Steve's blog

A blog about what's going on in Analysis UK...

Dinner Timer Lite 1.2.0 Released

I've just uploaded the new version of Dinner Timer Lite (1.2.0) and updated the DinnerTimer.com website to add the new version and update the screen shots.

Some new additions this time are:


  • Exec notifier to start .exe files or open web pages so custom notifications can be run on timer events.

  • The Timer Event selection for notifiers has been simplified with some help text thrown in as well.

  • The timer can now be started with a command line /start hh:mm:ss switch.



As well as many more improvements which are listed on the Download page.

Dinner Timer Lite V1.1 Released – and it's Huge!

Literally, huge. Below is a photo of my 22” wide-screen monitor with Dinner Timer Lite running. As you can see it fills the screen nicely with a big font – now you can easily see Dinner Timer Lite from the other end of the kitchen or further.

Photo of large Dinner Timer Lite

before you ask, yes you can make it smaller!

Just in-case you are wondering, yes that is the snowman build indicator on the left and it's not lit up because the build machine wasn't running (saving a little electricity and reducing the heat in the office!).

There are a few other cool additions to V1.1, these include :

Added Twitter notifier – now notify your friends and family automatically when you start dinner, when it will be ready, tweet notifications when it's about to be ready, when it's ready and through Dinner Timer Lite's unique overrun timer tweet when the dinners burnt.

Here's screen shot of setting up the Twitter notifier to send out a message when the timer has overrun :

Twitter

Here's a screen shot of my Twitter tweets. You can also follow me as BookSwapSteve on Twitter

Tweets

I've also improved bubble notifications – Bubble and twitter notifiers now support text template replacements. Include any of the following for them to be replaced with the appropriate values when run : {{RunMins}}, {{StartTime}}, {{EndTime}}, {{MinsRemaining}}, {{MinsOverrun}}.

Additional sounds for the sound notifier including : Cow moo, Air horn, Alarm beep, Alarm clock beep, Alarm ring, All clear, Ambulance, Aooga horn, Boat air horn, Boing, Boing2, Boxing bell multi, Bullet ricochet, Buzzer, Buzzer 2, Buzzer 3, Buzzer 4, Buzzer 5, Buzzer heavy, Buzz through loud, Buzz thru and Chainsaw.

The time options available in the drop down list is now user configurable and includes the ability to name the times. e.g. you can enter a timer called "Pizza" and have it set as a 12 minute timer, the list will then show Pizza which can be easily selected and when the timer is started it will run for 12 minutes.

Here's a sample of modifying the time option to show pizza :

Setting the time options.

Selecting the pizza time.

The options boxes have been resized for the default Windows Vista font size.

I've also added warnings for opacity settings where the timer may not be visible and a extra context menu item has been added to the notification area icon to reveal the timer if it is difficult to see. Both myself and a few others had managed to get Dinner Timer Lite to be so transparent that we couldn't find it to restore it.

I've also changed the installer to be a single exe so no unzipping required and the binaries and installer are digitally signed so you know their genuinely from me (Analysis UK).

Their are also various under-the-cover improvements to facilitate some new features in the next release, including the first stage of splitting out of the notifiers from the main application with the intention of allowing developers to create their own notifier plugins, but thats going to have to wait for a future version before it's fully implemented.