Date & Time 1.2

52 Responses to “Date & Time 1.2”

1. Chestercl Says:
   October 23rd, 2009 at 11:47 am

   This is so nice- Thank you for putting in the multiple alarm choice- was wondering- to make this gadget perfect- is there any way to say- set an alarm to go off Monday- Friday and not weekend for say a semester. I have been watching this gadget grow and this would make it perfect for my class change alarm. I guess i could close out the gadget on the weekends and this would work.
   Thanks again for your labors.

2. The Staff Says:
   October 23rd, 2009 at 2:18 pm

   Hi Chestercl, We are glad that you like the new update. As for the functionality that you are referring to, we had reviewed what it would take to make the recurrence options more sophisticated but it did not make sense at this point. We are going to review again when we do our next update. That said, it is possible to set it up alarms that will meet your needs using the events system. You would just need to set up multiple events that recur weekly at the appropriate times. The only downside is that you have to set up numerous events but once they are in there, it should work as you need it to. Let us know if you have any other thoughts or comments.

3. Elric Says:
   October 25th, 2009 at 6:01 am

   Using Win7×64, have noticed at some point, the “custom alarm sound” no longer functions – alarm goes off but no sound… however no issue on default alarm settings. Have tried everything, from moving btwn x86 & x64 Sidebar, removing Date & Time gadget and reinstalling, running Sidebar as Admin, moving the Gadget from the App Data location to the actual Windows Sidebar gadgets directory….. no love no matter what I try. No audio issues being experienced anywhere else, so don’t think is an OS issue.

   Any ideas?

4. Howard Says:
   October 27th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

   This is a really great gadget that I use everyday.

   Was wondering if it is possible to show the Title of the event when the alarm goes off, without having to open the fly off window, and the ability to add Label to an alarm that will be shown when the alarm goes off.

   Also for the analog clock, is it possible to include date information as well.

   Thank you again for creating such a useful gadget.

5. The Staff Says:
   October 27th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

   Hi Elric, Our apologies for the problems you are having. It sounds like you have done a very thorough job of troubleshooting already but a few quick questions… 1) What is the file type that you are using? 2) Have you tried changing the location/path of the file in question? 3) Is it not working with any file or has it been specific to a single file? I am pretty sure you’ve already tested these parameters but if you could confirm, it would be helfpul.

6. The Staff Says:
   October 27th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

   Hi Howard, We are glad that you like the gadget and appreciate your suggestions… they are all quite good. We have logged these in our suggestion sheet and will consider them with our next update. If you have any other suggestions, please drop us a line as we review them any time we do an update.

7. Bruce Says:
   October 29th, 2009 at 12:54 am

   Win 7 Ultimate x64 – had same problem as Elric. uninstalled, rebooted, reinstalled and made sure file was mp3 and sound works fine again. (with Rush Subdivisions how could it not!) what formats will it play?
   hhhmm maybe each alarm could have different sound file? hhhmmm
   i’m not into gadgets much, but this is one excellent gadget! thank you and i’ll follow your work.

8. Jan Says:
   October 29th, 2009 at 1:21 am

   Hi, good stuff, I also raise my hand for the need of an alarm titling option.

   What bothers me slightly is the analog clock, why does the short arrow not move in smaller increments than 1h? it can be quite difficult to judge the time when looking quickly at the clock now if time is close to f.ex 8:30 (e.g. is is 8:30 or 7:30?)
   And finally, will other analog clock layouts be added at some point?

   Thanks for a very useful gadget

9. The Staff Says:
   October 29th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

   Hi Bruce, Glad to know that the reinstallation worked for you. We are still going to do some troubleshooting to see if we can determine what is causing the problem in the first place. You should be able to play any type of format that is supported by Windows Media Player. Please do let us know if you have any other thoughts or suggestions.

10. The Staff Says:
    October 29th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    Hi Jan, We’ve got the alarm titling option on our list for future improvements. It is certainly one of the most frequently asked for items we’re seeing. Apologies for the shortcoming on the analog clock. It is due to a limitation in the way the graphics were produced and to fix it would have been fairly tedious and time consuming. The hour hand is literally going to stay exactly at the hour it is on until the hour changes. We will review this in a future update and maybe we can come up with a way to design without this issue. Other analog clocks are on our list for a future update. Thanks for your feedback and let us know if you have any other suggestions for us. Glad you like the gadget.

