Author Topic: WhenLast (Android app) - v2.20 Beta - Aug 20, 2018 (Read 176,365 times)

mouser · « **on:** February 07, 2015, 10:07 AM »

"WhenLast" is a simple app that helps you keep track of the last time you performed some activity (like changed the batteries on your smoke detectors).

Download the most recent stable version at the Google Play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.donationcoder.whenlast
Or contact me to be added to the beta testing list for early access to alpha/beta versions.
Or download unofficial latest apk from: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/android/downloads/whenlast-release.apk

Features include:

The ability to sync data across multiple devices.
Timed reminders and overdue notifications.
Configurable homescreen widgets.

Version 2.20 beta - Aug 20, 2018

Font scaling option
Improved view menus
Better font layouts

Version 2.14 beta - Dec 31, 2016

New Feature: Search function

Version 2.12 beta - Dec 8, 2016

Feature: Lastitem widget now has option to display item and date on separate lines.
BugFix: ALL Section was not always being displayed when it should be.
Improvement: Widget timer update improvements (and new option)
BugFix: Long-click drag-and-drop was not working on some items (thanks ewemoa!)
Improvement: Notices (reminders, etc., shown on bottom of window) are now persistant until acknowledged.
Bugfixes: fixed some import bugs (thanks ewemoa!)
Fixed timer bugs, especially effecting the case where user has multiple widgets from same app.
Improvement: Widgets now default to ALL category if visible, or fallback to a sensible one.
Improvement: Widgets now have options for showing hidden items, empty sections, etc.
Improvement: Widgets now have independent option for sortmode.
Bugfixes: Lots of miscelaneous bugfixes.
Improvement: If current section becomes empty and should be hidden, it was being left onscreen after a chance in view options.

Version 2.01 beta - Sep 30, 2016

NewFeature: You can now sort on various fields.
Improvement: New view submenu (no more ViewAll button)
Miscelaneous fixes

Version 1.96 beta - Sep 26, 2016

Tons of improvements, list coming soon.

Version 1.82 - Feb 10, 2015

Manual sync working well
Thanks to DC members cyberdiva and cranioscopical for all the help testing!

Version 1.71beta - Feb 9, 2015

Another manual sync bugfix try (manual sync is harder than one would think)

Version 1.56 - Feb 8, 2015

More autosync options (disable on battery power, disable on non-wifi connection)
Sync bugfixes

Screenshots:
[attachthumb]

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** February 07, 2015, 12:34 PM »

New beta version uploaded (v1.51) with the ability to enable or disable autosync, plus better and more efficient auto-saving of changes (when in autosync mode, all changes will be automatically saved after a few second delay).
I'd appreciate any testing of these two modes -- I'd like to upload a production version this weekend but with all the rapid changes to these two modes, i would not be surprised if there are some issues to resolve.

Some notes on autosync vs non-autosync modes:

When autosync checkbox is enabled, changes to your data file are automatically pushed out to dropbox soon after you make them (not immediately so that if you make multiple changes it wont try to push many times); and dropbox api monitors remote changes so they are detected quickly.
When autosync checkbox is not enabled, nothing will be pushed to dropbox, and no remote dropbox scanning will occur until you use the "Scan Now" menu item. Only then will changes be pushed and pulled. One consequence of this *may* be that changes on a remote device might be "discovered" on your first check, but that you will get a message that a download is in progress, and to rescan later. As of now, this means you have to manually scan again in a few seconds/minutes; I will probably automate that later, but right now i'm erring on the side of leaving things manual in this mode.
In a future version I might make it possible to switch between auto and manual sync mode based on battery life and/or network connection type (wifi vs cellular).
Even in autosync mode, if the app is minimized, it will NOT check for sync updates. In general the app tries to use as little resources as possible when not being actively used, shutting off timers, etc.
Widgets will not be auto-updated with sync changes if the main app is not running; they will update only when main app gets a sync update. I may try to fix this in the future.

mouser · « **Reply #2 on:** February 11, 2015, 08:30 AM »

Version 1.82 - Feb 10, 2015

Manual sync working well
Thanks to DC members cyberdiva and cranioscopical for all the help testing!

