Deadliner Word Count Tool
Posted under: Finito!
It’s ready! (well, hopefully)
After a month or so of wrangling, I think the Taven Deadliner application is now ready for public use.
What Is It?
What is Taven Deadliner?
It’s a simple tool that allows you to input your daily wordcount, set your own wordcount goals, and it will give you some feedback on how you’re doing.
It’s simple.
There’s not a lot of bells and whistles and extra gadgets and features. I like that. It does exactly what I need and not a whole lot else.
(Okay, I didn’t NEED multiple stylesheets, but that was too much fun to pass up, and I learned a trick or two by programming it.)
Future Features
It’s not finished.
Nothing like this is ever finished. I’d like to add some graphs, and just today I thought it might be fun to show the average actual wordcount per day … I’m sure new things will get added over time.
But it’s ready.
When you notice bugs or think of new features that would help you as a writer (and you will) email me at us@tavenmoore.com and I’ll prioritize them to be fixed.
I’m just one person though, not a big corporation. I can’t guarantee your data or your satisfaction or even that bugfixes will go out fast or that I’ll get graphing in soon.
Tool
I built a tool because I had a need, as a writer, for that tool.
I’d prefer to spend some time being a writer using that tool now, rather than constantly sharpening it so that others can use it. =]
Congrats! I can’t WAIT to try it out!
I’d also like to point out a very important line dropped in at the end of this post that will excite Tami Moore fans everywhere:
WOO HOO! What are you going to write first? When do you plan to publish? Come on, your fans want to know!!
willydd3´s last post ..Shifting Priorities–Chapter Three (Part 1)
<3<3
I've still got Choose going full-time, which is something I need to develop a plan moving forward for, while writing longer pieces.
HOWEVER, I do have a long Choose Vacation lined up as I release the extra content from Volume 2 (as an apology for taking so long editing it) during which I WILL (note: WILL) write Pony Express.
Period.
*glee*
Looks excellent, Tami, thanks!
Faith´s last post ..Marvin The Caterpillar Finds True Love #7
Thanks! It’s been awesome – I’ve used it for two days now (which, um, doesn’t mean the zeroes I have for the rest of the month are incorrect) and it’s been a great motivator for me.
Woot! Looks awesome! I love that you got the sharing option and alias :D You rock, madam! Thanks for creating such a useful tool!
*laugh*
“I don’t want to! It’ll be work! LOTS AND LOTS OF WORK! *whine, whimper, stomps foot*”
An hour later.
“Okay, done! *sparkle, happy*”
I swear, it’s like everything in my writing life goes this way.
<3
Quick question – when I click on the sidebar menus, nothing happens. Any idea why?
willydd3´s last post ..Shifting Priorities-Chapter Three (Part 2)
Do you have javascript turned off, perhaps? I use homebrew ajax to make the menus appear and disappear.
I have no idea – is there an easy explanation for how to check?
None that I could give you faster than a google search (not being trite – it’s different for every browser)
Usually you have to manually turn it off, though.
What browser are you using?
No problem, I don’t really want to take up your time (I want you to WRITE), and I feel kind of stupid for not searching in the first place!
However, I found something else interesting. The menus work fine until I log in and then nothing works.
Does that give your programming mind anything to work with?
Maybe I’ll try starting a new account?
No worries! That they work before you log in means it shouldn’t be a javascript turned off thing. I just tested it myself and I’ve got no problems with it. *groan*
I’ll test it in IE (things always break there) and see if I can find a clue.
What browser are you using?
May a paraphrase, since you’re too nice to say it?
“Answer the question, stupid.”
I seem to have trouble with directions such as
Anyway, I tried IE8 and IE9.
You must be so glad I stumbled across Saucy Ink and became a thorn in your side! :)
Oh gross, it looks like a LOT of the stuff is broken in IE.
Gads, I hate that browser. I’ll work on fixing it when I can, but given the scope of the problem, it may take me a little while. If you have an alternate browser to use in the short term …
… otherwise I will work on it asap. Thanks for the bug notification, that’s a BIG one!
What browser do you recommend?
Firefox is the most stable browser out there. I use Chrome because I like how minimal it is, but there are a few sites out there that do weird things with chrome.
