Channel 9 Forums - The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 04:26:39 GMT

This is a clock that auto-fits into the title bar - saves space in the system tray
Requirements:
Windows 2000 or later (for transparency)

EDIT:
v2 - allows a registry setting TimeFormat (string) which overrides the settings pulled from the Regional control panel. Uses wildcards like these
For example, %#c shows the date (in long format) as well as the time. AM/PM can be added via %#c %p which yields -- to use the date in the documentation --
Tuesday, March 14, 1995, 12:41:29 PM

v2.1 - fixed bug where if you dragged it close to the left edge of the screen, the next launch would force it to be at least a few hundred pixels away from the left edge

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

dotnetjunkie — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 12:41:30 GMT

This application failed to start because MFC70.DLL was not found.

I run on Windows 2003, with tons of programs installed like Office 2003, Visual Studio.NET 2003, etc...

Seems like MFC70.DLL is a rare component.

You see, this should be re-written in .NET

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 17:40:38 GMT

I built an MFC6 version in the MFC6 subfolder - try that one

EDIT: isn't mfc70.dll included in the .NET 1.1 Framework?

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 01:04:00 GMT

I suppose I could just include only the MFC6 build... is there a way to link to the latest MFC available on the executing system? The machine I built this on had MFC7 installed.

I do need window transparency so the app does require W2K or later, but I don't use any MFC7 stuff.

Or am I blowing the linking thing completely?

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Travis H — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:26:55 GMT

Is this supposed to actually hook into the application so that it displays to the left of the control-buttons or is it just to overlay on the screen at the position of the control buttons when it's maximized?

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:30:12 GMT

It doesn't tie to the foreground application - just tacks on to the area of the workspace (screen minus Start Menu bar)

You can drag it wherever you like though, and it will remember across launches

It uses a default color/font from the Appearance settings - caption font

I've noticed this is really ugly when the default caption font (white) is displayed against a desktop with the "clouds" image (when there are no windows maximized)

So I put in a feature where you can pick whatever color you want - give the app the focus and hit the "C" key to pull up a color picker

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

darklotus — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 19:30:32 GMT

Is there some way to add the date into this as well? I dont know enough C++ to add it. Just a thought.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:04:43 GMT

Good question. I pull the time/date format from the Regional Settings control panel, so mm/dd/yyyy vs. dd/mm/yyyy is not an issue... I could probably even have it display the month and day names in the language edition of the OS. It's probably a matter of mucking with a very specific area of the code that generates the time string. I'll look into it.

The hard part gets to be setting preferences in an app with no user interface.

EDIT: and the size of the form will need to be expanded... not a big deal...
EDIT2: maybe adding the date should be a ToolTip-style onhover kind of thing. No - on second thoughts that could get real annoying.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

darklotus — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 13:16:24 GMT

I dont know c++ well enough to write this nice application, i was able to get the date to display though. Most of my programming knowledge is vb6 and c# so the sytax may not look right , but it worked!

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:04:59 GMT

Very nice
EDIT: can you post the lines you changed?

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

darklotus — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:00:24 GMT

File:Settings.h Line(s):16


#define BARCLOCK_CX 128

to

#define BARCLOCK_CX 256

File:BarClockWnd.h Line(s):12


CString m_time;

to

CString m_time;
CString m_date;

File:BarClockWnd.cpp Line(s):165


m_time = COleDateTime::GetCurrentTime().Format(VAR_TIMEVALUEONLY);

to

m_time = COleDateTime::GetCurrentTime().Format(VAR_TIMEVALUEONLY);
m_date = COleDateTime::GetCurrentTime().Format(VAR_DATEVALUEONLY);

File:BarClockWnd.cpp Line(s):176


m_time,

to

m_time + "  " + m_date,

Its nothing major, just simple addition of some code thats already there, not too bad for someone who doesnt know c++.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:27:01 GMT

darklotus wrote:

Is there some way to add the date into this as well?

As of the latest version, set the following registry key to the format you want
HKCU\Software\BarClock\TimeFormat

%x %X will put the date first
%X %x will put the time first

You can get very specific using the strftime wildcards

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

zybler — Wed, 04 May 2005 13:07:03 GMT

I tested it and it work fine.. the catch is that it doesn't work with all software, namely WMP 10. WMP 10 has the fourth button in addition to the 3 usual buttons (min, max/restore, close) it will be overlapped.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Maurits — Fri, 06 May 2005 16:48:13 GMT

Thanks for the tip! I'm not sure what the fix is, but I'll think about it.

I also thought of two more potential justifications for the app.

Full-screen - if you're viewing something full-screen, and you want to know what time it is, you can check without taking your eyes off the screen. (Though some games may change the resolution on the fly, which might break the clock - perhaps I could listen for resolution-change-events and reposition accordingly.)
Auto-hide Task bar - if you like auto-hiding the task bar, but want to see the clock anyway, this app is for you.

