enjoy! :)

First Things First widget

Will be out in first version later today!

Upd.: Sorry, guys, today is Champions League day!) Widget will be tomorrow ;)

Habits new widget

New 'Common' widget is out with today's update. Update is staged (means, first will be available to ~20% of active users) - will try to use this feature so that, if any problems with the update, it doesn't affect all the users. If by evening everything is ok, will do the full rollout.

The name 'Common' is not final, reflects the common most used operations: add a note, go to First Things First page, go to My Roles page, add an action (go straight to entering the text). If you find a more suitable, we'd be very grateful to hear :).

The widget looks like this:

Together with the Today's Actions widget and app icon:

Besides this, several fixes were done. As always, your feedback and reports has helped a lot - a big Thank You for them!

Enjoy the new functionality!

Add to calendar, goal details to actions

Some new functionality out there:

+ 'Add to calendar' button has been added to the action right-side menu, where reminders and recurrences inhabit. Clicking it you can add the action as an item to your calendars on the device. If you have several calendar apps, a 'Choose action' dialog will appear (usual android behavior). If your device is Android 2.x (below 3.x) - the function might not work, couldn't well test it. If you have issues, would be really great if you contacted us and we tried to solve it together!

+ Goal 'Details to action' function added. Remember in complex actions you could type your sub-actions in the Details pane, then click one menu 'Details to actions' and the app would auto-magically create the sub-actions for you? Same functionality has been added to the goal 'Envision' section now. The motivation for it is simple (as always) - it is often much more convenient to just type the steps you want to implement, entering in a kind of action generation flow. Type your actions, separate them by one of the symbols: '+' ,  ' . ' , ';', and click 'Details to actions' - and get a list of actions for this goal. You can then cleanup the generated stuff deleting and/or renaming, prioritizing them.

+ It appeared that 'Snooze reminder' didn't work for some time periods. This has been fixed. Thank you for pointing this out!

+ Ads are back :) I know this sounds not so encouraging, but we tried to show them on as few pages as possible. And we'll be rolling out the paying feature soon, so wanted to see the behavior of the app and users with ads before that.

Again, thank you all for your constant feedback.

And one more thing - we have decided to change our update policy - we'll try to roll out updates more often, as soon as they're working, not waiting for week(s) period or for several updates to couple together. This way, we think, you'll get the best use of the app as soon as we prepare it!

Some news on the recent updates to Habits.

+ Have removed most of the widgets - only the QuickAction left from the previous ones.
+ Added the 'Snooze reminder' functionality with previous update. You can snooze for several periods, from 5 minutes to 24 hours.
+ In Android 3x and above - have added the 'Today Actions' scrollable widget - can see your Today actions from the Home screen now.

The list is identical to what is shown for Today on the WeekPlan activity. Have been thinking of adding the full WeekPlan widget, but don't know if it is demanded - will see the result of current update.

Note: unfortunately, the widget works only on devices with Android versin of 3 and above - they allow scrollable list to be added to home screen widgets.

Translations

Have rolled out initial translation of the Habits into Russian. Since main part of the work is done, can try to translate into other languages. If you want Habits translated into your language, write us at ksasdk@gmail.com, we'll send back the resource file (file with original English texts).

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.

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.

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. 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!