Task Tracker

By Rik Heywood
28 November, 2001

If you are a fan of Joel On Software and especially his views on scheduling, then you might just like Task Tracker. It is a very simple task organiser that lets you keep track of what you are supposed to be doing, and spot as soon as possible when it is taking too long. Joel uses Excel, but I always got annoyed with Excel, as it was hard to group tasks, and completed tasks started to get in the way. I am probably just not enough of an Excel guru, so I wrote a tool to perform a similar task.

My other motivation for writing Task Tracker was to try and learn something new. It has been a few years since I wrote a proper Windows GUI application. I started out wanting something dead simple, but kept getting annoyed that the standard Windows list and tree controls were not really giving me the GUI that I was after. After a few experiments I decided to write a new control - the tree list control. It is the heart of Task Tracker and I am quite pleased with the way that it turned out. However, I am no expert in these areas, but if you think you are, then let me know what I am doing wrong. One thing I never got right was the scroll bars. I know why I get 2 scroll bars from time to time, but I have no idea how to solve the problem.

Task Tracker Features

• Group tasks together.
• Quick and simple entry of new tasks.
• Infinite undo and redo support.
• Attach long notes to tasks that are optionally visible in the GUI.
• Set tasks priority.
• Cut and Paste into MS Word and email messages.
• Sort tasks in numerous ways.
• Quick and simple way to note that you have done some work on a task.
• Overview of time remaining.
• Export to HTML, XML and MS Project.

You can learn more about Task Tracker, download and evaluation version and even buy your very own copy over at www.positive-g.com.