| Install the current version of Simple Timer + Clocks (from AMO) |
| Install older versions of Simple Timer + Clocks (from AMO) |
Notes for January 31, 2010:
- updated to version 1.0
- while this add-on is classed as experimental, you will not receive automatic notifications when new versions are released. You can use my new add-on EAVE to notify you when updates for experimental add-ons become available.
Notes for January 29, 2010:
- triggered tzdata version 2010b
Notes for January 25, 2010:
- uploaded a new timezone data file reflecting the
(Olson) tzdata version 2010b. As usual, I will wait a few days before
triggering it.
What can Simple Timer + Clocks do?
Various clock and timer functions, including:
- display your local clock
- track the local time in locations around the world
- receive notifications at specific times of the day (using your local time, or local time in other timezones)
- receive notifications on specific dates (ie. calendar function)
- count up from zero
- count down from any time (less than 24 hours). You can set as many timers as you want
- track
your
browsing times
- event
logging
for
completed
count
ups,
count
downs,
notifications,
calendar
events
and daily browsing times
Detailed description
Downloading this extension
places a blue
alarm clock icon in your
statusbar. You can drag and drop the icon anywhere upon the statusbar.
When dragging the icon, you will see a little vertical red line between
other icons in the status bar, which indicates where the clock icon
will end up if you drop at that time.
Features are available via a context menu (right-click on icon).
You can also choose to instead use a
toolbar display.
First use the context menu and select
Options... and click the Positioning tab. Choose toolbar.
Next, you need to move the
SimpleClocks toolbar button from the toolbar
palette to the toolbar. To access the palette, right-click your toolbar
and select Customize... which displays the Customize Toolbar dialog.
Locate the SimpleClocks button and drag it to wherever you want on your
toolbar.
Lets examine each menu item in detail
Displays the local time in the format and language (ie. AM/PM) of your locale. In the Options dialog you can toggle on/off the seconds portion of the display, and you can choose to use the 24 hour format if you are in a locale that normally uses a 12 hour clock. There is also an option to append a formatted date to the display. Middle-click displays the icon again. Why would you want a clock when Windows, for example, displays a clock in the taskbar? Some people like to hide their taskbar!
This will display the Other Locations dialog where you can choose which locations around the world for which you want to track local time.
When the dialog first displays,
a
list of
countries is displayed in the Countries listbox. Note that it make take
a few moments for them to
appear, as the timezone data file is retrieved from the mozdev server.
As a shortcut to show the country you are interested in, click on the
Countries listbox and type the starting letter(s) of the country name;
it will scroll there.
Click
the country you want, and a list of timezones for the country appears
in the Timezones tree. Most countries have only one timezone, but some,
like Indonesia above, have more. You may not be familiar with
these timezones. This program uses the tz (a/k/a/
zoneinfo a/k/a Olson) database,
which has become the de facto standard
for timezone and daylight
savings time information. (In fact, I don't use the database but rather
a small file I generate from the tz datafiles) .
View tz data versions here.
You need to select one
of
these timezones from the Timezones tree. Great if you live in New York,
you will find an "America/New York" timezone. But what if you live in
Tupelo, Mississippi? Which timezone should you select? There is no
Tupelo timezone. You may get some hint from the Comments column of the
tree, or you could take an educated guess, but if you want to be sure,
enter your city name into the "Optional - Enter city to find timezone:"
textbox and click Enter. This will take you to a nice website http://worldtimeengine.com/
(this link shows Tupelo). I am not
affiliated in any way with this site. You will
see a Google map, and if
you scroll down you see an item "Timezone
Reference Point" which lists Tupelo's timezone as "America/Chicago".
Voila! After you finish checking out this website, maximize the Other
Locations dialog (it got minimized along the way) and now either select
"America/Chicago" and then click Add (beside the Selected tree), or
just double-click "America/Chicago" to enter it directly into the
Selected tree. You now have an entry for Chicago. If you like,
double-click the Location column and change the name to whatever you
like. If
daylight savings time (DST) is observed, and currently in effect, for
this location,
the UTC Offset entry is
adjusted, and a double asterisk will appear (see Toronto entry
above), and the current DST rules are shown. If DST is not in effect,
the upcoming DST rules are shown.
If DST is not observed, or in rare cases when a rule hasn't been
determined, you will see N/A (see Jakarta above). The more familiar
Local timezone is
also shown (eg. EST, EDT etc). (An oddity: Australia uses the
same abbreviation for standard and DST times).
