# It's ShowTime! Where do you find the time?!

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Philip Ahrens Editorials Some Ideas About PACT Search 12Ghosts.com: Did you find what you were looking for? E-mail Philip Ahrens. MCSE MCSD MCP+I MCT Team #3 NT Workstation PACT supports • Walker's Watchguard • Citizens for Cycles • Heidelberg AKTUELL | Designed for Windows 95/98/NT. (Download all 12Ghosts 1.3 MB, 08-Dec-98) What's ShowTime?? Usage Examples History FAQs Details about Resource Efficiency Options for System Administrators Dialog Screen Shot ClipNotes Homepage E-mail PACT Software Support How to Order a License ### Download PACT ShowTime 99.1b 450 KB, 26-Nov-98, Self-extracting, with Setup and Uninstall. ### What's ShowTime?? Clock with 100% configurable time and date display, size, color, font style, shadow for 3D effect, blinking colon, exact phase of moon (on mouse over), move free even on top of the taskbar, per pixel with arrow keys, or lock position. Taskbar tray icon, 100% user defined 2-line time and date display, e.g. with day and day of week, size, color, font style, shadow, optionally move tray icon right every 10 minutes. FlyingIcon™. Alarm time once or on certain days of the week, snooze, play any sound file or CD title. 30 wave and midi sound files included. Chimes every quarter, once or 1-4 times, full hour signal, once or 1-12 times, tick on second. World times, DST. Quickly to access countdown. Sticky notes editor with automatic saving, auto-scrolling, font formatting, and a lot more. ### PACT ShowTime Examples Dialog Screen Shot ### History 99.1b The tooltip (context help) delay for the settings dialog was too high by a factor 10. This was unpleasant, since many users had the feeling as if there's no help. This has been corrected. By the way, you can adjust the context help delay in General options. 99.1 Save/restore all user defined settings for backup, or to transfer settings to other PCs. 99.1 General options to set the icons, shortcuts, and startup behavior. 98.10.2 DST was a "hack" in the previous version, I admit. We put all efforts into having it polished and now provide the most detailed information about world times including accurate daylight saving times. 98.10.2 You can now adjust the tool tip delay directly in the dialog. 98.10.2 On some older versions of Windows, ShowTime tried to access a new feature not present - and crashed. Workaround applied. All Minor enhancements and corrections. ### Usage To install PACT ShowTime, just click on the above link "Download PACT ShowTime " to save the file on your local disk. Start the just downloaded program and select OK to accept the default installation options. That's it! You should notice the ShowTime window, a taskbar tray icon and a FlyingIcon™. Click to open the format font dialog. Click with the right (the other) mouse button to open the context menu. Hold the left mouse button to move the window. The FlyingIcon™ is called FlyingIcon™ because it can be moved anywhere on the screen. Hold the left mouse button to move the icon. There is enough room on the top of the screen where most windows just display a broad blue beam, or use the area to the right where the vertical scroll bar usually wastes screen real estate. But you need to really move it, otherwise it's a click opening the font settings. # FAQs • Things you should know • ShowTime is the only clock I want. How do I remove the clock from the taskbar? • I noticed I can specify any file, not only sound files, to play. Can I add parameters? • Can I wake up with a CD title? • Talking about resources, don't you think a full blown editor is a little overhead for a simple clock? • Is PACT ShowTime more exact than the Windows clock? • Where can I find out more about the moon? Things you should know • ShowTime does not have any special requirements, however, a sound card is highly recommended. • Tray icons do not support more than the 16 basic windows colors. This is due to a limitation of Windows, not ShowTime. • Font smoothing is only available on Windows 95/98 with Plus! installed, or on Windows NT. • You might want to set up AM and PM symbols accordingly through Start - Settings - Control Panel - Regional Settings - Time. • You can specify if you want a shadow for each line, however, the shadow color and offset are the same for all three. • It is recommended to update to the latest version of comctl32.dll, version 4.72. ShowTime is the only clock I want. How do I remove the clock from the taskbar? Click on Start - Settings - Taskbar and remove the check mark of Show Clock. I noticed I can specify any file, not only sound files, to play. Can I add parameters? Yes, you can specify any file, even a batch file (a normal text file with the ending .BAT) with full command lines. However, you might want to try PACT Timer (also included in 12Ghosts) if you need to add parameters, properties or more flexible scheduling. To use all features of ShowTime like repeated chimes you should use .WAV or .MID files. However, you can also call a program or any registered file type, for example .MP3 files. Can I wake up with a CD title? To start a music CD track you might want to create a batch file (a normal text file with the ending .BAT), having the line cdplayer /play D: Replace D: with your CD-ROM's drive letter. And you can edit the play list to set the track to start with. Talking about resources, don't you think a full blown editor is a little overhead for a simple clock? No. We did a little testing, commenting out all code relating to ClipNotes. This reduced the size of the executable by 30 KB. Now, if you had 32 MB of main memory, an additional 30 KB is only 0.1% of main memory. To load 30 KB from an average disk drive, with an average 3 MB per second data throughput, would last 0.01 seconds. Including ClipNotes