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** February 12, 2015, 12:05 PM »

A landmark day, 25 users

shadzovgra · « **Reply #4 on:** March 03, 2015, 04:41 AM »

Great idea starting to play with Android Apps. Would you think about making a emergency app that is capable of GPS location as well as sending a sms to either a person or people of your choice. I live on heavy duty opiate based pain killers and have to wear a emergency bracelet in case my back gives out and I hit the deck, then can't get to the phone. It's great for around the house, but as soon as I go outside or travel, the bracelet becomes useless. I have found three Android apps that will let one contact emergency services if needed, but they aren't capable of contacting family members or friends to either come and help, or simply let them know where I am located and what condition I'm in. One free, the other two are to be paid for. So if someone would be kind enough to create an Android App as described above, I and many others would be extremely grateful. I am thinking someone's going to argue, but wouldn't it be best to simply contact emergency services first, then think about contacting family and friends second. Which is fair enough. But there are times when things go wrong, but not bad enough to go calling those services. Anyway, just an idea. Thanks.

pencoe · « **Reply #5 on:** March 03, 2015, 11:59 AM »

@shadzovgra: how about this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clusor.ice Sounds, like this could be the right thing for you (own contacts list, sends SMS to contacts with GPS coordinates, free)

crono · « **Reply #6 on:** March 05, 2015, 05:12 PM »

Hi Mouser

really nice idea

- But I have some kind of feature request: I really would like, to see is an option to store the dates / schedules / reminder in the calendar. Not only with Goolge Calendar, but all with configured caldav syncprovider (I run my own caldav server using Baical). This would give a cross-platform desktop client for free. Maybe you would like to consider it for some future release.

Bye bye

shadzovgra · « **Reply #7 on:** March 07, 2015, 10:53 PM »

Hi pencoe, thanks heaps for the link to the emergency app for android. Very much appreciated. Have a good one.

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** March 08, 2015, 12:16 AM »

Up to 35 users

db90h · « **Reply #9 on:** March 09, 2015, 09:59 AM »

Makes me remember, almost time to file my taxes

.

Nice mobile app work Mouser. Glad you are proficient in this space.

Jibz · « **Reply #10 on:** May 28, 2015, 04:35 PM »

So, I installed this today -- looks very nice

.

Some observations:

The app icon does not work well on a white background, which is the default in the app drawer in lollipop.

If holding the phone normal (non-landscape), the text indicating the last time a task was performed is broken into a lot of lines, which makes it hard to read, and take up a lot of space. Perhaps put the task name above and the text below instead of side by side in this mode?

Localization would be nice.

Is there an undo option in case you hit the NOW button by accident

.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** May 28, 2015, 04:51 PM »

Quote

Is there an undo option in case you hit the NOW button by accident

Each item keeps a log of all times you hit the NOW button.
So just hit EDIT and either clear all history or clear the last date (or add a custom one for that matter).

I'll try to fix the other items -- it shouldnt break up into lots of lines, but its hard to predict on all machines. Maybe i need to do as you say and detect small screens and split into multiple lines manually in such cases.
Do you know your portrait resolution?

Jibz · « **Reply #12 on:** May 28, 2015, 05:25 PM »

Quote from: mouser on May 28, 2015, 04:51 PM

Do you know your portrait resolution?

Looks like it's 1080x1920, here is a (scaled down) screenshot of what it looks like:

[attachimg=#]

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** May 28, 2015, 05:32 PM »

Yeah, looks like i need to make a special layout for portrait phones.
Another alternative you could use is to go into options and change what info is displayed in that middle column and make it more compact.

mouser · « **Reply #14 on:** June 05, 2015, 09:14 PM »

It might soon be time for another round of work on WhenLast. Any (other) feature requests?

cyberdiva · « **Reply #15 on:** June 06, 2015, 03:04 PM »

I asked myself why I was quite content with the way WhenLast looks on my phone in portrait mode, and the answer was the one you gave: reducing the amount of info shown. I realized early on that I didn't need to know what time a particular action was last performed, so my listings don't show time. As a result, even on my phone, the info never runs to five lines (as it does in the screenshot Jibz provided).

I've been very happy with WhenLast. There were a few occasions when the sync between tablet and phone wasn't complete, but those occasions were quite rare. On the whole, the app performs beautifully, and I'm finding it very useful.

