Author Topic: IDEA: Desktop progress meter (Read 111,070 times)

cranioscopical · « **Reply #25 on:** April 16, 2009, 02:23 PM »

Quote

Anybody able to come up with a better name for this so we can call it done?

Bar be cue?

raybeere · « **Reply #26 on:** April 16, 2009, 05:38 PM »

Quote from: cranioscopical on April 16, 2009, 02:23 PM

Quote
Anybody able to come up with a better name for this so we can call it done?
Bar be cue?

I want to congratulate you on one of the more inventive puns I've come across lately.

raybeere · « **Reply #27 on:** April 16, 2009, 05:41 PM »

You've done an incredible job on this. Thanks!

skwire · « **Reply #28 on:** April 17, 2009, 05:26 AM »

Quote from: raybeere on April 16, 2009, 05:41 PM

You've done an incredible job on this. Thanks!

Nothing to it, I'm happy to help. "Barbecue" it is.

I've gone ahead and updated my posts with new links. Here's the latest revision:

Barbecue

mouser · « **Reply #29 on:** April 17, 2009, 05:55 AM »

looks beautiful.

skwire · « **Reply #30 on:** April 17, 2009, 06:02 AM »

Quote from: mouser on April 17, 2009, 05:55 AM

looks beautiful.

Thanks, mouser.

skwire · « **Reply #31 on:** May 20, 2010, 12:35 PM »

Website | Download v1.0.3 - 2010-05-20 + Added up/down controls to the Number and Total fields. (Thanks, Cameron) + Added option to launch the configuration dialog from the tray instead of meter display. (Thanks, Cameron)

paarkhi · « **Reply #32 on:** May 20, 2010, 03:32 PM »

Congrats, Sir, another feather in your hat, I always like your codings and thanks for the program, Simple and sweet

Scott_Y · « **Reply #33 on:** January 06, 2013, 11:50 PM »

Wish: Provide an option to specify the number of decimal places reported in the % done. Currently two places are displayed, but none or at most one would be fine for me. I think fewer decimal places is simpler and easier to read. And if I'm reading a 500-page book, a few hundredths of a percent difference is not significant, so I don't need or want to see it. Thanks.

Josh · « **Reply #34 on:** January 07, 2013, 12:30 AM »

Progress bars of life

skwire · « **Reply #35 on:** January 07, 2013, 01:07 AM »

Quote from: Josh on January 07, 2013, 12:30 AM

Progress bars of life

Hahaha, I was going to suggest he look at mouser's PBoL as well. =]

mouser · « **Reply #36 on:** January 07, 2013, 04:43 AM »

I had completely forgotten about this program.. im not sure i would have written Progress Bars of Life if I had remembered it -- would have just bugged skwire to add some features to his.. crazy.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #37 on:** January 07, 2013, 02:37 PM »

Actually I did look at Progress Bars of Life before posting, and for some reason felt it wasn't as suited to what I need. Maybe it was the attractive colors and solid bars in Barbecue's screenshot that tipped the balance? Or perhaps I was thrown off because all the PBoL screenshots use time units, whereas my use would be concrete units similar to Barbecue's examples. I'll have another look at PBoL.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #38 on:** January 07, 2013, 10:31 PM »

I have now tried Progress Bars of Life, and surprisingly, it has a different purpose than Barbecue -- not suited to my need.

PBoL is focused on tracking time progress: set the time or date target, and it counts down for you. But it is cumbersome for tracking irregular progress in concrete units such as pages or chapters read (what PBoL calls "manually set range"). To add units requires 7-8 clicks:
- View
- Options
- Progress Bar Items (if not already focused)
- Name (double click)
- Current Value
- Accept
- Accept

I don't want to go through all that every time I add a unit or two of progress. Obviously PBoL is optimized for automatic time progress, not manual addition of progress.

Furthermore, the bar color -- green to yellow to orange as the time limit approaches, then red as the limit is passed -- is more suited to a time countdown than, say, tracking the number of games played.

Barbecue is focused on tracking non-chronological units rather than time. For this it is slightly easier than PBoL because only 5-6 clicks are required:
- Tray icon (two clicks, depending on configuration)
- Title (if not already focused)
- Number
- Show meter bars
- Close or Escape

This could be improved, as I suggest in my comment below.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #39 on:** January 07, 2013, 11:00 PM »

Here are several wishes for improving Barbecue -- especially as a tracker of irregular, non-chronological progress.

