Pictures, collage and virtual team members
Some rather sweet new changes have gone live tonight. I wanted to release them last night, but needed to check a few more things before i did.
Pictures
You can now upload pictures to MyChores! Before you get too excited, they can only be up to 90KB. I don’t know why; it’s not a restriction i would have chosen to apply, but anything larger than 90KB just doesn’t seem to work. So i had to limit it. Perhaps in the near future i may work out how to allow bigger uploads, but for the most case 90KB should be enough anyway. Why would you want to upload pictures? Well, partly for motivation, to remember what things look like when they are nice and clean, but also for …
The new Collage view!
A picture is worth 1000 words. The collage view scatters up to 24 of your uploaded pictures, representing tasks that are overdue, due today, or due tomorrow. For example:
To tick off a task you just click the picture! How easy is that! It does a nice sliding visual effect (oh yes, we’ve upgraded to a newer version of Scriptaculous too!)
This is a step towards MyChores for Kids, which will be entirely picture-based. So get uploading your pictures now, or use the public pictures that are already in place. Site supporters may upload any number of pictures, whilst non-site supporters may only upload 9 at a time.
Virtual team members
This is a fantastic suggestion from Alexa, who writes:
Here’s a possibility: virtual team members.
Explanation: I pay a commercial cleaning company to help with the housecleaning. I’m not going to confuse them by inviting them to join my team, yet I’d like to be able to track what they do.
You can now add virtual team members for exactly this purpose. To add a virtual team member you just go to the team page and click ‘Add a virtual member’. You only need provide a name. Virtual members do not have login ids nor email addresses, so they cannot log into the site, and they don’t receive emails. You cannot nudge a virtual member. You can, however, assign tasks to them and tick tasks off on their behalf. Virtual members get a slightly paler icon to indicate the difference.
This is another mini-step towards MyChores for Kids, since kids will also be virtual members.
Of course i would appreciate feedback on all these changes! I think i have tested it thoroughly but you may well find something i didn’t spot, or encounter an error on a different browser. Please let me know if you find anything wrong.
I hope you enjoy these new features! I have worked hard on them and i’m really pleased with how they turned out! :)