Financier Forums

Alright, if you haven't noticed already, the development updates have been few and far between lately. Attached is a picture of the primary reason.

Another Monday Tuesday Update: Ummmm... well... life has chucked a few lemons my way over the last couple of weeks. Had a few significant family issues pop up, work has been up and down, and I was let go from the band I've been playing with since January this morning (I'm not really heartbroken about that). We just got back from a 5 day road trip vacation, and I get to take my car in next week to find out why the dashboard was lighting up like a Christmas tree over the last 250 miles. It's been a summer to remember to say the least. Side project development time has been zero while dealing with and sorting all of that out. But enough about me. How are you guys doing?

Monday update: Thousands upon thousands of lines of code added, removed, or changed so far. The next update will be a hefty upgrade, and not just a layout redesign like I had planned. There are a few new features in the works that will make managing your budget complete (add/edit/remove budgets, add/edit/remove accounts, etc.). It's a good time to fill those gaps in as I go through the app structure page by page. I'm also learning how to add some flair like menus that slide up down smoothly, or modals that fade in and out. Some of that stuff isn't necessary, but it makes the app feel a lot nicer to use. I've been putting in about 2 to 3 hours per night and it's been a slow, tedious process. When I get closer to having a functional app, I may put together a "beta" site (without syncing enabled) that you can play with or test without interfering with your main budget.

Wednesday morning update: Spent 4 hours fighting with the new layout stuff last night after discovering that list scrolling was not working as it should on my iPhone (header wasn't locking to the top, and kept scrolling off screen). Rage quit and went to bed with zero new lines of code written for the evening after trying what I thought was everything under the sun. Woke up and something clicked...

Changed 4 lines of code and scrolling works again. I think that's enough to call today a total success.

I often have to stop and ask myself, "How on earth did I end up in this situation?", and it's usually self inflicted. The app style/restructure overhaul is going to take some time, mostly due to the tedious task of undoing all of the Frankenstein code I wrote. I spent most of the week refactoring the same 3 or 4 files (over, and over, and over, and over) until finally landing on a structure that works and can be cleanly reused throughout the app. It's only the tip of the iceberg, but a lot of the design decision making process is out of the way. Now I can stick to my new personal guidelines, rebuilding every page piece by piece. When I'm done, I will try to tally up the total number of lines changed throughout the project.

I did have one small but notable victory. If you have ever entered a long memo for a transaction that also has a long category name, you might find that the two values overlap in the account transaction list. I finally figured out how to property implement truncating of the memo with and ellipsis (...) when it collides with the category name (It's really not that difficult).  Actually, I haven't gotten to the transaction editor yet, but I figured out how to do it in another location. That issue has been on my hit-list for way too long.

Yes, displaying a list of the 3 most frequently used categories after selecting the payee is definitely possible. In fact, the app already does something similar in reverse when entering a transaction from the budget view for a specific category. It calculates the three most used payees for the category, and displays it above the full list. The logic should be the same for showing a list for showing a list of frequently used categories if the payee is set first. The app can still auto set the category to what was used for the last transaction, and the frequently used list will make it easy to switch for situations like you describe.

I run into the same situation often when I go to our local grocery store that has a gas station out front. When I have to enter two transactions in a row, one for food and one for filling my car up, it’s a toss up if the auto suggested category will be correct next time. Although, I have another secret project in the works that might take care of this issue...

v1.2.1 released: Polished up payee manager list. Added "clear all selected" button. Enabled budget loading when navigating directly to the payee manager.

This update sponsored by: Coffee.

I should also mention that I fixed a bug where you could use the calculator to divide zero, creating a transaction with an infinite amount. Sorry, no more free money.