After many months of development, we're finally releasing Habit2 for Windows! Download Habit 2.2.2 for Mac or Windows now!

   Habit 2.2.2 has some important fixes to version 2.2.1, so all users of Habit 2.2.1 should update their version (see below for changes and bug fixes). The Windows version is based on the same code, with only minor variations due to the differences between the Mac and Windows platforms. More on that, too, below.

   I want to thank all the folks who have quietly (some less so than others:) urged us to release Habit for Windows. That goes for all of you who have submitted bug reports, requested features, sent thanks and encouraging words, or just USED Habit for your research. Knowing that there are satisfied users out there is plenty of incentive to keep pushing on development. On a personal note, there was no small amount of difficulty in my personal life in the last year and a half, and that slowed development down significantly for a while. I want to extend my thanks to Prof. Lisa Oakes (Infant Cognition Lab, UC Davis) and  Prof. Marty Usrey (my direct supervisor) for their forbearance, patience, and understanding during this time. 

   My goal has been to maintain a single set of code that would compile and run on each platform. Sounds great, but its easier said than done. For starters, the multimedia library that was used in earlier versions of Habit was Mac-only. I devoted quite a bit of time to choosing (and learning to use) a new multimedia library (called GStreamer, in case you're interested) that would satisfy the requirements that Habit imposed. Integrating GStreamer into Habit's codebase, and adapting to the quirks and limitations of a library as complex as GStreamer all took significant time and effort. I updated the user interface. migrating from Qt4 to Qt5. I made significant changes beneath the hood, as it were, to position Habit for more changes to come. All in all, it was a long slog, but the time has come to release it and see what you all think. All these things required a ton of testing (and I still didn't do enough), and led, inevitably, to the introduction of a multitude of bugs. I've found and fixed quite a few, and some of you all have found quite a few others. There's a new class of bug, where a bug exists on one platform but not the other. Yes, I said Habit is grown from a single codebase, but that doesn't mean the program runs identically on Windows and the Mac.  Well, enough of my complaining, let's get into what you can expect from Habit 2.2.2.

Changes in Habit 2.2.2

• Multimedia fixes. Certain container media files (movie files with sound) that were set to LOOP (common way to configure attention getters, for instance) would freeze during playback, forcing users to stop Habit and restart. This is BAD during an experiment. This bug has been found and fixed. If you experience this issue, please contact me (and send along a sample movie file, if you can, that causes the hang). 
• When trials were repeated, the stimuli files were always scaled to full screen, even if Habit was configured to display images/movies at their original size. This only occurred when a trial ended with a repeat condition, not if a trial ended successfully. This has been fixed. 
• Stimulus orders and randomization did not play well together. This was a bug new to habit 2.2 (it didn't exist in the 2.1.x series of Habit releases) and has been fixed. 
• The habituation event was not recorded during habituation-type phases (either Criterion-to-end or Total-looking-time types), regardless of success/failure. This is fixed. 
• The experiment editor window now checks whether any settings have changed when the user hits "Cancel", or destroys the dialog. Previously, the checks that were performed didn't work as expected. Now Habit will prevent you from dismissing the editor dialog if you have unsaved changes to your experiment settings -- you will be asked whether you want to save the changes or not.

Known problems

• Certain multimedia files will not display the visual part of the stream, but the sound track works fine. If you encounter such a file, please send it to me (and tell me what tool(s) you used to create it). This problem seems isolated to certain tools (so far I only have a couple of avi's that were created with Microsoft PowerPoint, though I have others created with that tool that work fine, video and audio).
• The icons on Windows are ... ugh. I have no illusions about my meager artistic abilities. It turns out my weakness extends to pixel art. I'll continue working on it..... If there's anyone out there who has any skills in pixel art and some spare time.... let me know:)

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​Documentation update

   I've been migrating the Habit User Manual to an online HTML format. The online docs are based on the User Manual, and the conversion is not yet complete. As of this writing, the pdf User Manual is the most complete documentation, but the online version will catch up soon (and will overtake it, as this will be the place for documenting updates to Habit).

Windows quirks

   These exist, of course, because Windows and OS/X are quite different. There aren't too many differences, though, and most of them are things that an ordinary user would not notice. 

• The stimuli files for the template experiments are located in the folder c:/ProgramData/habit2. When a template experiment is used, the stimuli are given absolute file paths, full paths to the files themselves. On the Mac, the stim files are located within the workspace itself. 
• When you run an experiment in "test mode" - where the stimuli window(s) is(are) displayed in a window on your regular screen - that stimuli window will be displayed at a fixed position on your desktop, and cannot be moved. Furthermore, that windows may be behind the "Control Panel" window, which CAN be moved to expose the stimuli window. 
• The windows version will automatically create a log file every time it is run. This is a precaution I added in the event of bugs - these log files may be useful in debugging or tracking down bugs that users report. There isn't much in the log file for the regular user, and I'll change the windows release sometime in the future to turn off the log files by default. Again, this is not something you'll notice unless you go looking for it. It has no effect on the operation of Habit. 

