Here is the latest news about Habitbot.
Edit streaks by day
February 20, 2013
You can now edit streaks by day, allowing you to review all the previous day's goals together in grouped form, like so:
Just go to streaks and click the "by day" tab.
I know progress has slowed down on Habitbot, but I intend to keep improving it. Stay tuned!
A first try at responsive layouts
January 11, 2013
A first try at responsive layouts went live today.
For the time being, I think this suffices for mobile access and I don't currently plan to do a native app because the interface is so simple and data-driven.
In other news, I fixed a bug involving the date migration from yesterday. Let me know if you have any issues.
At last: adjustable local timezones
January 9, 2013
Habitbot now lets you adjust the timezone you're in and will do correct date calculations accordingly. This should let international users use Habitbot and have due dates for goals be counted correctly.
The current default timezone for all users is GMT-8, the timezone of the west coast of the USA, because most of the users are from the USA.
If you want to adjust the timezone, you can do so at any time and it should do the right thing, adjusting the internal date at which you have until to do a task for the local time in that timezone. This is accessible from a new link that appears in the navigation, which takes you to the usual dropdown list of timezones you can select from:
New Habitbot feature: skipping days
January 3, 2013
Sometimes it’s natural to not complete a goal due to things like holidays. Hover over a goal and you’ll get a little clock icon that you can click to pass on achieving a goal for that day.
When you skip a goal, it causes that day to be excluded from streak calculations. So if you have a streak of, say, 3 then skip a day, it should remain at 3. Then if you completed that goal the next time it came around (the next day, say), your stream would then be 4, as if that day never happened. So in particular it won’t cause streaks to reset.
Habitbot changes, 1/1/2013
January 1, 2013
Happy New Year. Habitbot was made with the kind of goals people set for their New Years resolutions in mind. I hope you stick with what you set out on and that Habitbot helps you succeed.
Today I added a basic mechanism for revising past streaks in case you achieved a goal but just didn’t check it off on the date you did so. Existing users can check it out.
I also broke up the interface into a few different views: one for the current items to do, another for editing streaks, and another for editing goals.
It simplifies the starting page when you sign in and makes things a little nicer, I think.
A mobile client is on the way! I can’t promise an ETA, but it’s definitely planned.
Habitbot changes, 12/31/2013
December 31, 2012
- If a goal has a due date other than tomorrow, it will now have a due date next to it so you can see how much time remains on it.
- Parsing goals is now slightly more robust; variations in casing shouldn’t affect creating goals.
Remind yourself to pay rent with Habitbot
December 29, 2012
Habitbot lets you set goals for specific days of the month, like the following:Pay rent every first of the month
You’ll then get a checkbox that will appear on the first of every month with a due date for the next day.
Say goodbye to late fees and landlord drama with Habitbot!
New feature: incremental goals
December 28, 2012
Support for incremental goals, like “take the puppy for a walk two times every day”, has been added. It only applies to newly created goals, so if you have an existing one like this, you might want to delete it and remake it again.
When you make an incremental goal, the todo list will now show a counter displaying how much progress you’ve made. Checking off the box and clicking “done” gets you one step further to the goal, and when you reach the goal amount (two in this case), it shows it completed as two out of two.
The screenshots above illustrate how this currently works.
Recent changes, 12/28/2012
December 28, 2012
- Goals entered with trailing punctuation on them will no longer trigger an “invalid formatting” error message and will instead be parsed if the rest of the goal is correctly formatted.
- Added a modal dialog to edit goal descriptions. I’m not yet entirely sure how to handle editing changes to starting dates and frequencies, because they change the meaning of a streak, so for now I’m punting on the issue and just making only the description editable. I might revisit the issue in the near future.
- Added a modal dialog to confirm before deletion.
- Better handling of goals that occur on specific days of the month (such as “pay rent every first of the month”).
Recent Habitbot changes, 12/27/2012
December 27, 2012
- Fixed handling of weekly goals so that they appear as a todo item for a week as seems reasonable.
- Fixed a bug where weekly by-day goals had the wrong due date and were showing up on the wrong days.
- Added a link to this blog on Tumblr on the navigation bar.
- Spruced up the homepage a bit with a screenshot.
- Goals with URLs in them that begin with http:// or www. should be turned into clickable links. So “Visit www.google.com every day” will give you a clickable link. “Visit google.com every day” will not.
12/26/2012 Screenshot
December 26, 2012
Here is what Habitbot currently looks like for my account.
What is Habitbot?
December 25, 2012
Habitbot is a simple, free tool that lets you set goals you want to accomplish on a regular, recurring basis, like going for a walk or practicing piano every day.
The goal is to help without getting in your way. So, it has a very small feature set and a very simple interface.
You type in goals in natural English, like: “Practice piano every day”. Habitbot will parse this and create a checkbox for you to check off every day.
It will keep track of how long you’ve consecutively completed a goal and display it as a “streak”. This is inspired by Jerry Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” technique.