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TimeKeeper Change History

June 28, 2009

I hadn't look at this application in years, at least since 2004, and even back then, it was only a cursory glance. Over time, TimeKeeper hasn't kept up with the latest web browsers. Although it uses nothing but ancient JavaScript, it wasn't working with IE7, IE8 and Firefox3. I took a quick look at it and updating the cookie expiration date got it working in IE7.

It doesn't work in Firefox 3 and I don't know why. Firefox shows the cookie as a session cookie rather than a permanent one. After all, TimeKeeper was developed during the era of Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape Navigator 4. I didn't update the online version as that had some special zaps and I've forgotten what they were (probably just adding the menus - but TimeKeeper was meant for offline use anyway).

May 7, 2004

Minor changes.  First time users will now have the Resume, Suspend and End buttons disabled. No longer restrict the changing of the background color feature to only IE. Neatened up the UI a bit (the stuff at the bottom is now centered). The Help window now has a white background.

February  9, 2004 

Changes to web pages only, to bring them more in line with the design of the rest of the web site (headers, footers, CSS). Minor cosmetic changes to the TimeKeeper OnLine page.

November 7, 2001

The four buttons that drive TimeKeeper are now dynamically disabled when appropriate. For example, when the timer is off (you are not working), the only active button is the one to start a new work day. Disabling buttons has been tested with IE5. It should also work with IE4, IE6 and Netscape Navigator v6. It does not work with Navigator v4. If you click an inappropriate button in Navigator v4 a JavaScript error window is displayed which is the way TimeKeeper used to work up until now.

September 9, 2001

Minor stuff: The main status window now says current directory rather than current project. Upped the max number of minutes allowed in a reminder from 360 to 540. Added maxlength=99 parameter to input text boxes for comments and reminders. Added maxlength=3 parameter to input text box for reminder minutes. Bolded keywords in the help window. Added tests for the success of both window.open commands

September 5, 2001 

Minor tweaks to reminders: The title of the reminder window now has the first 20 characters of the reminder text so that it's visible in the Windows Task Bar. The reminder windows now say that they can be minimized and warn about loading another web page into them. Updated the usage notes page. Both the online and offline versions are now in synch, previously the online version was older code. 

September 4, 2001

Added reminders to the off-line version and a write-up about them to the online usage notes. Also added a technical discussion of how the reminders are implemented to the Technical Notes page. Note that reminders work much better with IE5 than with Netscape Navigator v4. 

September 3, 2001

Got rid of the debugging information in the online version of TimeKeeper. Neatened up the comments section on both the online and offline versions. 

September 2, 2001

Fixed new user problem in the offline version. The first time a new user invokes TimeKeeper, there are no TimeKeeper cookies to be found. The cookie parsing routine, incorrectly issued an alert saying there was an error. The only error was in issuing the alert. Finished the usage notes page. Made the debugging information (the display of current cookie values) optional which cleared up a lot of junk at the bottom of the page (it defaults to being off). This was only of interest to me and the look of TimeKeeper is much cleaner. See the Technical Notes page for more on debug mode.

September 1, 2001 

Major re-write to the offline version. In the old days, TimeKeeper used a separate cookie for each data field. The online version still works this way. The offline version now has a single cookie with all twelve variables needed to maintain the current state of a project. User interface changes were minimal. This change was made in preparation for giving TimeKeeper the ability to handle multiple projects. 

The TimeKeeper cookie is named "TimeKeeperProject". Any other input cookies are ignored. In the cookie, all the variables for a project are mushed together and separated by the "|" character. Up front, the new cookie is read and parsed into a bunch of globally shared variables. At the end, all the globally shared variables that have a value are saved back into the single TimeKeeper cookie. Variables that have no value are always indicated by the string "*not found*". 

The new function getCookieByName returns one cookie. The old function, getCookieData has been deleted. The new function ReadCookieSetupVariables is the only function that reads the input cookies. It sets up the globally shared variables. All processing is done on these globally shared variables. This too was done in preparation for handling multiple projects, code that references the globally shared variables will not need to be changed. 

The code used to zap the background color when the page is being loaded has been improved. A count of the cookies has been added to the debugging section when displaying formatted cookies. 

August 29, 2001 

Fixed looping problem in the offline version in the routine that reads the cookies. It caused IE to say that the script was running slowly and offering to abort it. 

August 2, 2001 

The page is now re-loaded after the background color is changed. This was done to write out the cookie with the new background color. Debugging information was moved to the very bottom of the web page.

August 1, 2001 

The duration of a work interval is now calculated in one place rather than two. It's in function CalculateMinsWorked(). Three globally used date/time fields are now calculated in one place rather than multiple places. They are consolidated in function SetupDates(). For use in Reset processing, I verified that subtracting 7 seconds from a date object that is only a couple seconds past the hour, appropriately reduces the minutes field. Deleted all references to the deprecated variable TimeStarted. Debugging information now includes a formatted display of the cookie values in addition to the unformatted display it always had. 

July 30, 2001 

The background color is now saved in a cookie when the user changes it. This cookie is read back every time the page is loaded and used to dynamically generate the <BODY> tag with the appropriate background color. Also fixed links at the bottom of page, some were relative rather than absolute. Current project is now displayed in the main status box next to the timer information. 

July 27, 2001 

Got rid of the Help on Tech button. Full technology notes and comments are now on this web site. 

July 26, 2001 

Added ability for IE users to change the background color. This is only implemented in the off-line version because the on-line version should keep the same color scheme as the rest of the web site. It is not implemented for Netscape Navigator users (see technical notes). It is not yet saved in a cookie, so the color change is reset on every page load. Modified the help text in the offline version to link to the online usage notes. 

July 24, 2001 
Changed the background color to be consistent with the rest of the gripes web site. Also started to maintain a version intended for on-line use and another version intended for off-line use, downloaded by users. 

June 2, 2001
Dynamically adjust the title bar. Every time the TimeKeeper web page is loaded, the first word of the title bar is always set to ON or OFF for the benefit of the task bar. The Windows task bar displays the first few characters of the window title. With this change, the first few characters are always ON or OFF, thus making it obvious whether the timer is on or off. 

May 11, 2001 
Changed background color to light green

February 13, 2001
When suspend, it no longer puts out a message box with the length of just ended interval. It was getting annoying. 
Display hours and minutes vs. just minutes 

Very old changes

  • Added 'Save This' warning at end of day. 
  • Fixed problem with deleting comments, now set to 'none'. 
  • Added a Welcome for new users. 
  • Renamed 'TimeStarted' cookie field to 'CItimeStarted' to better reflect its true purpose.
  • Save date that a work interval starts both at start of day and when resume.
  • Suspend now calculates length of current work interval using date and time, before it only used time. This means you can work past midnight.
  • Fixed problem displaying backslashes
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  Last updated: June 28, 2009 Previous Update: May 2004