Notable 

   You will find that Habit workspaces can be moved between Windows and Mac computers. Experiments that are exported from one platform can be imported on another platform as well. One significant problem has to do with the file paths stored for stimulus files. If your experiment(s) use the Default Stim Root, and you are able to configure the value on the target computer, the move will work as expected. If any of your stimuli use full file paths, however, those file paths will not be the same when you move to a different computer (this is true even when moving an experiment between two Macs, or between two Windows computers), and you will have to modify the paths to each stimulus file after the move. 


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   Its been a long time, but the time has finally come to release a new version of Habit. We're calling this version 2.2.1, and there's a lot that's changed. We have a new User's Manual (draft version), and we've submitted a methods paper describing habit2. Here's some of the key changes you'll see (and some that you won't see):

• More flexibility in experiment design. In habit2 you can design experiments with any number of phases (instead of the fixed 3-phase experiments from the previous version). 
• Template experiments - habit2 comes with a set of template experiments (described in our methods paper) that reproduce several experiments, each of which illustrates a different methodology.
• Settings saved per-workspace. The previous version of habit saved your preferences for all instances of habit running on your computer. In habit2, however, your preferences (monitor selections and stimulus root folder) are saved separately for each workspace you use. 
• Dual-stimulus synchronicity! Dual-stimulus experiments do not display a visible latency between the presentation on each of the stimuli monitors. In the previous version of habit, there was a visible lag between the two monitors. No more!
• Windows version coming soon! You heard that right, I've got a beta version for windows that I'll be releasing _very_ soon. Stay tuned!

   You can't have an update like this without a few WORDS OF CAUTION: If you are currently collecting data using the previous version of habit, you should continue to do so with the same version until the study is/are complete. This is a precaution against introducing systematic differences in your data set(s), which may depend in some way on the version of habit.  If you begin a study using habit2, however, you can continue to collect data using any updates to habit2 that may come along. 

   The newest version of habit2 will coexist with habit. There are implications to this which you should understand. First and foremost, habit2 uses a different database format than habit did. As a consequence, when you open a workspace with habit2, your database (which holds all of your experiment settings) is copied and updated to work with habit2. Once this happens, changes made to your experiments using habit2 do not affect the settings in your original habit database. 

   This may be confusing for some of you - especially those of you that have ongoing experiments and must continue using original habit. For those of you who are using habit2 for the first time, or if you do not have ongoing experiments which require original habit, none of this matters. You may uninstall original habit manually if you choose. 

A word or two about ... bugs

   Like any good software developer, I do NOT include bugs in my code, and I certainly never intentionally included any in this version of Habit. I've found that there are ways, mainly due to neutrino interactions with my hard drive, that bugs do find their way into Habit. 

   OK, that's not true. There are certainly bugs in Habit. There's over 100,000 lines of code in there, believe it or not, and there's bound to be a mistake or two lurking. And after a huge update like this, well, I can only test so much. 

   That's where you come in. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you find bugs, have questions about configuring an experiment, or have feature suggestions that you (and other users) might find helpful. 

A new version of Habit, version 2.1.25, is available for download! You may install this version (if you choose) over your existing version - your experimental settings and results will be saved.

What's changed?

   Well, a lot, actually, but not much that you will see....yet. I've begun making some major changes under the hood, preparing for a major new release this summer (along with a long-awaited methods paper describing Habit2 and its many uses).
   There are several changes which you will see, along with some minor bug fixes that will clean up some problems that users have reported (THANK YOU to all of you who have taken the time to report errors and problems!). 

You say "tomato"...

   Several users reported situations where they created experiments with valid stimuli, but found that the stimuli names were yellowed out in the "Stimuli" panel, or sometimes the "Stimuli Orders" panel of the Experiment Editor. The yellow color indicated a problem, but there was no clear reason (this occurred even when the stimuli were all valid files present on the computer).
   The bug (fixed in this version) was due to Habit2 using different "rules" for the names that can be given to stimuli. What was allowed as a name when the stimulus was added to the experiment was NOT allowed in other contexts within Habit. This inconsistency has been corrected.
   For the record, stimulus names (the names you give them, not their filenames) must adhere to the following rules. The dialog will enforce these rules as you type - so there isn't really a need to remember them. The rules are that a stimulus name:

• must begin with a letter or number
  
• contains letters, numbers, and/or these characters: space,  _ (underscore), - (dash), ' (single quote)
  
• trailing space(s) are trimmed before saving in the database
  

Results Viewer changes

   The Results Viewer has been changed somewhat. Previously you could use the Results Viewer to view results and  examine experiment settings in use when a particular result was obtained.
   I've cleaned up the display a bit, and you will notice that two types of files are displayed: *.hab file (the results file written on completion of an experimental run), and *.csv file (exported results data for use in you analysis).

