Polishing the existing features

With all the basic features in place for some time, there was enough room to continue polishing the existing features and keep the main focus on improving stability as much as possible.

The most noticable improvements for the upcoming SmallTime 1.8.5 are graphical task separators to keep the list of tasks more readable. AThe most noticeable improvements for the upcoming SmallTime 1.8.5 are graphical task separators to keep the list of tasks more readable. Another quality-of-life improvement is the ability to resize the app window in both docked and classical mode. The window size will persist even if you turn the app off and on again.

TThe changes deeper under the hood include more optimisation for Smalltime file handling and error messages for very obscure multithreading issues, which would probably mean that you wouldn’t even get to starting SmallTime before encountering this error everywhere else in your operating system.

Bugs found in SmallTime 1.8.4

While stabilizing areas where potential undefined behavior could occur, a bug causing the application to crash when DPI scaling is turned on in your system was found. This issue will be documented very soon with a workaround to prevent it. This issue will be fixed in SmallTime 1.8.5. I was planning to release the next update at the end of August as the last update for the 1.8 series, but I will publish this update as soon as possible and finish the rest of the optimizations in the 1.8.6 release.

The sThe second bug is missing support for 32K (and highier??) screen resolutions. This is due to how app width is stored, and undesired behavior may occur when resizing the window above 16K screen size. I will be investigating the latest technologies currently available on the market to see how far I should go to take care of this issue once and for a very, very long time.

SmallSkill Studio release schedule is officialy back on track and that means a new release for you!

New features:

• system error messages: when there is a fatal error in your system configuration or bug in SmallTime, you will be greeted with a comprehensive error message that will try to help you solve your issue, or report a bug if there is a problem with SmallTime itself. Not everything is covered yet, but more errors will be covered in the next releases of SmallTime. These error messages are now implemented:
  • can’t create a data folder for SmallTime
  • wrong version of .stf file (this should not be happening)
  • missing environment variable (this may happen if your system is damaged or you try to launch SmallTime on some exotic operating system via an emulator)
  • can’t save your SmallTime data

Miscellaneous

• optimisation of creating a file for your data in SmallTime
• optimisation of saving/loading your data in SmallTime

Note on experimental features

When doing final test runs of SmallTime 1.8.4 before release, I noticed that the window had a different width when I started SmallTime with no data file. I have a plan to have SmallTime remember your last window width and always start with the window size set by you. However, there is no user interface to do so in docked window mode, and the size of the window is not yet saved when you change it in classic window mode. You can directly edit the width of the SmallTime window in the data.stf file, but I strongly advise against doing so. Unless you make a backup of your data. If you send your file to me, I will be able to fix it, depending on the amount of damage you have done, but first ask yourself if you really want some random dude on the internet to view your private personal data 🙂

Both hardware and software are not perfect, and there are nasty failures happening from time to time. I do everything to make SmallTime as easy to use as possible, and I focus on preventing the application from crashing in situations where the user does something that is not standard. However, some failures are not preventable, and the most I can do is guide anyone unfortunate enough to encounter an unrecoverable error to possible solutions that may make SmallTime operational on their machine.

This is now a work in progress and after covering the most frequent causes of non-preventable application crashes, I will focus on problems that may not appear so often. I may not be able to get a 100% error coverage, but I thing I can cover things that are most urgent before I start the next stage of customisation features.

SmallTime 1.8.3 brings small optimisations, tweaks and an important bugfix for people who travel around the world and need/want SmallTime on their laptop.

New features

Floating window

SmallTime will be slowly turning away from the docked window as a default state next year. This is mainly because new users may not feel comfortable with docked window and may feel that something is not right. However, you will still have an option to dock SmallTime to the side of your screen. And I must say that it is the way I use SmallTime every day.

Bugfixes

• fixed a theoretical crash if ZALGO text was inserted into the task name
• fixed wrong task time data when creating a task in one time zone and then moving to another timezone.

Other changes

• reorganising the app code to allow faster development in the future
• compatibility system for keeping your data from old SmallTime releases (starting from 1.8.2) when upgrading to a new version.

Next release of SmallTime is being delayed because the version compatibility system is still not finished. This happened due to an illnes, which prevented me from working during holidays.

