HN Explorer

Show HN: my new app Timebar has a clever UI (I think)

81 points by markchristian ↗ HN
Howdy, gang; After almost two weeks of sitting in Apple's approval queue, my new app Timebar is finally available.

I think it has a pretty innovative UI feature, so I wanted to float it by Hacker News.

It's a timer app that turns your Mac's menu bar into a sort of virtual hourglass. Your menu bar starts out tinted blue (or whatever colour you pick) and it slowly drains from right-to-left until your time is up.

It works very well for situations where you want to keep track of time, but don't need to be super precise. The menu bar is easy to glance up at, and it doesn't take long to happen subconsciously.

Here are a few promo codes. I'd love to hear you you think. :)

  MYE99WJXFW4R
  936LKT4MF49W
  PLKYNNKH4ETN
Your pal; — Mark

Web site: http://whimsicalifornia.com/timebar/ App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/timebar/id617829225?mt=12 Twitter: https://twitter.com/timebar

59 comments

[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] thread
mlebel
Another beautiful Mac App from you, Mark.

Look forward to using it.

-A dedicated Dragondrop user

jarin
This is simple but awesome. I like this way better than my current pomodoro timer. I left a review.

I don't want to see the app all bloated up or anything, but an audible alarm would be nice, as would having a few saved timers (so I could start a pomodoro or a break with a single click).

markchristian
Sounds are a great idea. I'll have a noodle on how I can add that without cluttering things up too much.

As for separate pre-defined timers, that's a pretty good idea, but I'm not entirely sure how to do that without making it quite a bit more complex. That being said, I do plan on adding AppleScript support and some Alfred workflows, so I think we can definitely get things cookin'. :)

pyvek
Very clever use of the menubar to show timer progress. Blends in nicely without any distraction.
[dead] dgroves
Well that sucks, I don't use the app-store because I am against it for a thousand reasons. But I thought, what the hell I am going use a promo-code and give this guy some feedback.

So I go through the trouble of actually giving apple all that invasive information they want in order for you to download anything, and all the codes have been redeemed and only one person seems to have honored to provide you a review. :(

And in the 12 minutes it took me to create an HN account to post this story, two more reviews show up. :(

Its just not my day evidently.

richo
Nicely done!

Super innovative. Maybe I'm retarded.. what are the promo codes for?

Jackim
He's got it on the Mac App Store, giving away a few copies.
richo
I spent a while trying to work out where you are meant to enter them.

I like to think I'm reasonably clever, but apple's interfaces make me feel like a luddite.

grimgrin
I assume it should work fine with something like "30 seconds" or "1 minute", right? It's moving very slowly. About 2 inches in the past minute (set for 1 minute).

Oh another thing, I like that you offer a snooze when the timer runs out. I think that you probably left it silent because noises may seem to defeat the purpose. It wouldn't be terrible to allow the user to browse for an audio file, though.

I want the subtleness of the gradually emptying menubar, with maybe pulse.ogg to play at the end, or something. Just an idea.

markchristian
Eek; it sounds like you've hit a bug. Can you email me some more details? m@rkchristian.ca. Sorry!

Oh, yes — an audible alarm is a great idea. I'll explore that for the first update. I hope to start hacking on 1.1 with my lady tomorrow night. :)

jpettersson
Great work! This will be my first attempt at a timer based approach to task management. I've been meaning to give it a try for a while and this UI was just too neat to not try.
markchristian
Thank you! I'd love to hear how it ends up working out. Drop me a line sometime — m@rkchristian.ca or @shinypb.
kcoop
Nicely unobtrusive. And the approach of showing progress rather than a pedantic number is a clever innovation - much more relevant for many uses.

Is there a way to pause it?

markchristian
No, there's no way to pause it right now. I will add this to the feature request list. Thank you!
ruswick
The idea is novel, and I certainly commend you for being audacious with the UI. However, this is not worth the money for me. The app's functionality is not particularly distinct from any other timer app. The UI is nice, but I honestly don't see how it's worth what you're charging, at least for the way in which I use timing apps. Timers generally tend to be utilitarian and pretty trivial in their functionality. I'm perfectly content with a free timer, irrespective of the UI.

You might have a hard time attracting customers, especially in a market so overcrowded and with so little room for differentiation.

donaldguy
Pretty awesome.

Some suggestions:

  * Pause? (possibly autopause on screensaver/sleep/lock)
  * Re-label "Cancel" as "Stop". When I accidentally started a timer longer than I
    meant I overlooked it and quit/reopened the app instead (Maybe I subconsciously
    assumed cancel would just dismiss the window/popover?)
  * The slider is not a very rapid time entry method, if you expect to ever want
    different times. I'd suggest instead:
    * basic time parsing for rapid entry (e.g. '5m', '15m', '1.5h'). This would be
      more useful, to me, than being able to label the reminder.
    * or hotkeys for common lengths (e.g. ⌘1 for 5m, ⌘2 for 10m, ⌘3 for 15m when
      popover focused -- or user configurable alternative)
    * combined with a global focus hotkey (possibly assigned through an external 
      handler), this would make starting a timer for a given length without taking
      hands off the keyboard possible... which seems worthwhile to me
Anyway, just some thoughts.

Overall, super cool.

