I’m working with a junior help developer who is learning the ropes in Flare and she found something yesterday that I hadn’t contemplated in a long time:

The scary error messages that appear when building a target

I blow by these messages nowadays – because I know what they are and why they’re there. But someone new to Flare may not understand them. Here’s the first box that comes up – and to someone new to Flare, it’s scary enough:

But the terror doesn’t stop there, when you click OK you are faced with a list of items that Flare calls Warnings in the window above – but Errors in the build progress. Here’s a tiny list:

And here’s a much larger list:

These two lists have two things in common:

• To the new Flare user – these lists mean something’s broken and help won’t work!
• Neither, when it comes down to it, is anything to truly worry about.

How do I know?

Well, simply put, if the View Output button is enabled, as it is above, the help compiled and you can view it. Now that doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect, but at least you don’t have something so horrible that the build is abandoned.

In the short list above, I’m being told that there’s a missing linked source file. I know that I’m not using that image in this help project, so I disregard the warning. If I wanted, I could go track down the image, confirm that it’s not being used, and delete it. OR, I can just ignore the warning and move on.

The second list has a a number of types of warnings:

• Missing linked files
• Missing snippets
• Links pointing outside of the project
• Topic identifier not declared

Now, I can absolutely see how someone would flip out over this list. But it’s not as scary as it looks.

• The Topic Identifier warning is in regards to Context-Sensitive tags and it’s telling you that those IDs are not in the alias of the target you’re building. No big deal. That’s one set of warnings down.
• Missing linked files – I know I’m not using that file in this project – so that’s two down.
• Outside links – after reviewing this list – these links are not associated with this project (and I’m not sure why they’re appearing here actually) – that’s three
• The final one – the missing snippets – those are actual warnings that should be heeded.

Now, from the whole list, we have only 3 warnings but since two are identical, we really only have to figure out why those two snippets are not working.

In summary, don’t let the size of the list scare you. Look through it and start discarding irrelevant messages. Then you only have to bother with a few that may apply.

My wonderful husband bought me an iPad a few months back…and at the time, I felt bad that he’d spent that much money on something I considered frivolous. I’ve always been an Apple homer – but now it’s even worse. I’ve come to depend on my iPad and there are a number of apps that help me succeed as a consultant. Over the next week or so, I’ll cover each one to let you  know how I use it and why I like it.

I have a screen on my iPad just for business apps. Technically, I also use Safari, Mail, and Kindle at the bottom of the screen as well for business…but I’m going to focus on non-standard apps in this series.

HoursTracker: Lite Version – Free; Full Version – $2.99

I got the free version to try it out and I was impressed. So much so that I bought the full version. It keeps track of hours for multiple clients using a Clock In Now or Start Clock At… (the latter in the likely event that I forget to check in via iPad).

There are similar Clock Out Now and Clock Out At…. buttons. As you clock out, HoursTracker records your billing for that session based on your hourly rate x the hours worked. It’s easy to see how your efforts are paying off (no pun intended). You can also add breaks, lunches, etc…with the ability to set the duration.

You can also set details for that client including hourly rate, rounding of time, any overtime and when it kicks in, and what pay period comes with this job. If you select semi-monthly, the settings default to the 15th and 31st of the month. You can change this, of course, to whatever days of the month you need.

Another cool feature is the reporting via email that allows you to email job data to yourself or anyone else. I like that the data can be shown in the body of the email AND in an attachment.

Check out the screenshot to see the neat reporting options available.

At 2.99, you can’t beat HoursTracker as an app for managing your hours and pay. I’d pay double that if I had to. It’s that good.

Have you used HoursTracker? If so, do you like it? What other apps are out there that are similar?