    Double-clicking on a csv file will open that file in Excel (assuming you have Excel installed on your computer). Double-clicking on a results (*.hab) file will open that file and present you with 4 options (there used to be just 3):

   A new version of Habit is available, with some small fixes and some larger changes. Many of the changes are in response to comments and/or suggestions from users who have downloaded Habit and are using it - THANK YOU!
   You can download the latest version and install over your current version. All your settings will be preserved.

Bug Fixes and Changes in Habit 2.1.21

• What happened to version 2.1.20? Nothing - I created that version and discovered a minor issue after creating it. I made the fix and created a new version. But let me remind you that you can always update Habit2 regardless of missing version numbers.
  
• Main dialog appearance. The main dialog has been changed slightly. The title includes the version of Habit2, and the status bar (the gray panel at the bottom left of the dialog) shows the current workspace folder:
  

   A number of changes and fixes have been rolled into one release. We've also been fielding a few questions about Habit now that people are downloading and using it. I'll update you on the fixes below, and I'll also answer some of the more common questions.

   As always, you may download the latest Habit and install over your existing version. Your existing settings and experimental results will be preserved across versions.

Bug fixes and changes in 2.1.19

• There has been a tricky bug (now fixed) that can crop up when you use an Attention Getter (AG). When the AG is presented, the experimenter should hit the <Enter> key to start the trial, and then use the keypad keys (e.g. <4>, <5>, or <6>) to indicate looking behavior. If those keys were hit in quick succession, Habit sometimes missed the <4,5,6>! This is now fixed! Of course, I thought I had fixed it a couple of weeks ago, but I think I really got it this time!
• Stimulus sizing has been fixed. The Stimulus Display page of the experiment editor allows you to choose whether habit should display your stimuli files at their original size, or at full screen. When displaying stimuli at their original size, and the stimuli is smaller than the screen used to display it, Habit will center the stimulus and fill in the edges with the background color you've chosen. When you choose to display stimuli full screen, Habit will resize the stimulus (if needed) to fill the screen. You can check the Maintain Original Aspect Ratio box, and Habit will choose the maximum size of the stimulus which fits on the screen and preserves the aspect ratio of the original (and fill in the edges with the Background Color). If the Maintain Original Aspect Ratio box is unchecked, then Habit will stretch (and possibly distort) the stimulus to fill the entire screen. Note that in the stimulus preview (seen when you configure stimulus for any of the phases), the "screen" is always a 4:3 aspect ratio, which may differ from your display screen.

We've rolled a few bug fixes (many thanks to those of you who have reported bugs!) into this updated version. Download the update and install over your existing version of Habit. All your current settings will be preserved.

Changes from version 2.1.16

• Display and results now number trials starting at trial 1 (not trial 0..... long story, ask a programmer;). This is true for the results widget that is shown immediately on completing an experimental run, the output CSV file, as well as in the live experiment status widget (if you have chosen to display current experiment phase/trial in "Control Panel Display Options").
• Add option "Display Current Looking Direction" in "Control Panel Display Options". When checked, the current looking direction (e.g. "LookCenter") will be displayed in the Control Panel while your experiment is running.
• The stimulus previewer now handles stimulus orders. Forward/reverse navigation buttons are available, as well as a "stop" button.
• Stimuli for single-screen experiments are not pre-loaded and cached. Previously, large stimuli could use up all available memory and cause a crash. For single-screen experiments, it is not necessary to cache stimuli. In two-screen experiments, however, the stimuli are cached to minimize the time difference in the onset of the two stimuli. In such experiments, large stimuli can cause a crash if all available memory is taken up.
• In experiments that use attention getters, if the experimenter makes a fast transition from the "Attention"(Enter) key and a "Looking"(4,5,6) key, Habit will correctly respond to the key transition and looking will be recorded. Previously, the start of the looking period would be missed entirely.
  
• Global preferences now has a checkbox to use the default stimulus root folder for the workspace. For each workspace the default stimulus root folder is the stim/ folder in the workspace. This is a convenience for cases where you group a set of similar experiments (which all use the same set of stimuli) in a single workspace. Simply check the default stim root folder checkbox in the preferences dialog and you're set!
  

We are pleased to announce the release of Habit 2.1.16.

This version incorporates a stimulus previewer into the experiment editor, which allows you to quickly preview your stimuli and ordered stimuli sets.

The results for each experiment are stored in a separate folder (each named with the experiment name) under the results folder in your workspace. This allows you to more easily find results when you have multiple versions of the same experiment configured.

Habit 2.1.14 has been released. This version modifies the output format for CSV files to include a column for the order used to order the stimuli in a given phase. Existing experiment settings are not affected; install over an existing instance.