One of the things I have to do when developing a new tracker for the Roundup Issue Tracker is test on mobile browsers. When I run into issues, I used to hook up a remote debugger. This usually requires finding a USB cable as wifi is less reliable.

I really wish that mobile browsers had a native console that I could use to see console.log output and javascript errors. While not native, MobileConsole by hnldesign provides quite a bit of power by including one script and one style tag in my HTML page. At 45k uncompressed (17k gzipped) it's sized between the smallest and largest mobile consoles I found.

I am a developer for the open source Roundup Issue Tracker. It has many use cases. One is to develop issue trackers like GitHub Issues, Bugzilla, or Request Tracker. I also develop a custom issue tracker for a help desk environment. This article describes the steps in adding a task-timing feature for that tracker.

A user requested a task timer. The workflow:

• open an issue page,
• start a timer,
• start the task associated with the issue,
• use the issue page to document the work.

When done, the user would:

• stop the timer,
• finish documentation, attach files, and make other changes to the issue,
• submit the time and other changes.

There are a few decisions to make:

• timer functions
  • is start/stop enough?
  • is pause/restart needed?
  • does the user need to change/set/edit the timer?
  • do we need to track seconds, minutes, and hours? Since the customer is billed for the time, recording seconds seems excessive. Is there a scenario where the timer would need to record seconds?
• timer controls
  • do we use a button/buttons? Does checking a checkbox activate the timer?
  • what does the UI look like for each timer function? Are the controls in the issue page? Are the controls in a floating popup? Does the popup need to be movable/collapsible so it doesn't block access to the underlying issue?
• notification feedback
  • how is the user notified that the timer is running/paused/stopped?
  • how does the user see the elapsed time?
• future planning
  • how to add controls without cluttering an already complex interface
  • what impact will this have on adding future feature requests in the same context
  • does this guide us in implementing future workflows