A project timer is something I have been needing. I have trouble keeping track of hours for projects I have. I usually don’t worry about time traking for my personal projects, which is good because if I thought about all the time I’ve spent (wasted), I might take up a new hobby. But for contract work and for projects at mediaRAIN, I need to keep track of time I spend on each project. I always forget to write something down at the end of the day, and usually can’t remember how long I’ve spent anyway.
So, I made a project timer. It actually is built in Macromedia Flash, and made into a nice executable using mProjector. I have yet to start using it for my projects, but it seems to be working pretty well. I thought I would share it in case anyone else needed something like this. It only works on Windows right now, but mProjector can make executables for Mac, so I’ll look at doing a Mac version soon.
I used to have a screenshot of the app here. However, it’s flash, so why don’t I just put the swf up? Pretty small, unobtrusive, and hopefully usable.
To use, click on the world icon, enter in a new project, hit enter, and then click the green play button to start timing. You can add as many projects as needed and choose them from the drop down that appears when you click the world icon. The timer also minimizes to the system tray. You can make it stay on top of all applications from the right click menu, as well as close it down from there. It doesn’t use the registry or create any files of it’s own. It only uses the Flash SharedObject (which is basically a cookie for Flash). Also, if it works the way it should, you can look at a projects total time, the time for the current day, current week, current month, or even a custom time period. When you click custom, it will ask you for a start day. You can also put in an end day by adding a dash and another full date (e.g. “14/11/2005-18/11/2005″).
You may download the following:
flash_timer-mac-0.1.zip
flash_timer-win-0.1.zip
Hope it helps!
November 29th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Dude, Jac, this is great! But doesn’t your company have a license for m-projector so that fun little “This was used with an unlicensed blah blah doesn’t pop up?”
December 13th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
[...] The project timer I made a bit ago now has a Mac version available. I also updated the Windows version a little bit. I hope it’s useful! [...]
December 13th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
[...] Jac needed a quick and easy to use timer as well, so he just built his own. It’s built in Flash, and wrapped with mProjector so you can run it as a standalone executable. He has both Mac and Windows versions available. [...]
December 14th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
Hey Jac, this is a nice looking little tool. Does m-porjector give you the ability to do that system tray trick? I would love to know. It would also be great it this was a widget for the Mac. I think it would get a lot more attention that way when it was added to the widget site.
I also wanted to report a bug that I found. It appears there is a problem with the “custom” button. If you click on that and then select, say, week next as the new display option … you will notice that when you are in the “hit” stage of the week button custom is momentarily selected and displayed while the mouse button is depressed. This is reporducable with all other other options as well after this state is reached. I can send you a screenshot and exact repro steps of you like, you have my email. Good luck.
December 14th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I was told by Josh Buhler that there may be some issues to overcome when using flash in a Mac Widget. I’ll have to look more into that. It would definitely be nice.
Thank you for the bug report. I’ll look more into that. At least it’s not a show stopper, so I may take my time with that. :)
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:16 am
Thanks for such a simple Timer. I use the Mac version. It helps to tally the hours I spend on custom house plans when using my Cad Software. Thanks again.
February 7th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Excellent. This is just the timer that I need. While I have more advanced billing systems to use for complex assignments, the little jobs don’t make it worth entering all the data to fire up that system. I just needed something to give a good account of time on a project. Thanks for the effort… even the color scheme goes well with my desktop!
February 18th, 2006 at 1:57 am
I really like this timer! I use it to keep up with how many hours I spend on my school projects. Thanks for the download!
April 29th, 2006 at 4:29 am
Perfect! Just what I was looking for! I use it for tracking work for clients and invoice manually. Thank v much!! no more guessing and logging in notepad :-)
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Neat! Just what i needed. And I love the graphics :-)
How do you reset the time for any or all the projects? I can’t find a log where it stores the data. Did you say there’s a cookie?
Thanks!
October 23rd, 2006 at 2:46 pm
hey did you ever figure out how to convert the swf to a mac widget?
October 31st, 2006 at 1:35 am
wow, how awesome of you to share this! thank you so much!
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:35 am
thanks a lot,
thats exactly what I needed. Neat little tool:-)
thanks for sharing it, thats great!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
great. but is there a way to save time info between program starts? when i Quit and reopen, all info is gone. that’s bad, and renders it useless except as a kitchen timer.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
It should be saving the times for each project you define. Are you defining the projects first? Or just starting the timer?
April 11th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
i tried both ways. also, under 10.4.8, when i Quit, i get an error: “The application FlashTimer quit unexpectedly.”
also, i often get an error where the time looks like this:
0-4959:41:0-43
so far, simply awful. sorry, man, but i’m off to find something that works.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:33 am
Hi
I hope I’m not out of line here- I have been gazing at a couple of examples of timers-enviously and hopelessly-
Even if I duplicated the timer in the Flash tutorial examples or the others that I can see- I don’t seem able to figure out how I can use a timer to make a very simple thing I am attempting to construct timeout and go to the next scene.
I refuse to say I am feminine and therefore just plain not equipped for this-
We all have to begin somewhere and rely on others at some time or another.
Could you please explain how you get a timer to stop a scene playing and to go to the next scene
Thankyou
Penelope
October 27th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Hi,
Is there a way to zero out the time for a certain project without deleting the project from the list?
I need to start each project from 0:00:00 at the beginning of each month.
Thanks for this program. It is soooo much better than the Google Desktop gadget TaskTracker - which was crashing my system.
Robert
December 20th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Hi There. Seem to be having a problem downloading the Windows version of this :(. I get a page that says Lost probably meaning the file is not on the server anymore. I had gotten this nifty little app before but my previous computer is now pretty much inaccessible and started a new job. Boss was looking for a way for people here to keep track of time spent on projects better and told him about your fantastic little app.
Anyone know where, if its not going to be available here anymore, I can get it?
July 5th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Hello :) Thanks for sharing.
I’m having trouble downloading the windows version. It says that file can’t be found.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:50 am
Download doesn’t work. :(
August 12th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I’m sorry, I’m not supporting it anymore, but I DID fix the download link. Missed the file when moving to my new server.