InstantProject v0.5.8 for Mac OS X

 InstantProject Logo

Project Design by graphically laying out the
Objectives & Activity Network Diagram

Many years ago, I was a happy Mac Project user, and I was all the time looking for a drop-in replacement for Mac OS X. I had a look at many software packages, and I found nothing that came close to the easiness of graphically designing my R&D projects using Mac Project.

InstantProject now sees the light of the world, because my need of a Mac Project replacement became desperate, and I started to write it myself completely from the scratch with Objective-C/Cocoa.

As of the present version 0.5, InstantProject is already quite useful for Project Design, but it still lacks all features that are necessary for Project Management.

Version 0.5 is not feature complete, but it is not beta software. All implemented features are suposed to work, i.e. there are no known bugs.

Version 0.5 is also lacking a manual, and in its present stage, InstantProject does not claim to be a professional software package, and therefore it comes for free.

Of course, this won't prevent professionals to already make use of it.

End of February 2010, I used InstantProject 0.5.x for the elaboration of two R&D project proposals, and it was already very useful in the design phase. In addition it turned out to be a nice tool for project presentations.

 

 

cyclae  Screenshot of InstantProject for Mac OS X

InstantProject Objectives & Activity Network Diagram

 

cyclae  Install

Place InstantProject into your Applications folder, or move it to any other convenient place - e.g. the Desktop.

 

cyclae  Uninstall

Move InstantProject to the Trash can. Locate the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.InstantWare.InstantProject.plist, and move this preferences file to the Trash can too.

 

cyclae  Instantly design your projects
  • start InstantProject by double clicking on it.
  • draw task boxes of any size with the mouse.
  • change the size and position of the task boxes at any time by dragging with the mouse.
  • hold down the control key while moving or sizing for temporarily disabling snapping to grid.
  • change the task type, by choosing from the "View" menu from: "Activity", "Milestone", "Objective", "Stop".
  • enter descriptive text in the box, and format it to your needs, using the Paragraph and Font formatting menus and/or the Ruler.
  • drag & drop small images into the descriptive text.
  • edit the start date, and edit the task duration in h or the end date.
  • enter the short names of passive resources (e.g. raw materials), separated by comma, in the bottom-left text field of the task box.
  • enter the short names of active resources (e.g. human resources, analytical devices, bulldozers, etc.), separated by comma, in the bottom-right text field of the task box.
  • change the text and font format of said resource fields to your need.
  • connect the task boxes by <cmd>-dragging the connection going from one to a new or another existing box.
  • edit the retention period in h of the connection (may be negative).
  • <cmd>-select the retention period field if it is overlapped by another text field.
  • define in the Preferences panel the grid space for nice positioning and sizing of the task boxes.
  • define in the Preferences panel wether time periods shall be absolute or based on working hours 8-12 and 13-17 (default is working hours).
  • <shift>-select and<shift>-drag-select groups of task boxes.
  • arrange selected task boxes forward or backward.
  • delete selected task boxes and selected connections.
  • group/lock/align selected task boxes.
  • copy and paste selected task boxes to the same or another project network pane.
  • <alt>-drag selections for dropping a copy into the same or another project network pane.
  • use the zoom menu at the bottom-left of the InstantProject document window to zoom in/out your project design.
  • copy selected task boxes and paste as PDF image or TSV table into documents of other applications.
  • <alt>-drag selections for dropping a PDF image or a TSV table into documents of other applications.
  • save the project design in the quick and space effective native InstantProject format (.iprj).
  • export the project design as a PDF-Image-File.
  • import/export the project design as a TSV-Table-File (see InstantProject Import/Export TSV File Specification).
  • select "Show Arrows" from the "View" menu for toggling display of small direction-indicators on the connections.
  • select "Show Page Breaks" from the "View" menu, change the Scale percentage in the Page Setup panel and move around the task boxes to adjust your design for multi page printing.
  • select "Hide Dates & Times", "Hide Descriptions", "Hide Resources", and "Hide Tunnel Retentions" from the "View" menu for toggling display of the text fields and views that are attached to the task boxes and the connecting tunnels.
  • consult the Operator & Function Reference for a quick review of the calculation terminology, that can be used in the duration fields of the task boxes and retention period fields of the connections.

Finally, expect more to come in future versions of InstantProject. I am working on a descent resource management, perhaps linked to an OpenERP database installation.

I am continuously using InstantProject for designing medium to large R&D-Projects. I am very busy with these projects, and therefore I got no time to implement all the missing features to InstantProject, for now I come only to fixing bugs, improving the handling, and removing minor annoyances.