11. TomC Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    The non-moving hour hand on the analog clock is a very serious flaw. The whole point of an analog display is to be able to quickly see an approximate value. With your analog clock the answer is wrong, by a full hour, half of the time. If you can’t come up with a good fix, it would be a small improvement to move the hour hand at the half-hour point. And guess what – good programming IS tedious and time consuming.

12. The Staff Says:
    November 5th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    Hi TomC. The issue that you describe is due to the fact that we needed to use image replacement to generate the analog clock. This was done as to support the multiple analog clock feature which was one of the most requested features we received. We certainly understand that this is less than perfect. Please understand that because we provide our gadgets for free, we sometimes have limitations on our development. Your point about the hour hand being moved has been passed on to our development team and if it is economically feasible, we will look at implementing it. Thanks for your feedback and let us know if you have any other thoughts/suggestions.

13. Ted Says:
    November 7th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    Really? How hard can it be to make a working hour hand? As a developer, I can tell you it is not complex. I don’t think you should have even put it in if you weren’t going to make it work. The rest looks great though.

14. Woofa Says:
    November 7th, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    Same criticism as for the System Control gadget, show something representative of what the gadget looks like not some nonsensical icon. Having said that this application can be so good in so many ways, mainly the calendar but so poor in others such as the display limitations of the clock, in particular the analog clock. It’s really pretty half-baked.

15. duli Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 6:55 am

    guys…this has been my alarm clock for a long while now…and a big improvement for me was to have the alarm go off just monday through friday.
    To Chestercl’s response, I was trying to acomplish what I needed by making 5 alarms for every working day and have them repeat weekly but unfortunately the repeat options are daily monthly and yearly. Do I need to set up 20 alarms to get what I need?

16. The Staff Says:
    November 10th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    Hi Duli, The recurring option for the alarm is something that we need to address. That said, you can set up a workaround using Events instead of Alarms as they have a weekly recurring option. When we have updated the Alarm options, we will post here. Let us know if you have any other thoughts or suggestions.

17. duli Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 8:46 am

    Thanks for the quick reply guys! I set up 5 event reminders that kick off weekly. Mission accomplished! To that point though if you guys can add a day selection check box for the alarm for the new version and a start and end date (which would work for chestercl’s semester issue ) that would rock. It’s still my one and only alarm clock. Nice work guys.

18. Suhardi Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    I use Win7 RC 32bit (will use Win7 Ult 64bit – no stock at this time).

    My computer timezone is UTC +7 (Bangkok, Jakarta).

    When I try the gadget with several timezone, some of the timezone display the wrong date/time.

    Example, my comp date/time (local/GMT+7): Nov 14, 1:00 AM.

    If I use timezone “local”, the date/time : Nov 14, 1:00 AM. ===> OK
    If I use timezone “GMT +7/Bangkok, Jakarta)”, the date/time : Nov 13, 8:00 PM. ===> Wrong
    If I use timezone “GMT +8/Beijing, Hongkong”, the date/time : Nov 14, 2:00 AM. ===> OK
    If I use timezone “GMT +8/Singapore), the date/time : Nov 13, 11:00 PM. ===> Wrong

    ???

19. The Staff Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    Hi Suhardi, Try resetting the clocks and then adding them again. To do this, go to the Settings panel, click the Reset tab, click ‘Restore Gadget Clocks’. Then just add your clocks again. Hopefully this will fix the problems you’re having. Please let us know if you continue to see the same.

20. Suhardi Says:
    November 15th, 2009 at 12:16 am

    Already try to reset the clock and the problem still there…
    The results still same, GMT+7/Bangkok, Jakarta late 5 hrs from the rite time (local) and GMT+8/Singapore late 3 hrs from the rite time (GMT+8/Beijing, Hongkong)

21. The Staff Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Suhardi, have you tried a full on reset of the XML file for the gadget as well? Settings -> Help -> Follow the instructions on the bottom and delete all of the files in the directory.

    There are two possibilities: The first is that the clocks are still somehow set to their offsets instead of their region codes, a full reset should be able to disprove this or fix the issue.

    The second is that your computer is feeding faulty time data into the gadget. Not likely, but still possible as the gadget is only as accurate as the data from the sidebar API.

    Try a full reset though, I have a funny feeling those clocks still aren’t getting set to their appropriate region codes somehow.

22. Suhardi Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    Try to full reset, still not rite.

    Try uninstall and download from this site, install again, still not rite.

