TimeSnappermake timesheets a snap
The Automatic Screenshot Journal
TimeSnapper runs in the background of your computer, taking screenshots of your desktop every few seconds all week long.
Latest Release Notes
Please see TimeSnapper Wiki Release Notes where the latest notes are stored.
Previous release notes are still available on this page. See below.
Previous Release Notes
Version 3.5, September 2009- Plugin model enhanced considerably
- 3 sample plugins come provided with the setup file (not the auto-update). They are located in the TimeSnapper\SamplePlugins folder:
- RSS to Flags Plugin - Creates flags on the timeline (TimeBar) based on a RSS feed such as Twitter or Yahoo Pipes.
- Opening Hours Plugin - Defines "opening hours" for TimeSnapper, i.e. the time when TimeSnapper is actively taking screenshots.
- SQL Executer Plugin - For developers: Allows arbitrary SQL statements to be run against TimeSnapper database in order to extract or summarize data.
- See our wiki for some screenshots and more details: Wiki: Plugins
- Support for capturing URLs from Firefox 3.5.1
- Various minor improvements
- Long awaited plugin model! Enthusastic TimeSnapper users with programming know-how can develop plugins using .NET
- First plugin: "Export to animated .gif" pluqin.
- Accessible by selecting a range of activity on the TimeBar in the Day Browser, right clicking and selecting "Create Animated Gif"
- TimeSnapper Portable -- possible to run directly from a USB key
- URL capturing enhancements for website classifications / productivity calculations
- added support for URL capturing of Chrome 1.0xxx and IE 8.0 (beta)
- now captures localhost URL and etc.
- Day browser: Cosmetic enhancements
- Day browser: Play speed selected with (Slowest, Slow, Normal, Fast, Very Fast) etc. (But still possible to enter milliseconds directly into the box)
- Manual capture now works properly again ([Win]+[S] to bring up 'Shortcuts', then [M] for 'Manual capture' )
- New installations now store the snapshots and the database in a local appdata folder instead of a roaming one (which could cause problems)
- Automatic bug reporting includes some memory and OS information now
- ObjectDisposed error should not appear any more on systems under heavy memory load
- Upgrading from TimeSnapper Classic to Pro is now fully automated
- Day Browser: A decent zoom functionality finally! Now you can zoom into the screenshots more than before. Really nice for those capturing multiple monitors or those who need to take a much closer look at the screenshots.
- Day Browser: Categorize web sites as productive or non-productive like any other application! You can do it from the Productivity Wizard or directly from the Day Browser. You can also easily see if the current screenshot is categorized as productive or not.
- Day Browser: Ctrl-F5 refreshes/reloads the TimeBar
- Automatic Note Taking Reminder: New option in the automatic popup dialog (note taking reminder). Now it's possible to chose between:
- Showing dialog on top of all others (default behaviour)
- Showing dialog minimized and flashing like MSN (new feature)
- Activity Overview: Added URL and Domain to the list of available columns in the Activity overview dialog. You can of course group by them like other columns.
- Reports: Added a duration column to the Flags Reports. The duration tells the time difference between the current task and the next one (as long as it isn't a NOTE)
- Day Browser: Removed the +/- button. Use Ctrl-F to toggle between showing the toolbar or not.
- App: By default check for updates automatically (can be turned off from the options dialog).
- Bug fixes:
- TimeSnapper: Text Extractor has stopped working. Debugging in VS shows the error: InvalidOperationException: SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault must be called before the first IWin32Window object is created in the application (reported here)
- If we ran out of space while logging, the app would crash (case 2085)
- other minor bugfixes
- Program Statistics report improvements
- Statistics per web site finally! URLs captured for IE, Firefox (3.0, 2.0), Chrome
- possible to click IExplore / Firefox (not 3.0 yet) and Chrome to get a detailed breakdown of web pages
- show the hours as well as the percentage
- a total column at the bottom to show overall computer usage
- Some performance tuning when loading a day in the Day Browser
- Starts up a lot faster
- The following reports have been enhanced to include a link to the appropriate day in the Day Browser:
- Time Spent in front of the computer Report
- Productivity Score report
- Flags Report
- Disk Space Usage Report
- Assorted bug fixes and cosmetic changes
- Day browser - Timebar: show productive and nonproductive time as green and red in the timebar
- Day browser - Timebar: activity shown as all-blue if the productivity score panel is hidden in the day browser
- Day browser - Shortcuts: left and right arrow keys can be used to scroll between snapshots without having to set the focus specifically to the timebar. This is more consistent with how people expect this to work
- Automatic Note Taking Reminder: Previous Comment Text Behavior Inconsistent fixed.
