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Mar 06

Date & Time 1.1

It’s been quite a while since we built the 1.0 version of this gadget. We’ve learned a lot in the past year or two. For instance: If you build an alarm clock, make sure the shutoff button works. Good news everyone! We have a button that works now and a brand spanking new rewrite to boot.

We’re not kidding, we rewrote the entire gadget to update it and add in more features for people to use.

Features:

Multiple clocks system configurable from the settings panel.
Alarm clock works, custom sound can be configured from the settings panel.
Calendar almost completely redesigned, more event options.
New event options: Color and date re-occurrence.
Day and month event sort for calendars.
Ability to add holidays from an external site list.
Better event checking for the days with events.
Dynamic theme system allowing for multiple clocks set in different formats.

We realize there’s a lot more we can do with this project, so the odds are good that we’ll be revisiting it on and off over time. This update not only provided a ton of new options and new look, but laid the foundation to take this gadget even farther.

Download: BuildAGadget.com – Widgipedia.com – Live.com Gallery

As with all of our gadgets, please let us know if you run into any problems or have any questions, concerns, comments, etc. We do appreciate them and read all of the comments.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
and is filed under Date & Time, Gadgets.

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45 Responses to “Date & Time 1.1”

Les Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
VERRRY nice upgrade but one thing i don’t get at all. why do you advertise with an analog clock but not provide the option of one? even if it made the gadget taller this would be incredible to have. if you wont do this then why use an analog clock that misleads us into thinking it has one?
The Staff Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Les, Thanks! We were going to change the icon but figured that since it was already pretty recognized… In any case, we may someday add in an analog clock animation to the face or change the icon.
Les Says:
March 7th, 2009 at 8:50 am
cool but why dont you just leave it as it is and make it taller when the analog option is picked??! i think it owuld be a shame not to have the analog option
The Staff Says:
March 8th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Les, That’s the plan. With the 1.1 update, we upgraded the gadget to a dynamic theme system. In future updates, we’ll strongly consider adding in an analog face.
Richard S Says:
March 9th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Love this gadget – the interface is clean and elegant. However, when I set if for four different clocks, only the first two update. The second two remain unchanging unless I open the flyout. That forces the gadget to update the two clocks that are “stuck”. Thanks for your work.
Richard S Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Following up – a re-nstall fixed the issue and all of my clocks function properly. I love it!
The Staff Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Richard, glad to hear it! We’ll still look into the issue, but it’s definetely great to know there’s a temporary fix for the interrim.
hmm Says:
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:09 am
It’s a great gadget but it’s clocks fail to adjust for seasonal time shifts. as result all my clocks are inaccurate (local is accurate but everything else if 1 hour off)
The Staff Says:
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 am
Hmm… We offset the clocks the by timezone but forgot about potential time shifts, we’ll look into this.
Lee Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 1:47 am
This is a great gadget; however, I work from home and I have been looking for something for me to keep track of my day as my routine is the same daily. So it would be great if there were as many daily alarm setups as you can get. Like 7am (for the wake up and dog out), 9am (start of business day to get on the calls), 12pm (take dog out again, check mail), 3pm (make sure daily reports are done in an hour) and so on… It would really keep people on point! Thanks!
AnilKool Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 1:02 pm
The Clock Caption is not seen on gadget..How can we know which timezone is which click ?? needs to be checked urgently..
The Staff Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 11:20 pm
AnilKool, when you set the clock up, set the format to include the label. In the dropdown, select an option like “Label / Time”, that should display a custom label on top of the clock. We’ll look into giving a default of the timezone in the future, but the labels should show up as long as the format shows them and they are filled in. Let us know if they still aren’t working.
David Says:
April 7th, 2009 at 6:23 am
Great gadget. I use it mainly for quick alarm setting to remind me to go and do something. The alarm setting is always in AM/PM mode though. Is it possible to set the gadget to use 24h clock in all parts, and especially for alarm setting? (And I support the request for an analog clock.)
The Staff Says:
April 8th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
David, we’ll look into 24-hour options for the alarm clock.
kate Says:
April 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
by default it doesn’t show properly for me on my games PC it has pink marks where the rounded edges would be on Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with ATI Radeon 4870×2 graphics card (latest drivers)

I had 1.0 and that showed properly

When I change to “square” version instead of rounded it shows ok

I am guessing the transparency is broken somehow

here is a screenshot, the date and time thing is on the topright I haven’t messed with the settings yet to only show the time (text looks a bit weird because tinypic downsizes pictures larger than 1600×1200, it’s actually 1920×1440): http://i43.tinypic.com/2eb6crb.png
Dave Lambert Says:
April 11th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
This is a real cool update. I love the multiple clocks and the calendar update.
Neil Says:
April 12th, 2009 at 5:15 am
I’ve set two clocks, but only the first / top one updates. What have I done wrong?
Neil Says:
April 12th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Ah ha. Now that I’ve rebooted, it’s working fine. Thanks for your Gadget.
The Staff Says:
April 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Kate, it’s a problem with the way the dynamic themes work, it’ll show pink corners if the display is set to classic mode. This was one of the better theme systems we could use for this so that the gadget could display multiple clocks without having to have a ton of pre-rendered backgrounds. BTW, sweet wallpaper, really digging the Left4Dead dead center of the screen. Mmm… Blood Harvest…
The Staff Says:
April 13th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Thanks Dave!
kate Says:
April 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
okie, that’s a pity the old version worked fine (tho can’t remember if it had rounded corners or what)

