Help

A few tips for what you should do after you’ve installed MeeTimer and restarted Firefox (restart twice if you do not see MeeTimer’s icon in the Firefox bottom right tray).

Setup Initial Options

Right-click the tray icon for MeeTimer, select ‘Configure’ and then ‘Options’. From here, the most important thing you can do is set the number of hours you work a week. If you use Firefox across multiple different locations (workplace, home, client); then set it up for how much work you expect to do at your current location.

You can tweak the other options, but there is nothing else essential to be done.

Place Common Websites into Groups

There are two ways to do this.
When you are actually on a site, right-click the MeeTimer tray icon and click “Add ‘x.com’ to Group”; then select the group to add it too (you can create new groups too, by selecting ‘Add to New Group’ and entering the group name).

Alternatively, when you are viewing Advanced Stats (part of the Options window); you can right click any line in the list, and move the accompanying site URL to a particular group. This is useful when reviewing ungrouped sites that you spend a lot of time on.

Understand the ‘Modes’

This is easy enough. MeeTimer can run normally (just log sites, do not interrupt you); deter you (log sites and show a deterrent on certain sites); or be suspended (do nothing). You can change the Mode by right clicking on the MeeTimer tray icon.

Choose where the Deterrents Apply

Right-click the MeeTimer tray icon, select ‘Configure’, and then ‘Edit Deterrents’.
From here, you can choose which groups will be deterred (i.e. when you load a site in the chosen group, the Black Out warning will be shown).
A worthy note is a checkbox that lets you use the warning on all ungrouped sites. This can be useful if you wish to ‘permit’ sites within groups, but stop yourself wandering across the open Web.

Advanced Tips

Ignoring Certain Sites

You can tell MeeTimer to keep no record of some sites; simply by visiting the site, right-clicking the MeeTimer tray icon, click the current site (in bold) and choosing to ‘Ignore x.com’. After this, no record will be made.
You can stop ignoring a site by repeating this process, and choosing ‘Stop ignoring x.com’.

Remove All Records of a Site

You can do this by visiting the site, clicking the MeeTimer tray icon, clicking the current site name (in bold) and choosing ‘Remove All Records of this Site’.
Alternatively, you can do mass purging of records by loading the Options (right-click MeeTimer logo, clicking ‘Configure’ and then ‘Options’), choosing the Maintenance tab, and entering the site(s) you would like to remove.

URL Renaming to Capture Certain Pages and Applications

MeeTimer operates by recording just the domain (or sub-domain) of a site. E.g. no matter where you visit on Google.com, it will just record ‘google.com’.
This can be tricky on certain applications such as Google Reader, which has the address (www.google.com/reader) -> it will be lumped in with Google Search and countless other Google properties.
To sidestep this, you can tell MeeTimer to rename addresses that follow a certain pattern. So, you can tell it to isolate Google Reader (with the pattern %.google.%/reader/% -> the % is a wildcard that will let anything match it), and record it as ‘google.com/reader’.

You can do this by loading the Options (right-click MeeTimer logo, clicking ‘Configure’ and then ‘Options’), and choosing the ‘Rename Sites’ tab. Simple enter the pattern you wish to watch for; and the address to replace it with, and click ‘Add Alteration’.

Irritations

I turn the Deter Me mode off, and it comes back!

There is an option that tells MeeTimer to switch to Deterrent mode every time you restart Firefox. By editing the Options (on the ‘General Tab’) and deselecting ‘Switch to Deterrent Mode’; this behaviour will stop.

I like Deter Me mode, but I see it on every site. It’s too much!

Again, this is an option. So, load the Options and switch to ‘Deterrents’, and deselect the ‘Warn on all Miscellaneous (ungrouped) Sites’.

MeeTimer uses too much space.

Using the Options (General Tab), you can hide both the icon and the timer from the Firefox tray; so you no longer see any MeeTimer modification of Firefox.

FAQ

Is this risky to me? I mean, is my privacy in danger?

Absolutely not. We are very proactive about privacy and ethics in general. All data is stored on your machine; nothing is sent back to us; or shared with other machines/users (unless your on a public computer, obviously).

Will I notice if I leave it running 24/7?

Again, absolutely not. We take advantage of some useful technology in Firefox 2 to store big volumes of data very efficiently. You will not notice!

Help! I’ve lost the MeeTimer tray icon and can no longer control MeeTimer.

First, if you’ve just installed you may need to restart Firefox once or twice before you see the icon. Second, the Options (used to bring the icon back) is always available by clicking the Tools menu, then MeeTimer and finally ‘Options’.