I'll try to think of features I'd like to see added, but offhand nothing comes to mind.

cyberdiva · « **Reply #16 on:** June 06, 2015, 03:31 PM »

Mouser, some time ago you asked whether we could think of other apps you could create that would make use of the same technology you used in WhenLast. Let me first confess that I had never used Dropbox before WhenLast. I was very impressed by how well it worked with WhenLast, so I decided to use Dropbox for another app I use a lot, JotterPadX. I have it on my tablet, my phone, and my Windows 7 computer (I have it on Windows because that's the way I had been transferring updated files between the tablet and the phone). I thought I set up all three to sync with Dropbox, but although the syncs supposedly took place, they never seemed to be reflected in the app itself, just in Dropbox. So, for example, if I update five JotterPadX files on my tablet, the files would also go to Dropbox, but I never saw them in the JotterPadX app on my phone or my desktop. Does Dropbox normally sync the files so that they appear in all the relevant apps automatically, as they do when I sync files in WhenLast? If so, then I probably set things up wrong in Dropbox when I tried to add JotterPadX. However, if this happens in WhenLast only because you created it that way and it doesn't normally happen in Dropbox, then I think you'd have lots of opportunities either to collaborate with developers of existing apps that would benefit from what you did in WhenLast, or to create apps similar to some that already exist but that lack the sync mechanism you've created for WhenLast. My guess is that I just screwed up when I tried to get JotterPadX to sync via Dropbox, but I thought I'd ask, embarrassing though it is.

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** June 07, 2015, 02:28 PM »

Quote

Does Dropbox normally sync the files so that they appear in all the relevant apps automatically, as they do when I sync files in WhenLast? If so, then I probably set things up wrong in Dropbox when I tried to add JotterPadX. However, if this happens in WhenLast only because you created it that way and it doesn't normally happen in Dropbox, then I think you'd have lots of opportunities either to collaborate with developers of existing apps that would benefit from what you did in WhenLast, or to create apps similar to some that already exist but that lack the sync mechanism you've created for WhenLast.

The SYNC feature between machines is specifically coded in WhenLast and is definitely non-trivial. It is *not* a generic feature of dropbox integration.

What dropbox gets you is the ability to save and load files to your online account. If an app installed on multiple devices wants to keep sync'd between multiple devices, it has to write some real code to merge changes and keep files synchronized, etc.

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** June 08, 2015, 04:28 AM »

fyi: currently 51 users of whenlast according to Google Play store.

KynloStephen66515 · « **Reply #19 on:** June 08, 2015, 05:07 AM »

Mouser, release a version with less features or ads as a free version and you will add a few 0's to the end of that number, same with your Hotrod panel

moongose · « **Reply #20 on:** September 22, 2015, 01:44 PM »

Hello Mouser,
if you are still developing this app, is it possible to add some statistics? Like time from first recorded event, average time between events, number of events per month or year, compare number of events from this month/year to previous etc.

Thanks.

mouser · « **Reply #21 on:** September 22, 2015, 02:13 PM »

i need to do an update, statistics might be fun.

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** September 09, 2016, 08:26 PM »

Update coming soon.
I've fixed something that's been bothering me for a while -- if you rotated screen while editing an item the edit dialog would disappear (Android is insane when it comes to what happens to an app when user rotates screen -- it basically kills and restarts your app and you have to go through real hoops to resume where user was when they rotated).

Any other requests?

rjbull · « **Reply #23 on:** September 09, 2016, 10:07 PM »

+1 for moongose's idea of statistics. And maybe a calendar chart to present them, just spikes on days when an event has occurred, so you can get a visual impression of the spacing between events, and whether it's increasing or decreasing - thinking of times between charges for rechargeable batteries as they age.

rjbull · « **Reply #24 on:** September 10, 2016, 08:25 PM »

Editing an entry:

(1) When one edits an entry, one finds the dates presented in US format. I would much prefer them to be in ISO format, that being the clearest, least ambiguous, and most suited to a program that may be used internationally.

(2) It's possible to edit a date and time manually - and the field accepts any old garbage, there doesn't seem to be any error-trapping. You also allow use of the standard Android date-picker. Is there any reason not to make that mandatory, i.e., remove manual editing? If you do that, for consistency there would have to be a time-picker as well.