 

 

cyclae  Version History

v0.5.8   September 11, 2010

  • activated Font menu commands and the Font Panel for batch changing of the font attributes of the task description of selected task boxes.
  • activated Color Panel for batch changing of the text color of the task description of selected task boxes.
  • activated Help Menu for easy access to the still limited InstantProject documentation.
  • set tool tip of the task box to its description, if the zoom factor is less than 75 %, so the task description can be read in the tool tip, even if the zoomed-in text is too small for reeading.
  • fixed a bug that could crash InstantProject when undoing deletions.

v0.5.7   August 29, 2010

  • text now fills the shape in oval and octagonal task boxes for the centered and justified default text alignment.
  • activated paragraph menu commands for setting the default alignment of the task description text view.
  • hold down the control key while moving or sizing for temporarily disabling snapping to grid.
  • fixed regression in v0.5.6, whereby auto hyphenation could not more be set in selected text.
  • loop through the dates & times fields of a task box with the tab key.
  • fixed display glitches showing the wrong cursor.
  • fixed display glitches when auto scrolling for centering the selection within the window.

v0.5.6   August 24, 2010

  • significantly improved speed of loading, drawing, and scrolling of large network diagrams.
  • hide dates & times, task descriptions, resources text boxes, and tunnel retentions fields using menu commands.
  • save the hidden state of dates & times, task descriptions, resources text boxes, and tunnel retentions fields to file.
  • save the active text field/view and its text selection to file.
  • on open files, center selections into the document view.
  • on key down, scroll the active text field inside the visible area of the document view, if it was outside.
  • on resizing of task boxes, adjust the widths of the attached resource text boxes.
  • reserve space in the horizontal ruler for text accessories in order to prevent an annoying movement of the drawing pane.
  • fixed a bug that prevented proper saving of the printing orientation on Intel Macs.
  • fixed a bug that limited the number of task boxes to 1024.
  • fixed a bug that let to unnecessary re-drawing when closing the document.
  • fixed another memory leak.
  • fixed a display glitch of the horizontal scroller knob.

v0.5.5   May 4, 2010

  • fixed a hanging issue during critical path calculation of large project designs with many parallel activities.
  • select "Show Arrows" from the View menu for toggling display of small direction-indicators on the connections.
  • <cmd>-select the retention period field if it is overlapped by another text field.
  • end editing of any text field/area when changing the selection.
  • renamed Keywords: Process -> Activity and Purpose -> Objective.

v0.5.4   March 23, 2010

v0.5.3   March 2, 2010

  • added auto-hyphenation.
  • ruler sophistication.
  • fixes for some display glitches (moving zoom menu, displaced horizontal scrollbar, hidden text after drag & drop, visually incomplete deletion of connections).
  • deactivate all text fields on locking, so selection of adjacent items becomes more easy by locking a task box, no need to move it out of the way anymore.
  • <shift>-drag-select now toggles items that are already selected.
  • dramatically improved speed of forward and backward date/time calculations.
  • now, date/time storage and calculation are based on UTC in order to prevent confusion with day light saving switching.
    Note: opening pre-v0.5.3 files will result in a time offset because of the time difference of the local time zone to UTC. This can easily be corrected, by changing the starting date/time of the root tasks in the document.
  • now, some document states and attributes are saved to the document file - show ruler, show page breaks, auto-hyphenation, grid space, window size/position, and page setup settings.
  • separated Format menu into View, Paragraph, and Font menus.

v0.5.1   February 25, 2010

  • Bug fixed, zoom menu didn't work.

v0.5.0   February 25, 2010

  • implemented Text Finding & Replacing including total undo support.
  • added menu command Paste and Match Style.
  • straightened critical path calculation and display.
  • sorry, needed abandon support for Mac OS X 10.4.

v0.4.0   February 19, 2010

  • new: <shift>-drag-selection of groups of task boxes.
  • new: grouping, locking and alignment of task boxes.
  • fixed a minor memory leak.
  • completed TSV export.

v0.3.0   February 10, 2010

  • initial release.

 

cyclae  Downloads

cyclae  Copyright and Terms of use.

InstantProject v0.5.8: Copyright 2009-2010 Dr. Rolf Jansen

Provided you agree to the following terms of use, InstantProject v0.5.8 can be freely used and distributed by any means.

The terms of use are:

You use InstantProject v0.5.8 at your own risk, and therefore, the author of InstantProject, Dr. Rolf Jansen, cannot be held responsible for anything resulting from your use of InstantProject v0.5.8.

You note, that InstantProject v0.5.8 comes for free without any expressed or implied promises about licensing of future versions.

You note, that the author Dr. Rolf Jansen may discontinue the development and distribution of InstantProject at any point in time without further notice.

 

cyclae  Imprint / Impressum

Dr. Rolf Jansen
Rua Reginaldo de Lima, 98 - Parque São Diogo
09732-550 São Bernardo do Campo
São Paulo - Brazil
rj(at)cyclaero.com
Cyclaero Blog (German)