Cosmetic Suggestions

[Bjl2AtCbordDotCom]

These are minor cosmetic issues and suggestions, based on version 20.1.45 alpha:

• Setting to Dark Mode does not seem to do anything on Windows.
• Personally, I only type in the Effort time and date fields; the dropdown lists are distracting, to me. I found that if I directly edit the TaskCoach.ini file, I can set effortminuteinterval = -1, and effortsecondinterval = -1, and that disables the dropdowns in the minutes and seconds field. That manual change gets reverted, the next time I save preferences in the application. It would be nice to have that option in the Preferences -> Features dropdown lists.
• Personally, when recording a new effort, or editing an existing one, I am only concerned with the time when I started and stopped working on them, and I use the keyboard to record those times, so the new Time spent and Duration fields are distracting, for me. It would be nice to move those below the Stop field, and make the tab order move directly from Start to Stop.
• The highlight color inside the edit effort dialog Start and Stop time and date fields has changed, recently. It used to be a darker blue; now it is light blue. Since the highlighted text color changes to white, this makes a low-contrast between background and foreground, making the highlighted text difficult to see. Notably, the darker blue highlight color remains in the Task field in that dialog, and the checked checkbox, next to Stop; it is only the Date and Time fields that have the light blue.
• When tabbing between fields in the edit Effort dialog, the checkbox next to Stop has no visual indicator that it is selected (i.e. that the tab order has landed on that field).

[Bjl2AtCbordDotCom]

Adding to the above:

I have noticed (on build 2.0.1.53 alpha), that when I change the start time for an effort record that already has an end time, the end time automagically changes. For me, that is undesirable behavior. The start and end times (to me) are original data; the duration between them is just a calculation.

[wolftune]

Oh wow, I agree, this feels very bad. I just noticed an interesting quirk though: After the automagic and unexpected change to the end time, when I went to undo, it undid the automagic change first, without undoing the start time (though I could undo that with another undo)

This seems analogous to cropping a picture or similar where the default should not be to lock the dimensions proportionally but that is good as an option.

This relates to the new "duration" setting being used as a setting rather than a calculation. In the task dates, there's "implicit" which I think means derived (from whatever the dates are). I think "derived" might be better word. Anyway, we need the same setting for Efforts.

Opened issue #324

[wolftune]

Overall, I think these concerns all justify opening issue tickets. These aren't just opinions and vague ideas to discuss, they are specific problems that need to be resolved. Thanks for bringing them up. Please feel free to open individual issue tickets, especially with details like screen capture and such.

[wolftune]

Opened issue #328 for second bullet

Personally, I only type in the Effort time and date fields; the dropdown lists are distracting, to me. I found that if I directly edit the TaskCoach.ini file, I can set effortminuteinterval = -1, and effortsecondinterval = -1, and that disables the dropdowns in the minutes and seconds field. That manual change gets reverted, the next time I save preferences in the application. It would be nice to have that option in the Preferences -> Features dropdown lists.