I was reading michkap's blog and noticed a "regional settings change" event - maybe I should capture that to allow re-reading of the system regional date/time format.

LATER:
OK, here's what I came up with for the three-vs.-four-button thing.

I thought about resolving as WONTFIX because the user can just drag the clock wherever. But I felt guilty about it.

Then I had an idea - add more commands!
There's already a command to change the color - "C"
I've been somewhat annoyed that there's no way to reset the position of the app to its initial default position ("3"-button position) - so I will add the following additional commands:
"3" - reset clock to initial position, based on three buttons (minimize, restore/maximize, close)
"4" - reset clock to a position based on FOUR buttons, as in WMP
"?" - show list of commands... or maybe "h" for help... depends on how that SHIFT key interacts with regional keyboard settings...

Commands may be entered by giving the app focus and typing that key.
I'll update this project once this is implemented.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

Matthew van Eerde — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 04:04:16 GMT

Now that I have two monitors I have to revisit this. It's not remembering its position (I have it on the non-primary monitor.)

It's probably some sanity-checking code that didn't correctly consider the rights of the purportedly insane.

EDIT: Yup, disabling the sanity checks in the code makes it work with multiple monitors.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

poo — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:29:29 GMT

Maurits wrote:

Requirements:
Windows 2000 or later (for transparency)

EDIT:
v2 - allows a registry setting TimeFormat (string) which overrides the settings pulled from the Regional control panel. Uses wildcards like these
For example, %#c shows the date (in long format) as well as the time. AM/PM can be added via %#c %p which yields -- to use the date in the documentation --
Tuesday, March 14, 1995, 12:41:29 PM

v2.1 - fixed bug where if you dragged it close to the left edge of the screen, the next launch would force it to be at least a few hundred pixels away from the left edge
" />

i'm new here. how do you DL the darn clock?!

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

JonathonW — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:07:16 GMT

poo wrote:

Maurits wrote:
Requirements:
Windows 2000 or later (for transparency)

EDIT:
v2 - allows a registry setting TimeFormat (string) which overrides the settings pulled from the Regional control panel. Uses wildcards like these
For example, %#c shows the date (in long format) as well as the time. AM/PM can be added via %#c %p which yields -- to use the date in the documentation --
Tuesday, March 14, 1995, 12:41:29 PM

v2.1 - fixed bug where if you dragged it close to the left edge of the screen, the next launch would force it to be at least a few hundred pixels away from the left edge
" />

i'm new here. how do you DL the darn clock?!

Click the Save link at the bottom of the first post.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

botnik — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:39:50 GMT

Hi, I'm even newer here. I don't have a compiler for Windows. I can give the app focus and get the colour dialog, but haven't been able to add the date to the display or get a help screen. Is there a way I can do that, or are there detailed instructions somewhere for how to use regedit or something to display the date? (The computer I'm running the clock on is my employer's computer, so I really don't want to screw it up.)

Thanks.

The Sandbox - Clock app for Title bar

francwalter — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:00:14 GMT

There is no documentation for this. No help screen. Not in the actual version.

For the TimeFormat you have to create a REG_SZ under

HKCU\Software\BarClock

called TimeFormat with e.g. the value '%d. %m. %y %H:%M' (without the quotation marks) and you get the dateformat like "26.07.08 18:05".
You can get the strftime-parameters e.g. from

http://de2.php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php

There are as well 'Color' (REG_DWORD) e.g. 'ffffff' for white, Left (REG_DWORD) and Top ( REG_DWORD).

If you cannot compile the BarClock, its a pity. Its more useful if you CAN compile it.
You need Visual Studio 2003 or similar.

If you add in BarClockWnd.cpp somewhere after after:

int color = a->GetProfileInt(
  "",
  "Color",
  BARCLOCK_COLOR_DEFAULT
);

// REG_SZ FontSize (default = 15)
int fontsize = a->GetProfileInt(
  "",
  "FontSize",
  15 // default is 15
);

and after

lfCaptionFont = ncmNonClientMetrics.lfCaptionFont;

lfCaptionFont.lfHeight = fontsize;

then you can use a REG_DWORD called FontSize, where you can determine the fontsize.

And i changed the "EasterEgg" :

if (nChar == VK_ESCAPE) // Easter egg
// this serves as copyright - preserve this feature
{ AfxMessageBox(BARCLOCK_EASTEREGGTEXT);
}

with:

if (nChar == VK_ESCAPE) // Exit
{
AfxGetMainWnd()->DestroyWindow();
}

to get an exit possibility. Without this, no saving of color and so on in registry

Regards, franc