HabitCal version 2
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:02 pm
I just rolled out an improved version of the habitcal. It doesn't have all the features people have requested, but it has enough that I figured it was worth releasing now. Have to save something for version 3, after all.
At first, you may not notice much of a difference. All the old urls still work pretty much as they used to, and show you the same calendar view that's been around since May 2007. But I've added 3 new views in addition to the traditional calendar mode. You can choose the view from the drop down list right next to the "load" button (the default is "calendar").
The new views (with links to my habitcal) are:
Table View
This is similar to the calendar view, but more compact. It makes it easier to view and edit many tags at once. Calendar view gets cumbersome if you're dealing with more than say 5 habits at once. Table view makes it easy to get a handle on 10, 20 or more (note: it may not actually be a good idea to tackle this many habits at once, so be careful and don't go nuts just because the technology makes it easy). In edit mode, you can use the "batch input" arrows to color in all the blank sqaures in a row or column.
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/vie ... &t=blimits
Stats
This gives you a statistical overview of your compliance over the selected period of time, the percentage of which you marked as success, exempt, or failure. "Special" (non-weekend or NWS) days are reported in a separate column to give you a quick overview as to whether you're abusing them. There's also a pie chart, a summary compliance score, and a personal olympics medal (if you deserve it!).
The summary compliance score is calculated by the following crude formula:
green / ( green + red ) - ( special percent exceeding 7%)
I realize that this isn't a perfect scoring system for all people and all habits, and version 3 will let you choose between several scoring systems for each tag. I already hacked something for weekend luddite so that special days aren't counted there.
The personal olympics medals are given as follows:
>= 98% Gold
>= 96% Silver
>= 92% Bronze
This is more or less in line with what I've previously recommended for personal olympics (an average 0,1,2 failures per month, respectively).
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/vie ... te&t=tasks
Export (tab)
You can now download your precious data to back it up or view it in excel or something. And if you're a programmer, you can build your own visualizer for habitcal data. The format is simple, 3 tab delimited columns: date, tag, and score (reported as 1/0/-1 for success/exempt/failure, respectively).
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/vie ... hovelglove
What's left for version 3?
A lot. The biggies are:
Timeline view: a compact but way of looking at (say) a whole year of compliance data at once. This might make version 2.5 because it doesn't require any database changes and I have a pretty good idea what it should look like.
Tag Properites Editing: a way to set things like what scoring system to use for each tag, maybe adding some descriptive text, and other options. Also the option to rename tags.
Add Note: a popular request, but tricky to add to the current interface unobtrusively. I'll probably add a "journal view"optimized for note viewing and editing and just make notes with a hyperlinked "*" or something in the other views.
Track arbitrary numeric data like weight: this is tricky because except for the pending timeline view, it's a little tricky to squeeze into the other views (what if the numbers are too big to fit in the date cell? etc).
More attractive "RESTful" urls: I doubt anyone cares about this except other programmers, but I'm a programmer after all... My primary concern is how to clean them up without breaking exisiting links, because aesthetics ain't worth inconvenience and cool urls never change.
Let me know if there are any other features you're hankering for, or if you run into bugs with the new release. It seems to work fine on firefox, safari, and IE 7 at least. (Chrome test pending)
Reinhard
At first, you may not notice much of a difference. All the old urls still work pretty much as they used to, and show you the same calendar view that's been around since May 2007. But I've added 3 new views in addition to the traditional calendar mode. You can choose the view from the drop down list right next to the "load" button (the default is "calendar").
The new views (with links to my habitcal) are:
Table View
This is similar to the calendar view, but more compact. It makes it easier to view and edit many tags at once. Calendar view gets cumbersome if you're dealing with more than say 5 habits at once. Table view makes it easy to get a handle on 10, 20 or more (note: it may not actually be a good idea to tackle this many habits at once, so be careful and don't go nuts just because the technology makes it easy). In edit mode, you can use the "batch input" arrows to color in all the blank sqaures in a row or column.
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/vie ... &t=blimits
Stats
This gives you a statistical overview of your compliance over the selected period of time, the percentage of which you marked as success, exempt, or failure. "Special" (non-weekend or NWS) days are reported in a separate column to give you a quick overview as to whether you're abusing them. There's also a pie chart, a summary compliance score, and a personal olympics medal (if you deserve it!).
The summary compliance score is calculated by the following crude formula:
green / ( green + red ) - ( special percent exceeding 7%)
I realize that this isn't a perfect scoring system for all people and all habits, and version 3 will let you choose between several scoring systems for each tag. I already hacked something for weekend luddite so that special days aren't counted there.
The personal olympics medals are given as follows:
>= 98% Gold
>= 96% Silver
>= 92% Bronze
This is more or less in line with what I've previously recommended for personal olympics (an average 0,1,2 failures per month, respectively).
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/vie ... te&t=tasks
Export (tab)
You can now download your precious data to back it up or view it in excel or something. And if you're a programmer, you can build your own visualizer for habitcal data. The format is simple, 3 tab delimited columns: date, tag, and score (reported as 1/0/-1 for success/exempt/failure, respectively).
http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/vie ... hovelglove
What's left for version 3?
A lot. The biggies are:
Timeline view: a compact but way of looking at (say) a whole year of compliance data at once. This might make version 2.5 because it doesn't require any database changes and I have a pretty good idea what it should look like.
Tag Properites Editing: a way to set things like what scoring system to use for each tag, maybe adding some descriptive text, and other options. Also the option to rename tags.
Add Note: a popular request, but tricky to add to the current interface unobtrusively. I'll probably add a "journal view"optimized for note viewing and editing and just make notes with a hyperlinked "*" or something in the other views.
Track arbitrary numeric data like weight: this is tricky because except for the pending timeline view, it's a little tricky to squeeze into the other views (what if the numbers are too big to fit in the date cell? etc).
More attractive "RESTful" urls: I doubt anyone cares about this except other programmers, but I'm a programmer after all... My primary concern is how to clean them up without breaking exisiting links, because aesthetics ain't worth inconvenience and cool urls never change.
Let me know if there are any other features you're hankering for, or if you run into bugs with the new release. It seems to work fine on firefox, safari, and IE 7 at least. (Chrome test pending)
Reinhard
, so well done indeed! My hat's off to you once again!
Debs x