Ok something else though, i can’t find any option to turn off the date anymore? The old one you could change it to not show or something, can’t find an option like that, is it hidden somewhere else or is it gone now? As you can see I prefer a big calendar so I have windows default calendar gadget and your date and time open, I don’t really need the date shown again so I had it turned off on old one

thanks for any help
The Staff Says:
April 15th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Kate, go into the settings panel -> Options -> Clocks. From there you can either customize the existing clock to not show the date (Edit icon -> Format dropdown) or delete it entirely to just keep the alarm and calendar on the bottom of the gadget.
kevin Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Is there any way to make the font bigger? I love the gadget but it is difficult to read with the small font size…Thanks!
kate Says:
April 19th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
oh thanks! i missed the little tabs underneath the main tab woops

I like the multiple clocks thing so you can have different world timezones and stuff, are there any plans to make it so you can have the date and time but a label as well? seems odd that there’s every other combination but not all 3
The Staff Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Kate, it’s an idea that crossed our minds as well, just a matter of getting back into the gadget at some point and adding it into the calculations. We’ll see what we can do.
kate Says:
April 20th, 2009 at 10:30 am
ok that’s great amazing support for a free thing with no ads!
David Says:
April 29th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Hello Build A Gadget

i just found your date & time gadget, its lovely.

i had one question tho … can you sync it with either windows calendar, outlook or preferably google calendar.

It would be awsome if it synced up with google calendar, i might even love u guys alittle if/when it can =)
The Staff Says:
April 30th, 2009 at 10:10 am
David, we don’t have it currently set up to do that, but in the future we’re hoping to get some integration features in for external calendars.
dedbeat Says:
May 12th, 2009 at 6:51 am
hey… i love this app but it would rock if you could include one more piece of functionality..

can you choose which days the alarm goes off? right now its everyday including saturday and sunday!

great work guys…cheers!
Anonymous Says:
May 17th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Hi

I was looking for something like this and thanks for building such a neat gadget. The one problem is see is you are saving the timezone as just -6 but not the actual timezone itself. For example, -6 has 4 different timezones and each have something different as day light savings time. Is there a workaround or fix for this?

thx
The Staff Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Anonymous, it’s something we’ll have to look into. We didn’t anticipate different daylight savings time settings on a per timezone basis. Currently, daylight savings time should be calculated automatically by the local computer clock,which would explain why it’s blanketed for every zone. For the interim, the only fix would be to put a label on the zone to remind yourself to add or subtract an hour. We’ll see if there’s a way to get this patched up, but it’s probably going to take a little while to get everything set up that specifically for the gadget.
Ron Says:
May 31st, 2009 at 3:17 am
tried several times to download but nothing happened although pc askd the download questions. Also does the clock work as a timer? Be great if it did sometimes I need something to tell me to get off the machine….
Weng Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Hi. I love this gadget so much. Can I set up an alarm for a particular date and time? Can I also change the numbering of weeks to ISO 8601 where the week starts on Monday and the week number starts on the week where the 1st Thursday is? I hope I can get a reply soon. Many thanks!
Simon Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
If you can get Daylight Savings sorted out then this would really help me and I suspect everyone else in Europe who has to comply. Best of luck and looking forward to 1.2 if its in. Otherwise this is pretty good and ideal from November to March. Keep up the good work.
Nesta Says:
June 28th, 2009 at 6:25 am
When I click the calendar button,the calendar show only one minute then close? How can I use the calendar? In Win7.
The Staff Says:
June 29th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Nesta, that is an odd problem, I knew we ran into something similar a while back and that’s why we have the flyout focus option in the gadget. Maybe try flipping that option on or off and see if it helps, otherwise, we’ll have to look into this one and see if we can replicate the issue.
Nesta Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
The method u give make everything all right, thx!
Alan Says:
July 31st, 2009 at 3:29 am
First of all, great gadget!

Please add “24:01″ as time format (%Mil%:%M%).

Workaround: The time format can be to 24-hour clock without seconds by changing “Time_Format” to “%Mil%:%M%” in \AppData\Local\BuildAGadget Content\Date And Time\Data-Time-Data.xml
IFlip92 Says:
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I used to love this gadget until I started liking the windows analog clock more with the neon lights theme on it but now I need this gadget’s alarm clock every now and then. What I’m sayin is that the next version should really have an option for analog or digital clock (with themes as well if possible) and keep all the other features as well i’d love to see that
Jean Pierre Says:
September 5th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
When do you plan to include a language option?
The Staff Says:
September 7th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Jean Pierre, we’ll consider it, but for the moment, our gadgets wil be in English unless otherwise translated into localized versions. Vista sidebar does allow for localization, though in a very strange way.
blah Says:
September 8th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
this gadget is great but it would look better if it had more themes and color options
The Staff Says:
September 9th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Color options will come in sometime down the road. The good news is that the gadget can use different background other than the pre-selected ones, we just haven’t put out any theme packs yet. But if you have a favorite background to use, by all means, try it out in the settings panel.
Benny Says:
October 10th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Great gadget!

When You added the 24 h time format You forgot to add it to the alarm clock to.
Is that something that will come in a future release?
The Staff Says:
October 12th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Hi Benny, Thanks for the nice compliment. We have a big update coming up for the D&T gadget which should address the point you mention. We will post when that update is ready.