I added the second-biggest efficiency improvement since supporting the Enter key in the task input field. Also, this release is probably the last of the version 1 branch.

The latest version can be grabbed from GitHub.

Version 1.3 contains a few improvements to make it faster to switch between tasks. First, the dropdown box that contains the suggestions based on the input automatically shows itself every time the task input field is displayed. You can now also manually trigger the suggestions with the Down key in case you closed it (e.g. by deleting all content or pressing the Escape key). To make this actually useful, the “last-used” timestamp is now used to sort the list of suggestions by recently used items. This way you always have the latest five tasks immediately visible and can quickly select one without having to think about the name and then type it. Of course, starting to type still narrows down the list. Although WorkTracker can also be used with the keyboard, using it with a mouse should be equally fast.

Perfect segue: I have fixed a few bugs regarding keyboard shortcuts. During translation I forgot to mark certain localized strings to be usable with Alt- combination. Now, all buttons can be triggered by a key combo again.

Lastly, I added the option to close the summary view. Previously, if you peaked at a snapshot of the data you had to live with the application window being expanded until you started or stopped a task. Now you can simply close the summary view again. In addition to that, there are less restrictions that would hinder you to open the summary view. Unless you have no active work day or are in the middle of entering a task’s name you can always show the summary.

With this productivity feature now finally being implemented, the application is now in a state where I would call it “final”. Unless there are some major or embarrassing bugs, there won’t be any more 1.x releases. Since I’ve already been using this version for some time now I’m pretty sure it is stable.

I’ve heard talk at work that we may be introducing a professional work tracking tool for all our developers. That makes the future of this little application a bit unsure. I have already mentioned some ideas but since I’m probably the only one using WorkTracker and I may not be needing it any more in the future this could very well be the end. I can’t say. It certainly is the perfect playground for Qt based technologies…