1. Make it easier to enter units of progress. Rather than going through the 5-6 steps listed above, double-click on the desired meter bar to go directly to its Number box. This is the primary place a user interacts with Barbecue once a meter has been set up, so make it more directly accessible.

2. Auto refresh the meter bar display when the configuration has changed. Currently refresh must be forced either by clicking on the "Show meter bars" button or by closing and reopening the meter bar display. This should be dynamic.

3. Similar to PBoL, add an "Enabled" column or checkbox to each meter configuration. Otherwise a meter must be deleted permanently to remove it from the display.

4. Like PBoL, allow meters to be moved up or down in the list. Otherwise pairs of meters must be edited in place.

5. Repeating my wish from above: Provide an option to specify the number of decimal places reported in the % done. Or simply make it no places instead of two as it now is.

6. Allow the user to determine where to save the meter data. (Where is it saved by default? I haven't found that yet.)

Scott_Y · « **Reply #40 on:** January 08, 2013, 01:22 AM »

I recognize that my requests may be more than what is expected of a "snack," but I think they would make Barbecue more integrated internally and bump it up to a really nice level. Thanks for considering this.

hamradio · « **Reply #41 on:** January 08, 2013, 03:49 AM »

I will work on a .net version if he doesn't want to update or have the time to update it. I been working on a .net progressbar user control anyway for another project, so it might not be that hard for me to do.

skwire · « **Reply #42 on:** January 08, 2013, 04:09 AM »

I should be able to add Scott's requests.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #43 on:** January 08, 2013, 05:35 AM »

Hamradio: Thanks for your offer -- I really appreciate it!

Skwire: Wow, thanks for such a quick and positive response! I'm looking forward to trying an updated version.

Here's one more request I hope you might consider as well:
7. Make the tray icon a single-click toggle, replacing what now requires a double-click then Escape.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #44 on:** January 09, 2013, 05:50 PM »

Where is the progress data saved? Barbecue changed all my Totals to zero, so it would be nice to backup the data for recovery purposes.

skwire · « **Reply #45 on:** January 09, 2013, 05:53 PM »

The data is saved in the meters.xml file. I'm working on a fix for the zero totals issue as well.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #46 on:** January 09, 2013, 06:31 PM »

Thanks, skwire; I'm backed up now.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #47 on:** January 10, 2013, 05:07 PM »

Two observations about BBQ 1.0.3:

1. When started, it always opens the configuration interface -- even though it was minimized to the Tray when last closed. I think this is unnecessary. I prefer to have it open in its last state. (BTW, Show Meter Bars is set as the double-click-on-icon action.)

2. As already noted, it sometimes zeros all Total fields. Sometimes it also zeros all Number fields. It may delete some of the fields and not others. But sometimes it leaves all fields intact. This happens between exiting the program and restarting it, never when BBQ is running. I haven't found any pattern for when it zeros the fields or not.

skwire · « **Reply #48 on:** January 10, 2013, 05:11 PM »

Quote from: Scott_Y on January 10, 2013, 05:07 PM

1. When started, it always opens the configuration interface -- even though it was minimized to the Tray when last closed. I think this is unnecessary. I prefer to have it open in its last state. (BTW, Show Meter Bars is set as the double-click-on-icon action.)

I can add a "Start minimized" option.

Quote from: Scott_Y on January 10, 2013, 05:07 PM

2. As already noted, it sometimes zeros all Total fields. Sometimes it also zeros all Number fields. It may delete some of the fields and not others. But sometimes it leaves all fields intact. This happens after exiting the program and restarting it. I haven't found any pattern for when it zeros the fields or not.

I never saw this under XPSP3/32 but I have now since I upgraded to W7/64 recently. What OS are you running?

BTW, apologies for the delay in getting this updated; my regular job has been rather busy lately.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #49 on:** January 10, 2013, 05:36 PM »

Sorry, I should have mentioned my OS; yep, it's Win7/64. Which is also why meters.xml gets written to C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\...

I wonder if saving it to another location would solve the data loss bug.

Start minimized would certainly be nice, and appropriate for a Tray app. Thanks.

No need at all to apologize for the time this takes. I think in the context of DonationCoder, the learning process and community interaction are as valuable as the results. BBQ has good potential, so it's worth waiting for. I'm in no rush, just take your time. I very much appreciate your effort.