Clockwork Feedback

Tags ( )

I'm lovin' the new functions. Just thought you might like to hear some feedback from having used it last night.

1) MULTIPLE PROJECTS: I've been aching for this for ages. I really love it. What I love about your implementation is that it's so simple and compact. I use your time to track multiple projects / billable hours. I just love it.

2) POSTION AWARENESS. I have two screens. At my desk, I have a large LCD screen, my primary screen, and a G4 PowerBook which I use as the "secondary" screen. I like to keep my biz tools over there: Address Book, OmniOutliner, iTunes and Clockwork. If I Quit and relaunch Clockwork, it positions the interface back on my primary monitor, not where I left it.

3) ADJUSTING TIME: I really miss the little arrows from HB Timer that allowed me to adjust the hours, mins, secs with a few clicks of my mouse. I don't like the way the text stays highlighted.

4) TITLE: would be nice to have the current timer's title listed in the interface so I can be sure I'm adding time to the right project.

5) TIMER SWITCHING: would be great to be able to switch between projects when the GUI is in its smallest/minimal state.

6) ENTER KEY: not wild about the enter key starting/stopping the clock. To me, the enter key just means 'confirm'.

Thanks again for supporting and developing this s/w. I use it throughout the day and it's a big part of keeping my business on track.

Thanks for posting your

Thanks for posting your feedback here.

2) POSTION AWARENESS. I have two screens. At my desk, I have a large LCD screen, my primary screen, and a G4 PowerBook which I use as the “secondary” screen. I like to keep my biz tools over there: Address Book, OmniOutliner, iTunes and Clockwork. If I Quit and relaunch Clockwork, it positions the interface back on my primary monitor, not where I left it.

That’s a good idea, though I’m not immediatly sure how to make it work, so i probably won’t start this immedialty. Would you mind posting an official feature request for this. To do that choose the Clockwork menu Help > Request New Feature… and then fill in the web page form. Once posted you can also vote on it to let me know how important it is to you. I’m hoping this system will make it easier for me to prioritize my time.

3) ADJUSTING TIME: I really miss the little arrows from HB Timer that allowed me to adjust the hours, mins, secs with a few clicks of my mouse. I don’t like the way the text stays highlighted.

I removed the arrows because they added some complexity to the program and I wanted to get this first version done as soon as possible, but note that you can still click on a number to increment it, or shift click to decrement it. You can also use the up and down arrow keys to change numbers, as well as entering then with the keyboard number keys. My hope is that this Clockwork’s approach is more functional and easy to use then HBTimers arrows were.

I don’t like the way the text stays highlighted.

This bothers me too sometimes, but I’m not sure what the solution should be. The text is highlighted when it is editable and the text field has focus. This indicates that you can use the arrow keys and number keys to change the time. I think that’s fairly standard and good.

But maybe unlike standard text field we should remove forcus when the mouse is clicked somewhere (such as window title) that normally wouldn’t change the focus? I’m not sure, does anyone else have ideas on this?

4) TITLE: would be nice to have the current timer’s title listed in the interface so I can be sure I’m adding time to the right project.

I’m not sure that I would like this by default, it would make the interface look more busy especially for a timer with a long title. But it should be possible to make an applescript that will do this. I’ll look into this.

5) TIMER SWITCHING: would be great to be able to switch between projects when the GUI is in its smallest/minimal state.

This should also be possible with applescript. I don’t want to clutter the interface with extra gui controls, but I could make a script that will select the next timer. So things don’t get confusing i would need to combine this script with the previous show title script… This might be my afternoon fun project.

6) ENTER KEY: not wild about the enter key starting/stopping the clock. To me, the enter key just means ‘confirm’.

True, but it’s also a nice easy key to hit. The spacebar might be a better choice, but I can’t get that to show up as a keyshortcut in the Timer menu. And now Command-Spacebar is taken by spotlight. Other thoughts out there?

Thanks Jesse. Sorry for not

Thanks Jesse. Sorry for not replying sooner - was on vacation. Saw your note about the new scripts. As soon as I upgrade to Tiger, I'll upgrade Clockwork.

3a) I'm using the arrow-keys to change hours and mins now, thanks for the tip, but I think the arrows were good UI design. Keep the key functions, but I'd still look at adding the arrows back in because they made the s/w so much more intuitive.

3b) I think the text being highlighted when editing is good, you're right, but I think it should be unhighlighted when I'm done. Otherwise, a) you run the risk of accidentally hitting a key and adjusting the time without realizing it, and b) it looks ugly. At the moment, what I do after editing time is to switch from the first project to a second project, then back to teh first project again. That gets rid of the highlight. Cumbersome.

6) Enter key - I think this should be the key to say "CONFIRM MY EDIT" and I think, in terms of UI design, that's the more expected behavior. CTRL-SPACE?

but I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d still look at

but I’d still look at adding the arrows back in because they made the s/w so much more intuitive.

I think your right on this, it’s just a bit of a pain to implement. Add it to the feature request list (you can do this from Clockworks Help menu). I’m not going to implement right away, but if people give it positive votes (after logging onto this site you can vote on feature requests) then I’ll go back to it.

I think the text being highlighted when editing is good, you’re right, but I think it should be unhighlighted when I’m done.

How do you want to let it know that you are done? Maybe the enter key? Escape key? Are there other cases when editing should stop?

I think this should be the key to say “CONFIRM MY EDIT” and I think, in terms of UI design, that’s the more expected behavior. CTRL-SPACE?

I think that makes sense. I’ll add this to the bug list and will try to get it fixed in the next version.

Yeah, I think the enter and

Yeah, I think the enter and return keys should be simply for confirmation (that is, confirming text changes and time adjustments - make highlight go away). Escape has the connotation of "get me out of this" and "cancel this" which aren't quite the same. The Enter key is very often used to confirm data entry so it's more settled in people's minds as an expected behavior.

The latest version remembers window positions - yay! thanks!

I've just added two new

I've just added two new AppleScripts to the scripts and plugins contributions area. They add some of the features that you requested.

The first one "Update Window Title" keeps the Clockwork window title in synch with the name of the selected timer. The second one "Select next timer" allows you to select the next timer, even when no user interface is available for doing so. To use these you will need to upgrade to the latest release (`05 Beta 13 as of today) of Clockwork. You can see what version you have from the Clockwork > About menu.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.