PipSqueak's dashboard

ethomaz replied on October 12, 2008 19:29 to the problem "Weird non-standard scrolling in Day view bad idea" in Slife Labs:

Yes, clicking on each hour column is the only option right now. Not ideal, I admit. It is based on an assumption we made that people would *not* want to click on the dots too much.

The day view, we thought, would be useful to give people a general sense of how they spent their time. They could dig in a little deeper and find out more (clicking on the dots), but they wouldn't want to browse the dots at that level.

So, it was a design decision and we need to address the issue to reflect what people actually want to do with the app - better dot navigation.

Errol replied on October 08, 2008 21:08 to the problem "Weird non-standard scrolling in Day view bad idea" in Slife Labs:

Without scrollbars, what are we supposed to do to navigate through this view? Is the intended way to browse by clicking each hour column header?

It'd be nice if we could even just use the cursor keys to navigate this, but the only way I've found to navigate it is by clicking the column headers for each hour...

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

This is exactly the feature I've been looking for! I'd love it. – SamUhl, on August 31, 2008 18:45

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Definitely, Slife can track by filename keyword. All you have to do is create a new activity and then create a new item with, say, ".doc" or "report", under Web & Documents (in the Activity editor window). – ethomaz, on August 23, 2008 12:42

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Thanks tinti. When we come up with something that works we will definitely let everybody here knows. The feedback here has been really great. – ethomaz, on August 23, 2008 12:38

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

We can track by filename, but not yet directory. I'm really wanting directory, (or, actually, full path if the Slife folks can find a way). – John B, on August 22, 2008 18:37

Chuck Vose replied on August 22, 2008 18:29 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Man, you guys have complicated needs. I would be happy with a provisional fix that allows me to track based on whether a file ends in .rb. Hell, I'm surprised that you guys can even know that.

So lets get some provisional stuff in and see how it goes over. Something simple like tracking by file extension would be a start and we can work our way up to regexs, metadata, etc.

Seems like most people can track based on filename or directory name if I'm reading the thread correctly?

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

OK, after a bit more thought, I just realised that if I want to track files that don't have an automatic job number that is part of all the files belonging to that project (e.g. a large number of images supplied), then only a watched folder will work. And to make it even more fun, any sub folders would need to be tracked as well...

Would be very happy to test some concepts here on my server for you and keep a log of errors etc. if that helps. – tinti, on August 22, 2008 03:22

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Sorry for chiming in here late in the discussions, but I am just about to ditch the 3 copies of JobCapture I have bought about a year ago (I'll explain maybe in another thread).

Basically, I would need the folder watching too, and to be honest, filename changing will be a no go! I will try the activity naming feature to see how far that will get me. I any event, I would need the folder watching feature to work also if I open files directly on my local file server across the LAN. It has a RAID card (and RAID 5 setup) and 4 big drives and backup software running. So please don't jump at me about working on server directly... – tinti, on August 22, 2008 03:14

ethomaz replied on August 21, 2008 14:26 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Hmmm. That's an idea. We will look into it.

Here's the issue. Most times, all Slife knows is the name of the file you are working on, say "report.doc". That's it. No metadata about the file or anything. Slife could ask Spotlight for metadata about "report.doc", but what if there's more than one "report.doc" in the file system? Then it becomes really hard to distinguish them.

John B replied on August 20, 2008 01:45 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Doing a find/replace could get tricky. You'd have to search for more than just links - also images, any type of embed or object, any filesystem operation in PHP, and so on. I think it could get pretty complicated.

I was wondering if there's a way to add metadata to a file, so I popped open the Get Info window. Could you do it by adding spotlight comments? That wouldn't mess with the actual files, and may work.

ethomaz replied on August 19, 2008 23:29 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

I agree. The way I see it, the issue with version control is a bigger problem than the links. In addition to changing the filenames, Slife could go into the files and do a quick find/replace on all the links.

A comment on the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

1) the tracking a whole folder thing is KEY for me.
2) the changing filename wouldn't be a huge deal for me, but JohnB (below) makes important points about problems it could cause. – saramichelef, on August 18, 2008 18:55

ethomaz replied on August 18, 2008 13:49 to the idea "Regular Expressions in Document Titles" in Slife Labs:

Yep, we are still working on it, figuring out the best way to go. It's a cool idea.

John B replied on August 16, 2008 14:28 to the idea "Regular Expressions in Document Titles" in Slife Labs:

We've been talking about this here.

Apparently it's harder than you would think, and I can imagine that programs may not make the whole path available to other programs for security purposes...

I'm hoping they'll figure it out, though.

Pitoo replied on August 16, 2008 12:39 to the idea "Regular Expressions in Document Titles" in Slife Labs:

As Slife remembers the mane of open files,
those ones are generaly located in some subdirectories...

So it sounds quite easy to match activities entries with the full path of documents instead of just the document name ?

for example :
- projects:client_A:subdir:file1
- projects:client_A:file2
- projects:client_B:some_files

what do you think of that ?

John B replied on July 30, 2008 14:24 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Yeah, I'm not down with changing the filenames. Other than messing with subversion, (my version control system), it would also mess with how the files interact with each other. For example, it would break all links and includes in a website that I am working on.

Edit: I realize that this folder thing is going to be really hard to do, but when you pull it off it'll really set slife apart from other time tracking apps, (imo).

ethomaz replied on July 30, 2008 14:15 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Ok, we have an idea for implementing the tracking folder feature. I thought I would post it here first to get some feedback from all of you.

In the activity editor window, we would add another tab for 'folders'. You will be able to pick a folder and add them to the folder tracking list. For each folder, Slife would add a small tracking code to the filenames in that folder. So if a file is called "index.html", Slife would rename it to "index-sl001.html". Once you remove the folder from the folder tracking list, Slife would remove the tracking code from the filenames as well.

Slife identifies files based on their filenames. The tracking code would be a way to associate them with a particular folder, which in turn could be linked to an activity.

One potential problem with changing filenames is that it would interfere with version control systems. There might be some other issues as well.

What do you think?

gregor replied on July 30, 2008 10:02 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

^^
Wow I didn't know this, very useful.

Could Slife pick up spotlight comments in addition to filenames? If so, it would be straightforward to tag files (including all files in a folder via Automator) with '8065' or whatever, and assign the tag to an Activity.

ethomaz replied on July 28, 2008 13:42 to the idea "Set Activities based on Document Location or folder" in Slife Labs:

Slife should be able to automatically categorize the document even if it's not called just "8065". If it has '8065' in the filename, that should be enough.