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.