Since there were some big changes, there was no compatibilty system between SmallTime 1.0 and 1.8. series. However, the upcoming compatibility system will be more robust and I can guarantee that all SmallTime releases from(and including) 1.8.2 will always have backward compatibility with future releases.

There may be some limitations to this to stop SmallTime from bloating too much, but there will always be a way to update SmallTime to the latest version without losing your data. I am not sure, what kind of limitations will I impose but it will probably be some time constraint, or range of versions. I am looking for at least the last 5 file modifications. And honestly I don’t think more file format revisions will be needed until SmallTime will be feature-complete.

Hopefully everything will be ready by the end of this month.

It looks like this:

A floating main window was a feature planned for SmallTime 1.8.2, but it was not pushed(rushed) into the release since both the UI and the application backend had some missing prerequisities to implement this. This will however change in the upcoming SmallTime 1.8.3. Since this release, SmallTime 2 (currently at version 1.8.3 in development) will be more feature-rich than the original release of SmallTime.

There is still much polishing to be done on this feature, and it may still have some rough edges at release, but it is very important for users who either don’t want the classic window snapped to the edge of their screen or have some other app snapped to the edge. For example, I have SmallTime snapped to the left edge of the screen and a music player snapped to the right side.

A next blog post will arrive shortly, explaining other improvements in SmallTime and why they are important for future releases. A release date will also be announced.

SmallTime 1.8.2 has just been released! Main focus for this version was to fix most of the bugs present in previous beta versions and fix all of the remaining performance issues. After this release a new phase of adding customisation options will begin. I hope that this release will be worth downloading for you and remember, if you find and bugs, please contact me at lubosmudrak93@gmail.com

You can download SmallTime 1.8.2 below:

New features:

New app icon:

Confirmation dialogue when deleting a task:

Dynamic size of task description field:

Probably the most important improvement in the upcoming release of Smallltime will be having much more space for your task descriptions. SmallTime 1.8.2 will be coming soon with this and other improvements!#Productivity #smalltime #smallskillstudio #tasktracker pic.twitter.com/iAca54lgVM

— smallskill studio (@smallskill_blog) July 2, 2022

Bugfixes:

• crash when inputting year lesser than 1000
• crash when you leave a field for a year of a task empty
• crash when entering zalgo into the task description field
  • DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE VALUABLE DATA SAVED IN SMALLTIME 1.8.1 BETA!!! Your data may get corrupted!
  • definition of zalgo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalgo_text
• the user interface does not update until you move your mouse cursor after launching the application
• attempting to delete several tasks in a row without moving your mouse cursor causes the task editor to open instead of deleting another task
• writing characters with the ALT key modifier does not work because the application thinks that CTRL key is pressed when the ALT key is pressed
• it is not possible to set a task date on the 29th of February, which should be possible to do every fourth year
• nothing happens after you try to paste a copied text that is too long to fit into the task name and task description fields
• missing character sets for Hebrew and Arabic languages
• the size of the main window does not scale precisely according to the number of tasks
• arrow for minimising the application does not point in the right direction when the window is snapped to the right side of the screen (a new icon will be made on full release)
• inconsistent text size across the application
• the information icon is too close to the left side of the task description window
• sound alarm plays more often when you are interacting with the application(for example, when you drag a mouse cursor across the window). Sound system is still in prototype stage
• sound alarm is playing on timers which did not start yet
• progressbars misalign when sond alarm is active

As was mentioned earlier, SmallTime had undergone a testing process to make note of bugs and inconsistencies, which are a dealbreaker for a full public release. Some of these can be fixed very quickly, some needed a deep dive into the program’s structure to get rid of them. 

But at first, lest mention a feature that will make downloading next version of SmallTime worth it even if you haven’t But first, let’s mention a feature that will make downloading the next version of SmallTime worth it even if you haven’t run into any of the bugs listed below. There will be a confirmation dialogue that will ask you if you really want to delete a task. This will eliminate accidental task deletion that could possibly happen because of the minimalistic design of the application. An image is shown below.