    Check with Win7 Date and Time Additional Clocks, all okay, nothing wrong.

    Maybe I wait until I get my Win7 Ultimate and try again.

23. The Staff Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    Suhardi, That is certainly odd, yeah, definitely give this another shot when you get the newer version of Win 7. We’ll try to think of anything else that might have caused this issue, but right now, we’re drawing blanks on it. Hopefully a non-RC version of the OS can help.

24. marciton Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Hello
    I love your gadget but :
    1°/ the weeks number are not good this year (if we use outlook as a reference)

    2°/can we have the week start the Monday as an option (Europe …)

    Thanks

25. The Staff Says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Marciton, the gadget is using an older calendar system we modified from a free download, so apologies if it can’t be set specifically just yet. Someday we’ll be able to use either an updated system or code our own version. Could you clarify what you mean by your first point?

26. RD Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 6:03 am

    I had Date & Time 1.1 running still. Oops.
    So I went to Settings, Update… Check for gadget updates… and it told me Congratulations. etc.
    Oh well. I closed it and unstalled, downloaded/installed 1.2.

27. RD Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 7:04 am

    Notes:

    For everyone complaining about the hour hand… well, yeah. But, if I understand “image replacement” right… how would y’all like to draw 60 images for 12 hours (720 images)… (or with a second hand, 60×60x12,maybe?). Tedious.
    Yes, well… shoulda, coulda, woulda derived it programmatically… guess they didn’t… as in ‘free’.

    However, the Analog option is kinda ‘buried’ anyway… a little hard to find.
    Settings, Options, Clocks, Add (or Edit), Clock Format, Analog/Label. And second hand visible is under ‘Basic’.

    Lastly, on -my- system… the analog face blinks every second anyway, whether there is a ’second-hand’ visible or not. Guess that’s ‘image replacement’

    But I gone digital from the beginning.

    I use BuildaGadget’s digital setting, 40% opaque… and the Microsoft analog. Works well for one location.

28. RD Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 7:27 am

    Hmmm… ya know, if you add a one-time alarm, and snooze it… it no longer shows in the alarm list.
    You’re gonna have to wait… to ‘off’ it (to delete it … but, only upto 20 minutes (max snooze).

    And, once you have an alarm set, you can let it go, or delete it… no edit, as far as I can tell.

    So… there might be a feature/fix, or two, to add?

29. RD Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    Is there a ‘timeout’ on the alarm? or could you add one? …just a thought.

30. The Staff Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    RD, if you close the gadget and re-add it, the snooze alarm should get reset. Since the alarm triggers, it automatically deletes itself, then if the user hits snooze, it just sets up a timer. Alarm editing is a possibility, we just figured it would be easier to delete and add a new one for most people.

31. The Staff Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    RD, we tried the programmatic way to build the clock, the problem was multiple analog clocks causing the gadget to crash. Image replacement was unfortunately the only way to proceed from there. We are planning on releasing a minor upgrade soon with an additional hour hand set to the halfway mark so that people can read the time a bit better (it’s not perfect, but better than before). Image wise, while the 60 minutes and 60 seconds work out fine, adding in 360 (degrees in a circle) images for the hour hand would not only get tedious, but rather large in terms of the gadget size. The analog option kind of got buried in the existing control scheme because up until this version, we had just never planned to have them in there.

    It does blink a bit, probably due to the image replacement, but that’s going to be one of those issues that will affect everyone differently.

    Also, we fixed our time zone settings now, the gadget should work well for lots of locations.

32. The Staff Says:
    November 28th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    RD, it’s the old update system, we’ll eventually get everything changed around.

33. RD Says:
    November 29th, 2009 at 11:20 am

    Hey… thanks for the info. I just thought you were taking a lot of flak on the image replacement thing.

    Cool on the halfway hour hand update.
    I just threw that editing note in for ‘completeness’

    Anyway… I note that, if you don’t manually ‘off’ the alarm… it’s like the energizer bunny… keeps going and going and… (at least for as long as I was willing to test it… which wasn’t long).
    So I thought an -option- for a user-set timeout/off (quick or long, secs or mins) …would be good, in case it’s unattendedly annoying or whatever. (Plus maybe someone just wants a short ‘blip’ reminder)

    Thanks for the gadgets!

34. Bruce Says:
    December 9th, 2009 at 8:52 am

    Win7 amd64 The clock has stopped – will only change when I open and close options menu.

