Beta test changes 8/4

New features

  • Pressing Ctrl-Enter (Control-Return on Mac) in an assignments adds another to that day

Updates and improvements

  • More useful dialog when cancelling from create/edit or manage family
  • Canadian postal code support in Weather widget
  • You can now edit the names of lists you add to the To Do and Shopping widgets, and delete lists from them

Fixes

  • Corrections to the way the Homeschool Helper handles days with multiple assignments
  • Corrections to the way the Homeschool Helper handles vacation days
  • Eliminated cases where the calendar/planner was not reflecting changes to activities
  • Assignment information now included in text (SMS) reminders

Beta test changes 7/18

These latest changes require that you restart your browser to ensure that you get all the latest updates. Follow these steps:

  1. Close all open Chrome windows.
  2. Restart Chrome.
  3. Visit Homeschool Planet
  4. While holding down the Shift key, refresh the page.

If after doing all that, things still don’t align correctly, or the display looks strange, or any of the features don’t seem to work for you, contact us right away at betatest@homeschool-planner.com and we’ll help get it resolved for you.

Changes in this release include:

The four existing themes have been finalized. Some of the colors of your classes and other activities may have changed (sorry!). We’ll be adding more themes, but these four should not be changing again.
The layout of the Calendar views has been tidied up. It is more readable, and takes less space on the Monthly view.
Newly created “Everything Else” activities will be pale gray by default. You can still choose a particular color if you like.
Assignments in classes with more than one student are now grouped by student.
The Weather App now shows current conditions, and supports Canadian postal codes.
Sending/retrieving To-Do or Shopping Lists by text message now sends neat lists.

plus a number of other smaller changes and bug fixes.

As always, let us know what you think, and send any questions or report any problems to betatest@homeschool-planner.com.

Thanks for participating in the beta test, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Beta Test changes 7/10

We made some major changes in this update. We wanted to get your feedback about the changes as soon as possible, so we are delivering these changes now, before we have finished testing to the level that we would if the product were publicly available. We believe they should work just fine, but if you run into anything that seems unusual or incorrect, please let us know right away.

The changes in this update include:

Both Classes and “Everything Else” activities can now have both Assignments (which get checkboxes) and Notes (which do not). There is a separate tab for Notes, where you can enter those. The “Every day” assignments will now have checkboxes, so that you can track which were completed each day.
You can now add additional assignments to the “Every day” section, so you can have multiple, checkable items every day
There is a new option in the “Show calendars for” menu that will let you hide recurring activities, like classes, to make it easier to see the exceptional items in your schedule (doctor’s appointments, etc).
The “all day” section of the weekly and daily calendars grows and shrinks to fit whatever activities you have scheduled there, and now will grow to almost the full height of the calendar if needed. There is also a new button (between the two sections) that will let you lock the height instead to a very small area at the top, if you need to see more of the time-scheduled events.
Assignments and notes that have more than one line of text will appear full-sized when you edit them, without having to click in them first to get them to resize.

Note that the change to the Assignments and Notes will change the way that “Every day” items appear. Previously, those were displayed without a checkbox; now they will have a checkbox. If you want to have that text again without a checkbox, cut and paste it from the Assignments tab onto the Notes tab.

Thanks again for participating in the Homeschool Planet Beta Test! Your help has already made the product better, and we look forward to hearing more of your thoughts and suggestions!

What happens to my data at the end of the Beta Test?

All of your data will remain on Homeschool Planet. Should you choose to purchase a subscription to Homeschool Planet, you can continue right where you were without having to re-enter anything.

Should you choose not to continue, your calendar data will be made available to you as a download in ICS format (suitable for import into another calendar program). However, since other calendar programs do not support the Assignments feature of Homeschool Planet, your assignments will be included in the ICS as part of the plain text descriptions of the events. Reminders will not be included, nor will data entered into any of the Widgets (To-do list, Shopping list, etc.).

How long does the Beta Test run?

The Beta Test will run until we feel that Homeschool Planet is stable enough and useful enough to be valuable to a significant number of homeschoolers. At the moment,we are planning to end the Beta Test and release the product to the public in July.

At the end of the Beta Test you can choose to purchase a subscription and continue access (with your data intact).

What is a beta test?

Our programmers have brought Homeschool Planet to the point where we think it is ready for our members to use. We’ve invited a limited number of people to try it out, so we can be sure it is truly ready before we open it up to the world.

As a participant in the beta test, we’d like you to use the Homeschool Planet as your primary tool for organizing and scheduling your homeschooling and home life.  The more often you use it, and the more thoroughly you use it, the more helpful it will be to us as we try to make Homeschool Planet as useful as possible to homeschoolers like you.

Just as important as using the software is letting us know what you find.  If you have questions, or if you run into problems, we want to hear from you!  Don’t hesitate to drop us a note for even the smallest question or problem at betatest@homeschool-planner.com – we are very eager to hear from you!