does not have a relevant effect on resources. Is PACT ShowTime more exact than the Windows clock? Your confidence in Microsoft software may be unlimited, but... yes, as long as you mean the sluggish display of seconds in the Date/Time Properties or Clock.exe: a) Please compare both times with a metronome or a analog wrist watch. b) Open a command prompt and enter the command "time" shortly before the next wrap of a second, compare the milliseconds. In comparison, you can recognize a slightly earlier wrap to the next second of PACT ShowTime. Technically, for ShowTime, this wrap is not possible to happen before the next second because we set a timer exactly to the next full second. In other words, the time in the dialog box title can only wrap to the next second a couple of milliseconds later, and never earlier. Where can I find out more about the moon? Well, how much more? You'll find anything for example at yahoo.com. Try searching for "astronomy"! You should find several observatories with rich explanations, the NASA site, the Java UTC atomic clock, astronomic software, NTP connectors, and everything else. ### Details about Resource Efficiency We put quite some time and thought into having this little clock save system resources wherever possible. The result is an astonishing low memory foot print and no recognizable processor time. First, we do not run a loop in any shape or form to wait for the next second to happen. Instead, ShowTime activates a system timer that only fires once exactly to the next full second. In between, ShowTime does not run as an active task. PACT ShowTime saves system resources because it does not do anything not required. Depending on user settings, it might be necessary to update the time window or tray icon every second - if seconds are displayed! If only minutes are displayed ShowTime does not redraw the main window until the next minute is triggered, etc. The tray icon will be repainted only once a day if the user has only set up the day or day of week for the icons. A small routine checks if any changes are necessary and - if not - returns without doing anything. All drawing routines have been optimized for high flexibility and saving of resources. Since v98.9, ShowTime does no longer include 31 + 7 icons for each day and day of week but creates the icons dynamically, providing for a smaller executable and more user control. We made sure that all time displays are only calculated if visible or selected: the tray icon, the moon and moon text, the world times, the options title bar, the alarm, countdown and chimes. However, even if you have all options selected and visible, ShowTime needs very few processor cycles. In fact, you will have difficulties to measure more than an average 0.5 percent processor time on a normal Pentium 200. Even the most processor intensive task - drawing the tray icon if seconds are selected - is hardly even visible in the System/Performance Monitor or NT Task Manager Performance. ### Special Options for System Administrators "No Options" for ClipNotes You may want to block users from changing the ClipNotes options. To do this, you can add the DWORD value NotesNoOptions and set it to 1 (for example through a policy file). Create a plain text file called NoOptions.reg, Enter the following text, save it, and then double-click on the file. --- Copy from here (without this line) --------- REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\PACT Software\ShowTime] "NotesNoOptions"=dword:00000001 --- Copy up to here (without this line) --------- ### License This program is a test version for evaluation only. You can use the software for evaluation purposes without charge for a maximum of 30 days. If you use this software after the 30 day evaluation period a registration fee for a full version is required. How to Order a License License Agreement ### Support Should you have any questions please contact support@12Ghosts.com. We stand committed to solving your issues within hours! We're also running a UBB support forum where other users might already have asked your question. You're welcome to join the discussion! And you can take part on the future development of the 12Ghosts family: Send us your thoughts on features and usage. We really appreciate your feedback! | COOL TOOL Award Winner Desktop98.com's William Eckles: "I downloaded the program and loved it. In my opinion ShowTime should be a major hit with a large portion of the demographic out there."
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5 Star Pick for 12Ghosts COOL TOOL Award Winner for Save Layout, JumpReg, ShellX, ShowTime for JumpReg for Save Layout, ShellX, ShutDown, Timer, 12Ghosts pick for ProfileCopy for 12Ghosts
BackGhosts 2ndBackup - airbag for your data ProfileCopy - copy user profiles, including the referenced files! Save Layout - desktop icon positions, auto-save and restore Major Update!!! Timer - application scheduler, once, recurring, after logon, reminder, moonphase Do It Now JumpReg - create bookmarks/ shortcuts to registry keys, ZD: SetTextColor - change the desktop icon text and background colors, also transparent! ShellX context menu extension for user defined commands in the right-click menu of files and folders! ShutDown - the most powerful terminating utility! Shutdown per shortcut, key, or your own programs! Major Update!!! Make it Easy DeskTOP Desktop simulator - application launcher with amazing behavior... QuickStart - open system folders and tools quicker! Major Update!!! It's ShowTime! - the ultimate clock, alarm, hour signal, sticky notes, more than 70 options. Major Update!!! WinBzzzz - size and position windows per click How to order a license online, free phone, fax, e-mail, or mail @ E-mail technical support, questions and suggestions
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