Editing
locations in
the Selected table:
- Delete button -- after selecting a location in the table, this deletes it. When deleting a location that has notifications pending, a confirmation dialog is displayed, informing you that the notifications will be cancelled if you continue.
- Del All button -- deletes all locations.
- Reset button -- restores the table to the state it was in when opening the dialog.
- Double-clicking the Location column allows you to change the name of the location.
Repeat for as many
locations as you like, and click
OK. So now you are tracking the local time for other locations, but
where do I see their times? They are displayed in a tooltip when
hovering over your statusbar display. If we peek ahead to Options...
there are two different tooltips you can choose that will display your
clocks.
Notes:
- When you enter this dialog, any locations you are currently tracking are displayed in the Selected tree.
- Above and to the right of the Selected tree shows the current tz data file version, year appended with letter.
- There can be several tz data updates in a year. If an update is not relevant to this add-on, I may not push it through.
- You can change the dimensions of the dialog by dragging its edges. You can also change the width of the tree columns by dragging the little seperators between the column headings. In the upper-right position of the column headings is a small image, which is a column picker. Click on it to display a drop-down list of the tree columns. Use this to hide/show individual tree columns. All of this is "remembered" the next time you open the dialog.
This
will display the Notify Me At This Time dialog where you can set a
specific time of day to receive a notification. Lets see what it looks
like
As
you can see, the upper half "Enter Notification" is where you supply
the notification info, while the lower half is a table of existing
notifications. You can enter as many notifications as you like.
The fields are:
Description -- an optional field which is displayed when your notification completes (assuming you have enabled a visual alert in the Options dialog), and in the "Full" or "Notifications" statusbar tooltip (also enabled in Options dialog).
URL -- an optional field. Click on Bookmark (to the right of the textbox) to copy your browsers current webpage URL into the textbox. This little bookmarking feature allows you to display a webpage upon completion of the notification. If you have enabled dialog alert in Options dialog, this URL is displayed in the Notification Completed dialog, and clicking on the "Open URL" button will open the associated webpage in a new tab. If instead you have enabled audio and/or popup alert in Options dialog, the webpage is opened in a new tab automatically. In the image above, at 12:00 PM a couple of my favorite pages open while I enjoy lunch..
Time
-- a mandatory field which indicates when the notification is issued.
This field will originally show the time when you opened the dialog, in
the language and format of your locale. Click on the hours, minutes
(and AM/PM if shown) subfields to edit them, using the spin buttons or
your keyboard's up and down arrows.
You can set multiple notifications for the same time (for instance,
have them open different web pages via Bookmark), but a warning dialog
is displayed, and the duplicate entries are highlighted in the table.
You can also set notifications for the same time, but different days
(no warning dialog in this case).
To the right of
the Time entry field is a drop-down with a list containing all
locations you are tracking , if any (as well the default value Local).
If you set a non-local value, you will receive an alert when it is the
specified time in that location. In the above image, I will get an
alert when it is 7:00 PM in Buenos Aires. If you mouse over the
locations in the list, a tooltip will appear showing the difference in
time between your local time and that location's time.
Recurring
-- an optional field. If left unchecked, this notification is one-time
only. If checked, this notification will repeat, as indicated by the
value of the dropdown box to the immediate right. You can set a value
of Daily, Weekdays (Monday-Friday), Weekends (Saturday-Sunday) or a
specific day of the week. Note that for non-local times, this refers to
the day in that location, which may be different (+/- one day) from
your local day. As an example, Saturday 1:00 AM Toronto = Friday, 10:00
PM Vancouver (usually).
Now you are ready to enter your notification. If you are just entering one notification and don't care to see it entered in the Notifications table, you can click Add/OK button, which adds the notification and dismisses the dialog. If you are going to enter another notification, or just want to see it in the table, click the Add button to the left of the table.
Editing notifications in the Notifications table:
- Delete button -- after selecting a notification in the table, this deletes it.
- Del All button -- deletes all notifications.
- Reset button -- restores the table to the state it was in when opening the dialog.
- Clicking the Recurring column of the table toggles this field (checkmark) on/off. This also affects the Day column: when Recurring is toggled off, Day becomes blank, when toggled on, Day assumes a value of Daily.
- Double-clicking any of the other fields allows complete editing by moving the notification info back to the upper-half (Enter Notification) of the dialog. Make your desired edits up there, then click Replace (the label on the Add button changes to Replace during a double-click edit) to replace the notification in the table.
Notes:
- When you enter this dialog, any existing notifications are displayed in the Notifications table.