Just finished finding the “solution” to the buggy javascript in IE. Fixing that breaks it in all other browsers – the javascript needs to be totally different for IE than anyone else I’ve tested in. (And, incidentally, different for each version of IE)
I can either figure out how to use jQuery for this or I’m going to have to put a warning up that it’s just not useable in IE. I don’t know why the stylesheet is unbroken until you log in AND the javascript works until you log in. that’s just weird.
Looks like the temporary warning is going to win, at least for the next week or so. All the “quick fixes” I’m finding break stuff in the other browsers, and some of the themes will need an almost complete overhaul to work in IE (like Wonderland, which is doing some mind-boggling stuff).
I will fix it – it’s a matter of pride! – but I’m going to edit Choose and entertain our guest this weekend rather than spending it grinding down my teeth in frustration at IE.
I AM grateful (despite what it may seem!) for the heads-up on IE’s brokenated nature with my app. *grin*
I didn’t mean to send you on this wild goose chase!
Glad I could “help!”
So, here are some things you might do. I’m a little rusty, but I bet this direction fixes most of your problems:
– DOCTYPE first, script in head or lower.
– Use an XHTML Transitional DOCTYPE or HTML5 DOCTYPE. HTML 4 loose makes IE render in “quirks mode” so that it’s backwards compatible with earlier browser (IE 5). A number of display issues with IE 6 are easily resolved by a simple DOCTYPE change.
– Use
.classNameinstead of.setAttribute('class'). If you want to use.setAttribute, do some javascript detection first (checking for something unsupported should return a null value). So, you could writeif (document.getElementById(thisid).setAttribute) { document.getElementById(thisid).setAttribute(...); } else { document.getElementById(thisid).className = "..."; }Hope that helps.
Brad-o´s last post ..My Pro-Life Policy
Ok, I gave in to peer pressure and I installed Firefox. Guess what? The Deadliner looks great!!!
@Brad-O
I’ll check into that when I dive into the IE issue again. Thanks!
@Willy
Woot! *kicks IE while it’s down*
@Brad-O
The doctype change doesn’t seem to have affected anything, but the javascript fix works in all the browsers I tested in (ha!) and doesn’t require browser sniffing OR jQuery. *blows kiss* Thank you!
Now I just need to get the css wrangled for IE’s rebel box model interpretation … but at least it’s USABLE now.
Thanks!
@Tami
The DOCTYPE should switch it out of “Quirks mode” (which may help with some of your box model issues — it’s a lifesaver for IE 6). The lack of a proper DOCTYPE causes this in IE. If you have IE 8 or 9, you can hit F12 to get at some developer tools and play around (including changing the rendering mode the browser is using). One thing you’ll notice is that some of your CSS properties get supported when you switch the render mode in IE 9.
In any case, I’d be more than happy to help out coding, if you want it. I’m busy, but I could use a late-night web project as a distraction. ;)
Brad-o´s last post ..My Pro-Life Policy
@Brad-O
The ways in which I am SO not adding to your workload, let me show you them.
I’ve read on the intent of the doctype, but in practice I changed it and saw zero alteration on screen display.
@Tami
In IE 9, your minorly curved boxes and the spacing between boxes work correctly outside of quirksmode. Maybe a DOCTYPE isn’t all you need. Maybe I’ve been in management too long. ;)
And I would be sooo willing to help. It’s that or I practice writing a 2D video game by stealing other people’s sprites and animating them (got a FF6 Sezter sprite to walk last night and have been tweaking my game loop and drawing to try and make it work better before actually accomplishing anything (my double-buffering is mildly too slow for me when I maximize the window (I know what you’re thinking. Why not use a game engine? Because that would defeat the purpose is why. (You might also be wondering if this response is in LISP at this point. (LISP is known for its excessive parenthesis. (This is just for people that didn’t know that. I’m not saying YOU didn’t know that. (Obviously.))))))).
Brad-o´s last post ..My Pro-Life Policy
@Brad-O
Emailing for the sake of my sanity. *laugh* Comment list is soooo loooong.
Lovely tool – thanks for sharing! I’ve tried to make something similar but as a standalone .xls file – do you have something like that in the works for sharing/download? Praps for a donation? ;) I bet you’d be surprised how many quarters you could earn.
I could do some of it as an xls file, but not enough to make me happy. PHP gave me a lot of date manipulation tools that allow me to customize the goals for each month (since the number of days is different).
Excel isn’t my preferred programming platform (though I know it’s very powerful) and I don’t think I’d be able to accomplish enough to make it worth the effort of building.