- Activity Overview: Wild cards are automatically applied to program/window title search criteria
- Activity Overview: Minor Bug - Activity Overview Export to CSV
- Reports: Activity Cloud exclusion list made case insensitive
- Error handling: The TimeSnapper database (Firebird) is validated and fixed on startup should any errors be found. (FbException ErrorCode=335544344 and 335544321)
- Day browser - Timebar: removed a flickering problem when hovering over flags
- NOTE: This is a free upgrade for all existing customers!
- Great improvements to the Activity Cloud (word cloud) report:
- Click on a word in the cloud to zoom in. That generates a new cloud with only words related to the previously clicked word.
- Then click the "View Activity" link to see all activity relating to that word in the Activity Search dialog.
- More meaningful cloud because:
- Users can now configure what words/phrases to exclude from the word cloud
- Users can configure what words to keep together in the cloud, e.g. names
- Added the ability to import exclude lists from a file. This is useful to exclude frequent words from other languages
- Two word lists are shipped with the installation: "Top 100" word lists for German and Spanish
- Bugfixes:
- Multi-monitor screenshots were broken for users with "unusual" monitor placement (e.g. monitor 2 on the left of monitor 1).
- Program statistics report: firefox could appear multiple times in the report because of case sensitivity.
- Auto-popup: Allow users to enter Zero in "after X seconds of inactivity" in the "Auto-popup note-taking reminder configuration"
- Timesheet database integration: transactions switched off if provider is mysqlprov
- other minor bugfixes
- Technical:
- Moved to Microsoft .NET framework, version 2.0 which will ease adding multiple long awaited features
- Replaced the webbrowser control with a .net version of it (no need for interop .dlls anymore)
- New report: Activity Cloud. Shows a word cloud of accumulated windows titles for a given period. This can give you an idea really quickly about what you were doing on a particular day. Words that appear more frequently appear bigger in the cloud.
- New filtering controls in the reports dialog for easier date ranges selections
- Some minor fixes:
- TimeSnapper was unable to capture apps in Vista running with elevated privileges - normally Visual Studio as admin (UAC turned ON)
- Capturing (semi-)transparent windows in a multi-monitor setup didn't always work
- Saved Dialog positions should be ignored if out of bounds
- The bug report dialog now allows empty email address
- Check if the database version is later than the TS client
- Multiple retries for connecting to the database if db-file is locked
- Fixed problem that was continually logged if there was no BookingDefinitions.xml file.
- Bugfix: TimeSnapper shortcuts [Win]+2, [Win]+3, [Win]+4 always popped up a new 'Task' (as opposed to 'Break', 'Note', 'End of day' -- respectively)
- Bugfix: For computers with multiple monitors, the 'New Flag' dialog sometimes appeared off-screen. Now we make sure it's visible.
- Bugfix: Auto-popup always popped up a 'New Task' as opposed to the last used flag type.
- [Enter] closed the flag dialog, not possible to enter multiline comments (well actually it was possible using Ctrl-Enter)
- Fixed a bug in the Time Spent Report when users with interval set to more than 60 seconds got inconsistent time spent values.
- Task/issue tracking integration options: LookupDefinition.xml completely imported (with redirection fields, lookup queries can now map back to multiple fields in a flag.)
- Fixed a bug in the URL capturing
- Fixed date comparison bug when handling Hijri Calendar (ArgumentOutOfRangeException (ah.a) V2.6.0.0, at System.Globalization.HijriCalendar.CheckTicksRange(Int64 ticks))
- The red X over the TimeSnapper icon when TimeSnapper is inactive was made a little bit more petit
- Transparent dialogs are also captured
- TimeSnapper failed to start if Service Pack 1 of the .NET 1.1 framework wasn't installed.
- Rare: Application dimension problems
- New tab in the Options dialog: Timesheet. This is useful for integrating to 3rd party timesheet, task & issue tracking database via SQL (through OleDB)
- TimeSnapper now captures the URL of the active browser and stores it along with the screenshot. This functionality will be used in later versions. Currently it's of little use except for statistical purposes later on. Supported browsers:
- FireFox
- Internet Explorer
- Maxthon
- Crazy Browser
- A new navigation system, allowing you to navigate easily to any TimeSnapper dialog. This Go To menu can be accessed by right clicking anywhere on any TimeSnapper dialog.
- A new and much improved method for importing images from TimeSnapper Classic.
Also works very well if you've moved images around the hard drive when using Pro - then you can just re-import the images and they will get associated with the correct activity (therefore the quick filter will continue to work).
It even show a nice progress bar (allowing to cancel), as well as runs it in the background. - Greatly enhanced error handling. Errors can be sent to us automatically by a click of a button. If the error has been fixed, TimeSnapper will let you know immediately. This feature will increase the quality of the program even more!
- The Day Browser (where you play your day) got a little facelift.
- Play button bigger and the Timebar also
- The timebar now shows the time with AM/PM for those who have their Windows regional settings set that way (as opposed to the 24 hour format).