Edit: Alfred workflows (which I saw you mentioned below) for common times would also do a pretty good job of what I was saying

markchristian
Thanks for the ideas. To run through 'em:

* Timebar actually compensates for sleep, so if you set an 8 hour timer at 12 PM, it will finish at 8 PM even if your computer was asleep for some of the time in between. * Definitely going to re-label this; there are a few little UI tweaks in the pipeline. Keep the suggestions coming; they're very welcome. * So, the very first drafts of this were built around the idea of a natural language text field for setting the time. I ended up abandoning it because a) I have no experience with NLP and b) since it's a menu bar app, your hand is already on your mouse/trackpad — not your keyboard. I think the Alfred workflows will go a long way towards letting power users work at warp speed. :)

miles_matthias
This is a pretty neat idea and I can definitely appreciate the time you've put into it! The only reason I didn't pull the trigger to buy it is because I'm a heavy full screen user, so I hardly ever see my menu bar while working. I suppose I'm not your target user, but feedback nonetheless.
thenduks
The app handles full screen mode (3rd of 4 screenshots on the app store).
markchristian
Yes sir, the full screen support was actually the longest part of my development! :) I ended up open sourcing a little bit of code from Timebar — code to detect when the user is switching to/from a full screen app. https://github.com/shinypb/FullScreenDetector
miles_matthias
Ah so it does. Nice! I'll be giving this another go around in the morning then :)
amartya916
Indeed the UI is quite nice; liked the snooze button too. Do you know if iOS supports anything similar? I know that it allows for app specific colours for the status bar, but perhaps this sort of control is impossible...because I'd like this on an iPad too :).

Off topic: Does DragonDrop (your/your company's other app) still under dev/support? It stopped working for me after Mountain Lion hit and I miss it.

markchristian
Yes, definitely still under development and support! It supports Mountain Lion. Can you email me so we can troubleshoot it? m@rkchristian.ca

First pass at support: do you have any other mouse-related software installed? Some Microsoft Intellimouse support software has been particularly troublesome.

rbchv
A video would be useful. I skim read too much to actually get how the animation is supposed to look like.
markchristian
Fair enough. I've been trying to think of a good way to do present it — you really need to see the full screen to get how subtle and delightful the effect can be. I am still iterating; thanks for the vote towards a video.
srik
Mark, The link to the developer website on itunes is misspelt.

Nice App BTW.

marcamillion
Wow....this is not what I expected, but it is surprisingly clever.

I accidentally bought it - and immediately thought....oh crap, I am going to regret it.

But...after seeing the clever use of the top menu, I don't.

Good job!

kawera
I just bought it; great idea and execution! Some feedback:

- Pause: say I set it to two hours and sometime later a client rings and we have a 30min conversation. A pause button would be very helpful.

- Full screen mode on 10.7: the bar isn't narrower than on normal mode.

- A way to set the default snooze length

Good job!

markchristian
Thanks for the suggestions. - Snooze is a very good idea - Eek. I will look into this. - I definitely want to play with snooze length a bit more. At the very least, I plan on making snooze interval be MIN(time_interval, 5 minutes) — that is, if you had a 1 minute timer, you'll get a 1 minute snooze.
jzting
Very clever! Some feedback:

* Text can get truncated sometimes: http://f.cl.ly/items/1G3L1F2D3P032T2F3m3E/Screen%20Shot%2020... * Is it possible to change the actual menu bar color? The overlay kind of makes it hard to make out the other items in the menu bar. Maybe an opacity setting would help.

markchristian
Thanks for the bug report; will fix in 1.1.

You can change the overlay colour by clicking the blue rectangle next to the menu bar preview.

awef
Good idea! Two things:

- Spotlight searches makes it flicker

- Make it narrow for non-native (i.e. not only lion style) full screen aswell. It's awfully disturbing together with full screen iTerm, MacVim etc.

Other than that it's quite neat! I'd rather have it fill than empty though, maybe make that an option? ;)

markchristian
I'll see what I can do about the flicker; thanks.

I'm not sure I can detect whether another app is non-natively full screened, I'm afraid. I'll give it a poke, but to be honest, working with full screen stuff is a bit difficulty on OS X. The APIs aren't super comprehensive.

Filling up rather than emptying out is a fun idea; I'll add that to the ol' feature request list.

eitland
Cool.

A kind of similar app that I used when I used Mac: http://www.grandtotal.biz/Alarms/

One of the few things I miss on Linux and one of many I miss on Windows.

(Please let me know if you know about replacements.)

fmavituna
It's not as functional as these but couple of years ago I quickly coded a timer for Windows - https://code.google.com/p/fst/ - "Freakin' Simple Timer for Pomodoro Technique"

You quickly enter time such as "30m" and it'll ping you when time is up, you can optionally enter a reminder text as well.

huhtenberg
Consider adding a screenshot of the menu bar acting like a progress bar to the website. It's the most interesting visual and it's missing.
jgeerts
Yes, I had to read the description on HN to actually understand what it does so this is a good suggestion.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
morphar
I don't need this at the moment, but I think it is a very nice idea! At some point in the near future, I will probably find a use and buy it ;)

+1 for adding a screenshot on the website.

trumbitta2
There's something strange going on with your website...

I expected to scroll a bit to read more about the App and see more screenshots, but as you know that wasn't possible.