Automate Work / Break Cycle

[balajikris]

Give the users a choice in preferences section (called 'auto mode')
which makes the extension to go in a work / break loop. This removes the
need to manually intervene to flip the work/break switch.

To Do: International strings. I have updated only locales\EN.

Future Improvements:

1. This option wont work well with Notifications. users won't see
   notifications because we
   dismiss them on onStart when the next cycle begins. Users may
   potentially notice
   notification appear and disappear in a flash. This is minor annoyance or
   sometimes un-noticeable. We can potentially uncheck Notifications, When
   Auto-Mode is set.

2. I haven't addressed when the work / break loop expires. This will go
   on in a loop. The user has to uncheck auto-mode option to break out of
   the loop.

[matchu]

Cool, thanks for the request! We've talked about an Auto Mode and similar variations in the past, and I think your hesitations are spot-on: how does the user break the cycle? Who's even using this: folks on work-only machines? If so, is the feature all that vital? If not, figuring out how to seamlessly enter and exit Auto Mode will take a lot of thought.

I suspect—but am not certain—that variants of Auto Mode might be using a sledgehammer to address a pretty simple shortcoming in the extension: the ability to cheat by taking extra-long breaks. I'm considering less aggressive ways to resolve this issue in the 2.0 release, one of which is to re-block sites after the break phase completes unless the user explicitly indicates that they're done working. (The original version didn't include this in case users were doing something uninterruptible during their breaks—not a great idea on their part, but I don't want to suddenly shut a user out of what they're doing, either—so I'm considering giving users a 30-second warning before the end of the break so they can wrap up whatever they're doing.) I'm also looking at the ability to schedule the cycle in advance, sorta like a mini-auto-mode in which the user decides to temporarily enter that cycle for a specific amount of time. The all-or-nothing approach, though, I think takes things too far, and we should address that concern before moving forward.

It's also worth noting that I'm expecting the 2.0 release to include a significant restructure of the codebase, so I'm not likely to merge any big features directly right now :/ I'll keep y'all posted on that.

Anyway. Interested in hearing your thoughts on how to polish this UX, since I've been giving it a lot of thought lately.

[balajikris]

I tend to agree with your feelings about the all-or-nothing approach. Yes, you were right, i did need it for work machines and sometimes on my personal machine, when i would wander off on the internet without returning to schedule. I think i'll just use my fork, until 2.0 is out. I'm not an UX expert, but i'll certainly let you know if i have some thoughts on it.

[matchu]

Sweet deal :) For the time being, if anyone comes lookin' for the feature, I'll send 'em your way. Happy Sunday!