- Pressing Escape while playing will pause the movie. Pressing it again will close the window
- Smoother icons in the Productivity Wizard (by using the alpha channel of the icon)
- Minor bug fixes and optimizations
- Snapshots can be password protected and encrypted. This way if someone else had access to your machine, they can not snoop through your personal TimeSnapper history.
- Greatly enhanced error recovery/resilience when upgrading the database file
- Removed the "Task type" label from the autopopup config dialog
- Query tuning for the flags
- Show the program's friendly name instead of just "devenv.exe", for example.
- More meaningful product name when selecting productivity apps from the Wizard
- Fix for the Turkish culture issue
- In autopopup: show label containing previous/current comment
- Zoom In and Zoom Out of the TimeBar (experimental)
- Memory leak bugfix
- Multiple new reports.
- Program Statistics
- Productivity Scorecard
- Flags Report
- Time Spent in front of the Computer Report
- Disk Space Usage Report
- Productivity Calculator, configured via a Wizard interface (accessible from the Day Browser)
- Other minor changes and fixes:
- Range selection in the Timebar changed to confirm to Microsoft standards
- Timebar with a gradient color
- Flags created between 12PM and 1PM landed at 12AM and 1AM respectively
- Copy functionality in spreads fixed
- No lockup in the activity search when searching (threaded search)
- And a lot of other small things :)
- Possibility to extract text from images to the clipboard right from the Day Browser (Optical Character Recognition / OCR) if Office 2003/2007 is installed on the same computer (as well as Microsoft Office Document Imaging).
- New option in the Options dialog: Automatically start recording when TimeSnapper starts (same as using the /a command line parameter)
- A more logical algorithm for calculating idle/active time when selecting time-range in the TimeBar in the day browser
- Improvements to the "Find" dialog where you can search for screenshots
- Various smaller things and bugfixes
- Easier to see if TimeSnapper is active or inactive in the tray bar
- Configurable Global Shortcut key
- 'New flag' Auto popup
- Various smaller things and bugfixes
- Various GUI improvements
- New dialog, the activity grid
- Range selection in the day browser along with some basic statistics
- Various smaller things and bugfixes
Initial Release of TS Professional. Includes:
- Filters
- Quick Filters
- Flags (notes)
- Firebird database
- More context menu options in daybrowser
- Fixed a bug: System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException when shutting down TimeSnapper (when it was saving its settings).
- Better Vista support.
- Better support for computers with tight security policy.
- Feature: The Active/Inactive state can now be seen in the tray icon (if TimeSnapper is not recording, a big red X is on top of TimeSnappers icon.
- Feature: A balloon is shown for the first time when TimeSnapper minimizes to help first time users see where the program went.
- Fixed: System.ArgumentException: Item has already been added. This could happen when the user moved files around. TimeSnapper now has better handling for that.
- Fixed: In case the settings file gets corrupted (in case of operating system crash e.g.), TimeSnapper notifies the user and tries to recover as much as possible from the situation.
- Fixed: A very rare error when changing between days in the day browser (System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException)
- Various GUI improvements
- Fixed: OverflowException when TimeSnapper had been running continuously for few weeks (24.9 days to be exact:)
- Smoother scaling of images when the resolution is set below 100% (We us High Quality Bicubic Interpolation method)
- Improved error handling when archiving old files and folders
- Fixed: Some users experienced blank grey images
-
Feature:
Due to users request (as always!:) two, behind the scenes, parameters can be set in TimeSnapper's configuration file (settings.ini). They are:
-
TakeScreenshotAlsoWhenIdle (default false)
This could be useful if you have some applications that are updating throughout the day and you want to take screenshots of them also while you are away.
-
SkipScreenshotIfChecksumSame (default false)
This parameter is normally just useful in conjunction with the one above. Since you don't want you're hard drive to fill up with redundant images you can set this parameter to True and TimeSnapper will compare the current screenshot with the one previously taken.
-
We recommend turning off screensavers if you decide to
use the two settings above.
- Right click the image in the day browser and select "Image -> Open containing folder" to open explorer with the current image selected.
-
TakeScreenshotAlsoWhenIdle (default false)
- Resolution couldn't be set below 50%
- System.NullReferenceException in rare occasions fixed
-
Feature:
- Added "View Options" menu item when right clicking the TimeSnapper's icon in the system tray
-
Multiple "Day browsers" can be
opened through the use of
TimeSnapper's tray icon
-
Bugfix:
- The "Browse Day" screen didn't not show up in the Taskbar: "The other day I finally noticed I had several instances of the screen running, hidden from view by other screens"...
-
Bugfix:
- When Windows was shutting down, TimeSnapper didn't close automatically, thereby cancelling the shutdown
-
Form's X
button minimizes the application instead of closing it (like MSN
Messenger)
- Overflow bug when maximum allowed space was greater the 2047 MB. Now TimeSnapper allowes ca. 8000 GB which should be plenty for everybody :-)
