TaskPool is a little application to help me keep track of time. You can add
tasks to a pool, turn them on and off, and it will tick off seconds. At the end
of the day/week, I transcribe the time into my company's billing software. It's
written in javascript and XUL, and runs on the XulRunner platform. That lets it
run as a stand-alone application outside of a Mozilla-based browser.
Download and Installation
There are two distributions, one with the actual Win32 XULRunner app included,
and one without. If you are on windows and want the easiest possible thing, use
the bundled version. If you're on Linux, you should be able to get the
source version, install XulRunner, and run it, but I haven't tested any of
that.
Usage
There's really not much to it. You enter the name of a task in a textbox, and
click an "Add" button to add that task to your pool. From then you can click on
the task to start or stop it. When a task is started it turns an ugly shade of
green, and the seconds start ticking up. You can double click on the time or
the name to change them. If you want to have time running on more than one task
at once, there is an option in the options menu at the bottom for that.
Otherwise, starting one task will automatically stop any other running task.
All settings get automatically saved, so there are no "Save" buttons anywhere.
The tasks auto-save whenever you start or stop, and every 5 minutes if its
active. You can also double-click to edit the various pieces.
To Do
-
Clean up the internals. It's all pretty messy, and need to be converted to use
rdfds for the storage.
-
Make the naming consistent. Sometimes its called TaskPool, sometimes its called
Time Tracker.
Known Bugs
-
Occasionally starting a task will start counting up on the wrong task. I don't
know why or how to recreate. I'm hoping the process of converting to rdfds will
resolve that.
-
When editing the hours manually, it can sometimes round badly, and you'll end
up with more than 60 seconds. As a workaround, when editing time, don't put a
lot of decimal places.
Changes
-
10/6/2005
-
Added bits to edit the time/name by double clicking. (actually done awhile ago,
but I forgot to note it here)
-
Added an "about" dialog.
-
9/15/2005
-
Corrected (I think) a bug that was occasionally corrupting the RDF.
-
8/11/2005
-
Added the ability to change the time and name by double clicking the labels.
-
Added the options menu, and allowed multiple active tasks.
-
Made this article as a place to post updates.