Why is the desktop interface and mobile app look so 2012?

[reava]

All love but it looks outdated af.

Wondering why that is since it seems to be successful enough to generate a decent income to pay programmers. Not to mention the potential.

[linux535]

Big fan off Beeminder but I do agree the UI is not the best. Also can be somewhat confusing to some people (my wife was a bit confused at first) Though I do like the graphs. Besides UI it would be nice there were better sorting options for goals.

[poisson]

I hang out in discord chats with people half my age on the regular, but I think this makes me feel more like an old man than anything that’s happened all year.

[philip]

@linux535

it would be nice there were better sorting options for goals.

Curious, as the person who designed the canonical sort order on the website: what would be better?

The default sort (‘deadline’) is the goal that derails the soonest, with pledge amount at risk as a tie breaker, then alphabetical (iirc).

The others (‘goal’, ‘pledge’, and ‘recent data’) are simpler, though sometimes it might be nice to click on the header again to reverse the sort order.

[linux535]

@philip

Curious, as the person who designed the canonical sort order on the website: what would be better?

The default sort (‘deadline’) is the goal that derails the soonest, with pledge amount at risk as a tie breaker, then alphabetical (iirc).

The others (‘goal’, ‘pledge’, and ‘recent data’) are simpler, though sometimes it might be nice to click on the header again to reverse the sort order.

For the default that works well. However it would be nice to be able to group via tag especially for the mobile app. So for example I could easily filter or group all my work goals while at work instead of looking through all my home and work goals. I know you can via browser via a certain tag but it is not apparent by just looking at the interface and it feels like it is harder to use than it should be.

[philip]

Understood! The whole tagging thing is so non-obvious that even I forget it exists.

[felixm]

For me, there are some goals that are usually red or yellow that I don’t want to process until the evening. In the morning, and during the day I just want them out of my way.

Like linux535, sorting or grouping by tags could solve that use case.

zzq’s altbee interface allows grouping by tags, but doesn’t provide the option to nicely fold done goals away.

I know that tagging is supported via beeminder, although, it doesn’t show up in the help documents (Search results for tag | Beeminder Help)? However, I don’t know how to filter by tag (as mentioned by @linux535). According to this thread, it’s only possible via altbee?

In my opinion:

1. Beeminder webinterface without zzq’s folding extension: Unusable with more than 5 goals.
2. Beeminder webinterface wihout tags/filters: Unusable with more than 20 goals (haven’t really been there until recently, but know I am pretty much annoyed every morning).
3. I (for the most part) only use the the Android app in the evening to enter my meditation goal, so that hasn’t been an issue for me, otherwise, I would call it unusable too.

[linux535]

@felixm

However, I don’t know how to filter by tag

To do it you add a # in the web address the the tags. For example if you want to filter by work tag then it would be ‘htttps://www.beeminder.com/linux535#work’. Though it must be done in a new tab.

[felixm]

@linux535

Though it must be done in a new tab.

Ah, thanks! I missed that part when I tried it out yesterday.

Well, that’s pretty cool. My bookmark bar now looks like this:

So, I have all goals, #day goals, and #evening goals. That even motivates me to create an evening goal for a daily review and intention setting session.

[linux535]

I have that bookmarked on work computer for work goals. Though I really would like to have it on mobile without having to have multiple web shortcuts on my phone. As 95% of the time I use the app for data entry.

[skorytnicki]

@felixm

but doesn’t provide the option to nicely fold done goals away.

This is possible in bui.interestingprojects.net

[skorytnicki]

But what’s the business for beeminder to invest at least 70k in new UI? To convert new users better? I would be very careful as a beeminder CEO to make such decision.

[alys]

@felixm

I know that tagging is supported via beeminder… However, I don’t know how to filter by tag (as mentioned by @linux535). According to this thread, it’s only possible via altbee?

You can filter by a tag (e.g., “exercise”) on your Beeminder dashboard like this: https://www.beeminder.com#exercise
There’s more details (e.g., two tags at once or negating a tag) at Advent 2022: 05. Tags for your Goals + Beebrowse & Altbee & BUI

The issue described in the thread you linked is that you can’t go from an unfiltered dashboard to a filtered one by just editing the URL and hitting enter. You have to either reload after hitting enter, or open the filtered view by entering the URL in a new tab. Similarly you can’t go from filtering by one tag to another tag without doing one of those workarounds. I believe this is because of the way browsers handle #... in URLs, rather than a Beeminder-specific problem.

[felixm]

These filter options are awesome! That’s all I would have ever asked for, and probably not $70k worth of development efforts? (I think most modern frameworks provide the infrastructure for filtering/sorting out of the box.)

Using BUI, is it possible to add data points directly from the goal overview page, @skorytnicki?

[felixm]

Thanks for sharing this information!

Yes, I am already resenting my new workflow with tags. Not being able to keep a certain tag active when navigating back from a goal page makes it too annoying to use.

I am going back to a single page, zzq’s folding extension, and adding data points as needed to get goals out of my way during the day.

[narthur]

My custom dashboard, bm.taskratchet.com, has tag filters. Though it doesn’t do anything to make it easier to modify your tags

[skorytnicki]

@felixm

add data points directly from the goal overview page

Unfortunately not.
I just wanted to get more information. I wanted not to reimplement but to augment beeminder.

I use iOS shortcuts and autodata to insert datapoints anyway. I think inserting data directly is not a good idea and should be avoided.

In beeminder, “read” operations are easy to implement, “write” is where you have to put the most of my 70k r&d budget

Why 70k: I’m speaking about 4 months of effort for a designer and a developer, landing page, documentation updates etc.

[zzq]

@alys

The issue described in the thread you linked is that you can’t go from an unfiltered dashboard to a filtered one by just editing the URL and hitting enter. You have to either reload after hitting enter, or open the filtered view by entering the URL in a new tab. Similarly you can’t go from filtering by one tag to another tag without doing one of those workarounds. I believe this is because of the way browsers handle #... in URLs, rather than a Beeminder-specific problem.

Seems like it should be easy to fix. When the page loads it calls a filterOnTags function with the hash’s value:

filterOnTags(location.hash.replace("#", ""));

If it did that not only on page load, but also whenever the hashchange event fires, it should work even when you just change the hash without opening a new page.

That is, I suspect that all that Beeminder needs to add in order to fix this annoyance is something like:

window.addEventListener('hashchange', () => {
  filterOnTags(location.hash.replace("#", ""));
});

[dreev]

Bingo / voila! You’re exactly right as usual, @zzq! Thank you for the UVI! This fix is now live

http://beeminder.com/changelog#4587

[linux535]

I have been wanting to learn more about web development. Was curious if you happen to know any good resources for learning?