- Mouse over any non-local notification in the table and a tooltip will appear showing the difference in time between your local time and that location's time.
- You can change the dimensions of the dialog by dragging its edges. You can also change the width of the tree columns by dragging the little seperators between the column headings. In the upper-right position of the column headings is a small image, which is a column picker. Click on it to display a drop-down list of the tree columns. Use this to hide/show individual tree columns. All of this is "remembered" the next time you open the dialog.
- Notifications are displayed in a tooltip when hovering over your statusbar display if you have chosen to display the "Full" or "Notifications" tooltip (see Options... below).
- When a notification is set and pending, the alarm clock icon in the statusbar (when displayed) will be red instead of blue.
- Notifications are retained between browser sessions.
If a non-recurring notification expires while your browser is closed, a
notification is issued when you reopen your browser, informing you of
this.
- The alert you receive when the notification time is reached is set by you in Options.
- "The Missing
Hour": On the day DST first comes
into effect, the clock is adjusted ahead (almost always 1 hour) and an
hour is skipped, eg. suppose DST for some location starts at 2:00 on
some date, so we can imagine the clocks moving as such: 1:59:58,
1:59:59, 3:00:00. The hour 2:00:00-2:59:59 does not exist. What if we
have a notification scheduled to trigger during that hour for that
location? Windows will not allow a time to be set for that hour, and in
fact will set such a time for 1 hour earlier. So a 2:30 notification
gets set for 1:30. This is not something unique to Simple Timer +
Clocks, for example ReminderFox exhibits the same behaviour. This
problem only exists for the first hour of DST.
- "The
Repeated Hour": On
the final day of DST, the clock is adjusted backwards
(almost always 1 hour) and an hour is repeated, eg. suppose DST for
some
location ends at 2:00 on some date, so we can imagine the clocks
moving as such: 1:59:58, 1:59:59, 1:00:00. An extra hour to sleep! What
if we have a notification scheduled to trigger during that repeated
hour for that location? Normally you will only receive the notification
once, but depending on various conditions, you may receive the
notification twice! Hopefully that is not a problem for you.
This will display the Calendar Events dialog where you can set a specific day to receive an alert. Lets see what it looks like
As
you can see, the upper half "Enter Event" is where you supply
the event info, while the lower half is a table of existing events. You
can enter as many events as you like.
The fields are:
Description
-- a mandatory field which is displayed in the slider alert, and in the
"Full" or "Calendar events (today and upcoming)" statusbar tooltips
(enabled in Options dialog).
Append - tick this checkbox to append an ordinal number (optional) and category (birthday or anniversary) to the description. In the image above, "6th birthday" will be appended to "Fred" to create an event with description "Fred 6th birthday". This saves some typing. Also, assuming this event is set as recurring with a frequency of yearly, the ordinal number is incremented each year, so next year the description will read "Fred 7th birthday". The default value of the ordinal number is 0. If you leave it at 0, then a number is not appended, but the category still is, eg. "Fred birthday".
Start date --
this datepicker is a mandatory field which indicates the date the event
starts. There are different ways to edit this field:
- click on a year, month or day subfield and use your keyboard up/down arrows
- click on a year, month or day subfield and use the
spin buttons to the right of the datepicker box
- click on the dropmarker (the little arrow button to the right of the spin buttons) to display a calendar popup. The popup has buttons on the top corners to navigate the months. Click on the date you want
- other methods are not recommended
Clicking the
Today button will set the value of all 3 datepickers in this dialog to
today's date.
Do not try and enter a past date, or an alert box will scold you when
you try to add the event.
Start time --
this timepicker allows you to set the event time, or you can tick the
All day checkbox if there is no specific time for the event. Remember
that this time is for your reference only. Alerts you receive for
events are based on date only. More about that later.
This field will originally show the time
when you opened the dialog, in
the language and format of your locale. Click on the hours, minutes
(and AM/PM if shown) subfields to edit them, using the spin buttons or
your keyboard's up and down arrows.
End date --
another datepicker, which
indicates the date the event ends. Most events start and end on the
same date, so these dates will be the same. But if you have an event
that spans multiple days, set the end date here. Note when editing the
start date, the end date is also changed to match it. If you enter an
end date which is earlier than the start date, the end date will be
adjusted forward to match the start date.
The next two
rows are specific to recurring, or repeating events.
