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Hi Mustafa,


You can easily open the countdown page to watch it while you work by clicking the Build Focus button in the toolbar at any time. Is that what you're looking for? Or is it that you're concerned this doesn't happen by default, clicking the button is annoying, and you'd like to automatically have the page stay open for you?


Thanks,

Tim

If you could change the length of the break/focus time, what would you change it to?


Would a continuous mode solve your problems? http://buildfocus.userecho.com/topics/22-allow-continuous-building-without-distracting-notifications/ It's not enormously difficult to implement this, but it does add complexity to the design and usage of the app, and doing both of these features does so even more.

This should happen already. I've just tested your facebook examples above, and they all work correctly for me. Are you seeing this not working with those examples, or in any other specific cases?

I'm afraid it's not that simple, sadly.


While some data on which tabs you've viewed is synced, that's not accessible from extensions, and you certainly can't do anything on the device with it from your computer (e.g. you can't throw up a block page, or fire notifications on the device). More importantly though, the data that does exist exists only for which Chrome tabs you've viewed, and the key thing for mobile devices is to be able to block apps too. It's definitely going to require a project in itself.

I've heard this in quite a few places. This is a definite feature that will be coming in future. Any ideas on UI? Something quite subtle would be nice, so you don't get too tempted and distracted peering round at everything, and to keep the main page and simple as possible.


I was thinking maybe UI-less: just click and drag on the city to move it around, and click and scroll to zoom in and out, resetting anytime you reload the page. How does that sound?

That's really interesting, it's very helpful to be able to hear your use cases. The long-term plan for this is full mobile support: if you get distracted by your phone, you'll fail Build Focus on your phone (...details TBC). Would that solve this for you?


I'd rather not try and make the chrome extension try and be too clever about things. It's probably always going to be wrong for somebody's use case, and I think it's better to try and keep it simple rather than adding too many extra options and rules.


One other thing that might help is http://buildfocus.userecho.com/topics/5-add-a-i-failed-to-focus-button-to-handle-distractions-outside-of-chrome/# - adding an 'I failed' button, so you can manually track when you've got distracted outside the extension. That's still to come, but shouldn't take very long once I actually find time for it.

I've updated the title of this to "Allow continuous building without distracting notifications", because I think that more clearly highlights what you're talking about. I'm quite interested in this, I'd definitely like to add something in like this eventually.

Indeed it could! Helpfully in fact, it already does. See http://buildfocus.userecho.com/topics/28-autopause-when-youre-away-from-your-desk/ for some of the discussion.


As of yesterday however it's now configurable, and by default pausing happens only when you actually lock your computer, not just when you're idle. If you're using the newest version (0.1.12 - you can check at chrome://extensions) that might be what you're seeing? If you don't have the newest version then it's actually turned on already anyway. The idle timeout is set to 1:30 at the moment.


This is definitely a feature that's still in flux right now though, I'm not sure exactly what's going to work out best for people. If you've got thoughts do throw them on the other thread linked above, I'm very open to tweaking and tuning this to find what works best for people.