35. The Staff Says:
    December 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Bruce, we imagine you’ve tried adding it to the sidebar, but maybe try removing the XML data files and fully resetting the gadget? Head to the gadget Settings Panel -> Help -> Follow the bottom instructions. It might be enough to get it going again, though from the sounds of it, something is killing the timer variables, which isn’t completely unheard of, but very odd in this case.

36. chilly Says:
    December 15th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    Hello,
    I like ur gadget, even when its still in 1.1 version. However just a thought, I am now currently using deepfreeze to lock up my C drive. Is there a way to save my alarm setting (xml file) to a diffrent directory? it would certainly be a hassle to unlock deepfreeze whenever i need to update my alarm. (is there a way I can modify it myself?)

37. The Staff Says:
    December 15th, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    Chilly, there’s a way to set a new directory in the Storage.xml file in the gadget files themselves. Though it will set all outside files to that directory. Not sure if you can switch drives though, we never tried that. Otherwise, the code is open as well as the XML files, so just play with it until it works.

38. CRMDude Says:
    December 16th, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    Great gadget. I use it all the time.

    I do have a small issue. When I click the calendar icon, the calendar opens for a fraction of a second and then closes immediately. No matter what I do, it just refuses to stay open. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the gadget but no luck so far.

    I will appreciate a solution to the issue. Thanks a bunch in advance.

39. CRMDude Says:
    December 16th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

    Forgot to add that I am using Windows 7 Prof.

40. The Staff Says:
    December 16th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

    CRMDude, go into the gadget settings panel and toggle the “Flyout Focus Fix” option and hopefully that should fix it.

41. CRMDude Says:
    December 16th, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    That did it. Thanks again!!

42. RD Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 7:33 pm

    I don’t know if this is of any help/use/interest, but I thought it interesting, myself. I came across an analog clock display on a webpage… it’s built as an SWF, less than 2K. The second hand is a constant movement, not a ‘tick’… the minute hand ticks (a little), the hour hand moves along appropriately. It’s on a webpage for a news screensaver…
    http://www.etn.nl/screensavers/news

43. The Staff Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    RD, we will certainly look into it, though from our recent experience with a commissioned project, we’ve learned that Flash doesn’t play well with the sidebar, especially those on x64 machines.

44. Mel Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 2:21 pm

    The time for Perth Western Australia is incorrect, it shows 2 hours later than it actually is.

45. The Staff Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    Mel, the time is coming from the sidebar API. If necessary, reset the clocks and re-add them and make sure you have the latest version of the gadget. Also double check that your Windows clock is accurate.

46. Mel Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    I have done the things suggested and it is still out by 2 hours. All other countries with GMT +8 are the correct time but Perth comes up 2 hours different. Can it have something to do with DLS?

47. The Staff Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    Mel, most likely. When we did the last upgrade of the gadget, we converted the clock system to read in DST values from the operating system instead of a non-corrected time zone. The data the gadget is reading in is from Windows which is grabbing it’s time from time.windows.com. We don’t have a way to exclude DST data from the gadget as it seemed that more people would need the correct time rather and a non-DST version and the time zones should be reading in correctly.

    It might be possible to turn off DST on the local Windows clock to compensate.

48. Jaime Says:
    February 11th, 2010 at 1:08 am

    I am using Date&Time V1.2

    I hope you can add more Formatting features for the Label, Date/Time separately. I’d like to see the Label having it’s own Font/Size/Color separate from the Date/Time’s Font/Size/Color for better reading.

    Since you are using XML, why not make it fully customizeable like Left Justified, Center Justified, Right Justified, Label+Date/Time in One-Line (if they can fit) etc..

49. The Staff Says:
    February 11th, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    Jaime, thank you for the suggestions, we’ll see what we can do for the next update.

50. Al Says:
    February 17th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

    Thanks for the gadget, really good stuff.

    My only suggestion would be to add a “fortnightly” recurrence option for events – something I’ve been trying to find in calendar apps for a whiel now.

    Thanks

51. Phil Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    Date & Time v 1.2, found world GMT time is inccorrected? for example to set on Jerusalem (GMT +2 ..) but display clock time incorrected??
    pls kinldy help, thanks.

52. The Staff Says:
    February 25th, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    Phil, we’ve been getting lots of complaints about incorrect time zones since this Tuesday. We’re looking into the possibility of a Windows update causing a problem. Since the gadget is reading info back from the sidebar API, if something happens to the API, the gadget can’t compensate.