Recurring --
tick this checkbox if the event repeats. To the right of this checkbox
is a dropdown which allows you to specify the frequency of the
repeating event. When a recurring event completes, the start (and end)
dates are updated according to the frequency option selected:
- yearly, eg. Sept 15, 2009 ==> Sept 15, 2010
- yearly by day, eg. third Tuesday in Sept, 2009 ==> third Tuesday in Sept, 2010
- monthly, eg. Sept 15, 2009 ==> Oct 15, 2009 (or in cases where the next date doesn't exist, Jan 30, 2009 ==> Feb 28, 2009)
- monthly by day, eg. third Tuesday in Sept, 2009 ==> third Tuesday in Oct, 2009
- weekly, eg. Sept 15, 2009 ==> Sept 22, 2009
- daily, eg. Sept 15, 2009 ==> Sept 16, 2009
Repeat until --
another datepicker, which
indicates the date the event stops repeating, and is removed from the
system. When an event completes and the new start/end dates are
calculated, if new start date > repeat until date, event removed.
Or, you can tick the Forever checkbox. I'll let you figure that one out
yourself.
Alert -- select
the number of days prior to the start date to start alerting for this
event. For example, if an event is due to start in 3 days, and you had
set this value to, say, 5 days, then this event is classed as Upcoming,
and will appear now in alerts and in the
"Full" or "Calendar events (today and upcoming)" statusbar tooltips
(enabled in Options dialog).
So here is the definition of a word you may see elsewhere in this
program:
An "alertable"
event is an event due today, or classed as Upcoming.
An alert value
of 0 means only alert on the day the event is due.
Now you are ready to enter your event. If you are just entering one event and don't care to see it entered in the Events table, you can click Add/OK button, which adds the event and dismisses the dialog. If you are going to enter another event, or just want to see it in the table, click the Add button to the left of the table.
Editing events in the Events table:
- Delete button -- after selecting an event in the table, this deletes it.
- Del All button -- deletes all events.
- Reset button -- restores the table to the state it was in when opening the dialog.
- Clicking the Recurring column of the table toggles this field (checkmark) on/off. This also affects the Frequency and Repeat until columns: when Recurring is toggled off, those fields becomes N/A (ie. not applicable), when toggled on, Frequency assumes a value of yearly and Repeat until assumes a value of Forever.
- Double-clicking any of the other fields allows complete editing by moving the event info back to the upper-half (Enter Event) of the dialog. Make your desired edits up there, then click Replace (the label on the Add button changes to Replace during a double-click edit) to replace the event in the table.
Notes:
- When you enter this dialog, any existing events are displayed in the Events table.
- An event file calEvents.txt is created in
the SimpleTimerClocks folder within your Firefox profile folder. A
backup file calEvents-bkup.txt is also created.
- An "alertable" event is an event due today, or
classed as Upcoming (see Alert field above).
- Alerts are issued when there are "alertable" events to show . Alerts occur at browser startup, and every n hours during your browser session (n is set in in Options dialog).
- Alerts are issued through slider popup only. Unlike
Notifications, there is no dialog alert, and audio alert cannot be
selected.
- "Alertable" events are shown in the "Full" or "Calendar events (today and upcoming)" statusbar tooltips (enabled in Options dialog).
- You can change the dimensions of the dialog by dragging its edges. You can also change the width of the tree columns by dragging the little seperators between the column headings. In the upper-right position of the column headings is a small image, which is a column picker. Click on it to display a drop-down list of the tree columns. Use this to hide/show individual tree columns. All of this is "remembered" the next time you open the dialog.
- For Windows users, the format of the date displayed in the datepickers is taken from "Short date format". This format can be changed, for example in Win XP, through "Regional and Language Options". However, do not try to use a month format of MMMM (text month) datepicker will not like that!
Browser timing is turned off by default, so this item is disabled until you have enabled browser timing (see Options->Browser Timing). Clicking this menu item will display a submenu of activities:
- Current Browser Session
-- displays
the elapsed time of your current browser session in your
statusbar/toolbar.
The time is displayed with "C:" prepended, to distinguish it from a Total Daily Browsing display or Count up. - Total Daily Browsing
-- displays
the
total
elapsed time of all your browser sessions for the day in your
statusbar/toolbar.
The time is displayed with "D:" prepended, to distinguish it from a Current Browser Session display or Count up. See Options->Browser Timing to set your definition of daily
- Display Both
- Reset Browsing Times -- resets both
values to zero.
Starts
a count up from zero in the statusbar. Hours, minutes and seconds are
displayed. If you left-click the display, the count is paused. Another
left-click resumes the count. Middle-click stops the count and displays
the alarm clock icon in the statusbar. If you are using the Full
tooltip (see Options) the completed time of the last count up is
displayed.
