I am reopening my previous issue ( #360 ) since it was closed and I can no longer comment on it.
I understand that the Smart Breaks feature is intended to address the situation of "I want the break timer to reset when I come back to my computer after having been away". While Smart Breaks solves this problem for the majority of cases, and I really want to stress this, it does not solve this issue for all cases.
As I said, not everyone wants to use the "Smart Breaks" feature. There could be various reasons as to why. In my case, my computer is purposely configured to never go to idle (by simulating mouse movement), and therefore the Smart Breaks feature does absolutely nothing. I am not willing to change my idle configuration just to use that feature.
My proposal, is that if Smart Breaks is not enabled, the break window should remain open until the user clicks the "End Break" button. As it is now, if you do not use Smart Breaks, the functionality is not great, the break window automatically closes and the timer starts counting towards the next break. So if you take longer than exactly the configured break duration (which is extremely likely) then the timer starts counting down too early. This is unpleasant and frustrating UX.
Please consider what the UX of this app is like with Smart Breaks disabled. I would recommend that you yourself disable Smart Breaks and try using the app for awhile. You'll likely quickly get tired of this irritating behavior of the break window automatically closing and therefore the next break occurring too soon.
I completely understand what Smart Breaks is meant to solve, and for those circumstances it works wonderfully. But it does not work for all cases, and if the feature is disabled, the UX of the app becomes irritating and un-useful. All that is required to fix this is a simple change, don't automatically close the break window when Smart Breaks is disabled, and require the user to manually end the break.
I am reopening my previous issue ( #360 ) since it was closed and I can no longer comment on it.
I understand that the Smart Breaks feature is intended to address the situation of "I want the break timer to reset when I come back to my computer after having been away". While Smart Breaks solves this problem for the majority of cases, and I really want to stress this, it does not solve this issue for all cases.
As I said, not everyone wants to use the "Smart Breaks" feature. There could be various reasons as to why. In my case, my computer is purposely configured to never go to idle (by simulating mouse movement), and therefore the Smart Breaks feature does absolutely nothing. I am not willing to change my idle configuration just to use that feature.
My proposal, is that if Smart Breaks is not enabled, the break window should remain open until the user clicks the "End Break" button. As it is now, if you do not use Smart Breaks, the functionality is not great, the break window automatically closes and the timer starts counting towards the next break. So if you take longer than exactly the configured break duration (which is extremely likely) then the timer starts counting down too early. This is unpleasant and frustrating UX.
Please consider what the UX of this app is like with Smart Breaks disabled. I would recommend that you yourself disable Smart Breaks and try using the app for awhile. You'll likely quickly get tired of this irritating behavior of the break window automatically closing and therefore the next break occurring too soon.
I completely understand what Smart Breaks is meant to solve, and for those circumstances it works wonderfully. But it does not work for all cases, and if the feature is disabled, the UX of the app becomes irritating and un-useful. All that is required to fix this is a simple change, don't automatically close the break window when Smart Breaks is disabled, and require the user to manually end the break.