And now back to the bugs…

User input bugs plagued a beta version of SmallTime (currently version 1.8.2 in development) for a long time, but all major issues with user input should be fixed for good now. However, there are still more issues that need solving, and I will try to get everything ready before the end of this release cycle. If I will not be able to fix everything, there will be one more beta release.

Right now, there is a list of already known issues in the current open beta version of SmallTime (1.8.1)

• crash when inputting year lesser than 1000 (fixed for v1.8.2)
• crash when you leave a field for a year of a task empty (fixed for v1.8.2)
• crash when entering zalgo into the task description field (fixed for v1.8.2)
  • DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE VALUABLE DATA SAVED IN SMALLTIME 1.8.1 BETA!!! Your data may get corrupted!
  • definition of zalgo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalgo_text
• the user interface does not update until you move your mouse cursor after launching the application (fixed for v1.8.2)
• attempting to delete several tasks in a row without moving your mouse cursor causes the task editor to open instead of deleting another task (fixed for v1.8.2)
• writing characters with the ALT key modifier does not work because the application thinks that CTRL key is pressed when the ALT key is pressed (fixed for v1.8.2)
• it is not possible to set a task date on the 29th of February, which should be possible to do every fourth year
• nothing happens after you try to paste a copied text that is too long to fit into the task name and task description fields
• missing character sets for Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese languages
• the size of the main window does not scale precisely according to the number of tasks
• arrow for minimising the application does not point in the right direction when the window is snapped to the right side of the screen (a new icon will be made on full release)
• inconsistent text size across the application
• the information icon is too close to the left side of the task description window
• sound alarm plays more often when you are interacting with the application(for example, when you drag a mouse cursor across the window). Sound system is still in prototype stage
• sound alarm is playing on timers which did not start yet

Thanks to the technology I use (Rust programming language), the source of crashes was not hard to identify. There are more sources of possible crashes present, but they have a low priority because their occurrence is hypothetical in most cases. They will however get taken care of in the next release to improve the stability and reliability of SmallTime even in edge cases like partial corruption of data on your hard-drive.

This month I spent several hours on a little side-project to use in my portfolio to showcase the level and style of my work. It will also be used to test feasability of using frameworks and libraries (for example, graphical user interfaces) for the next projects. Calc New Roman is not officially released yet, and only the source code is available right now.

However, if you like, you can find the source code and build Calc New Roman yourself by following the link at the Download page

The time has come to release an open beta version of SmallTime (currently at 1.8.1). As was mentioned in previous blog posts, this is a complete rewrite of SmallTime, which is optimised for much greater customisability options in future updates. After a very long pause without any new releases, I will return to a four-month release cycle, and you will get blogs with status updates more frequently.

Unfortunately, to make this release according to schedule, the testing process was rushed and some features had to be cut from this release, the reason being material and physical preparation for possible war. The Army of Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, and almost two months ago there were bombs and rockets falling 200 km (140 miles) from the borders of the Slovak Republic, where I live. Fortunately, brave Ukrainian soldiers pushed Russian forces far enough for me to live in peace and continue with my work.

Next (and previous) releases

Previous alpha release of SmallTime (1.8.0) was available to testers with a direct link into the SmallSkill lab. Its main purpose was to test if SmallTime would be able to launch on other machines and if it would be stable. Some crashes were fixed very soon after the closed alpha release. Thank you very much for your time!

Target for 1.8.1 open beta release was to provide the same set of features as the old versions of SmallTime. This release will be available from the SmallTime page on this website, but it will not be visible on the main page. There are still small issues to be taken care of in the next release.

There is a detailed testing process planned for the upcoming version of SmallTime. The main focus will be to fix all little bugs and inconsistencies, after which there will be a full public release (version 1.8.2). With some luck, I could even bring in some of the new customisation options.

Known issues:

• some UI elements are not placed correctly
• sound notifications are still in a prototype stage and are very cpu-intensive (this will be optimised later)
• scrolling in task description field of task editor is not available yet
• some features are not properly tested yet

Download link for Windows:

That is all for now. Oh and another thing… since some parts of this website broke down for some reason without any editing done, I will test this website and fix/update anything that is broken or did not age well since I will have free time capacity to do so. For now, enjoy the new release!