This displays the Countdown Time Entry dialog, lets look...
The fields are:
Description
-- an optional field which is displayed when your countdown
completes (assuming you have enabled a visual alert in the Options
dialog), and in the "Full" tooltip (also enabled in Options dialog).
hrs, mins, and
secs - enter
your countdown time (less
than 24 hours). Use the spin buttons or your keyboard's up/down arrows
to set the values.
Recurring - if
this
checkbox is ticked, the countdown will continually restart
immediately upon
completion.
Now you are ready to enter your countdown timer. If you are just entering one timer and don't care to see it entered in the Countdown Timers table, you can click Add/OK button, which adds the timer and dismisses the dialog. If you are going to enter another timer, or just want to see it in the table, click the Add button to the left of the table.
Editing timers in the Countdown Timers table:- Delete button -- after selecting a timer in the table, this deletes it.
- Del All button -- deletes all timers.
- Reset button -- restores the table to the state it was in when opening the dialog.
- Clicking the Recurring column of the table toggles this field (checkmark) on/off.
- Double-clicking the Description column of the table allows you to edit. Change focus ( ie. click elsewhere in the dialog) to apply the edit.
If you have a frequently used list of timers, you can
save the list (shown in the Countdown
Timers table) by clicking
the Save List button. You can then load the list at a later time using
the Load List button.
Clicking OK or Add/Ok starts the countdown in the statusbar. The timer which will expire the soonest is displayed in the statusbar. If you have set multiple timers, you can see the current time remaining for them if the appropriate tooltip option was selected (see Options below).
Notes:- When you enter this dialog, any existing timers are displayed in the Countdown Timers table.
- If you have set multiple timers, you can see the current time remaining for them if the appropriate tooltip option was selected (see Options... below).
- Left-click the statusbar display to pause the countdown, another left-click resumes the countdown (this can be disabled in Options), while middle-click stops the countdown. This only affects the timer that is displayed in the statusbar. If you have other timers set, they are not affected.
- Incomplete timers are retained between browser
sessions, and are restarted when you reopen your browser. It will seem
as if the timer was running while your browser was closed. A
notification is issued when you reopen, reporting on status of such
timers.
- You can change the dimensions of the dialog by dragging its edges. You can also change the width of the tree columns by dragging the little seperators between the column headings. All of this is "remembered" the next time you open the dialog.
- The alert you receive when the countdown is completed is set by you in Options.
Pauses or
resumes a count up or countdown. Same as
left-clicking the time in the statusbar. Note
that
disabling
the
pause/resume
function
via
left-click
on
statusbar
display
(in
Options)
does
not affect this menu item.
Stops a count up, countdown or clock and displays the alarm clock icon in the statusbar. Same as middle-clicking the time in the statusbar.
Displays the Preferences dialog, where you have plenty of options to customize how Simple Timer + Clocks looks and operates.
The dialog has seven tabs, click links for more detail:- set audio, popup and dialog alerts for completed timers
- choose file to use for audio alert
- set display for statusbar or toolbar
- set popup alert to
appear from bottom-left or bottom-right of screen
- clock display options
- enable/disable timing for current browser session and total daily browsing
- define "daily"
- calendar alert options
- enable/disable event logging
- set event log path
- startup options
- action to perform when left-click on icon
- enable/disable the pause/resume function of timers
- tooltip options for statusbar/toolbar
Displays the Event log dialog, lets see...
The event log contains data about your
completed count ups, count downs, notifications, calendar events and
daily browser times. You can change the
dimensions of the dialog by dragging
its edges. You can also change the width of the tree columns by dragging the little seperators between
the column
headings. In the upper-right position of the column headings is a
small image, which is a column picker. Click on it to
display a drop-down list of the tree columns. Use this to hide/show individual tree columns. All of this is
"remembered" the next
time you open the dialog. If you have set a non-zero value for"Delete
log entries after n days" (see Options... above) , entries that meet
this criteria are automatically deleted from your log file (this clean
up processing occurs when you open the event log dialog). You can also
clear the entire log by clicking the "Clear log" button.
A Status value of "Expired" indicates that this one-time notification
or count down "completed" while your browser was closed.
Values of "N/A" means this column is not applicable to this event type.
Visit Home Page
Links to this webpage.
Documentation
About
The About menu
item has
two tabs, a Credits tab and a Changelog tab
(where you can quickly see the changes made to the latest version).