Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Yea that was my initial thought when the idea of "simple" alarm mode first came around... I just haven't implemented it yet, so in the end there will be 3 alarm styles: the two that we have right now, along with an "intermediate" one which will be "weekdays", "saturday", "sunday". No promises on when that'll happen as it's not a huge priority for me right now, but it will happen one day ;-)

And on that happy note, 0.9.4 Beta is available for you guys to play with!
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa....9.4_armel.deb
Just a few minor tweaks and changes, there is still a lot to do and thanks to being sick last week I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but at least this takes care of some of the annoying issues that have been around for a while. Notably:[*] The digits for the night theme are now fixed, so no more "lagging/nagging" erronious first digits.[*] I've adjusted the main clock display a bit... not sure if I like it as much or not, I may still move the AM/PM thing a bit as it looks a little cluttered, but take a look and see what you think... at least it's more obvious as to how to get to different screens now. I will put "Return" buttons on the settings screens, just haven't gotten that far yet. The traditional drag still works too.[*] I've completely rebuilt "Insomniac mode", so it now runs at the bare minimum brightness level possible on the tablets... and it's much nicer at night now! I will eventually add a control to let you choose what brightness level you want for Insomnaic mode, but haven't gotten to that yet either.[*] I've tweaked the graphics a bit, but I know there are still issues. The date/alarm time thing not looking quite right still hasn't been fixed (looks slightly worse now I think). I have fixed the ugly un-readable buttons on the clock settings screen though!

As always you can grab this version from the garage page and I've tried firing it over to extras-devel again, so hopefully this time it'll actually show up there as well! Feed back and comments are desperately needed as usual, and keep in mind there's still a ways to go yet, but at least it's getting a little closer! ;-)

Thanks for all the support and help with making this app everyone, my goal is still to get this as a 5 star "Defacto clock/alarm app" for all Maemo devices eventually!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Jolouis, when I run version .9.4 it doesn't sense that the power adaptor is plugged in so that the display goes blank after 5 minutes. If I exit FlipClock, my desktop will not dim after 5 minutes.

Edited: Sorry, it works OK, I just needed to turn "insomniac mode" off.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Jolouis, glad to hear you are feeling better and an update is available. I will grab it ASAP. One thing I noticed yesterday was the snooze/alarm off buttons remained after the alarm quit. I have mine set up to play a music file once and noted the buttons remained on screen after the song was finished. I believe in a previous version they reset and disappeared until the next alarm. Great job as always!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I think this was mentioned before, but also
on 9.4: after alarm rings and I push the
off button, flipclock exits as it should but
leaves the volume at MAX.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Dimming works fine for me. Stays on in insomniac mode. After exiting, nit dims as normal.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Okay guys before I get to questions... important annoucement: I've taken a stab at porting Flip to Fremantle as well... it seems to run ok in the SDK, but the colours are a bit goofy sometimes, and I'm not sure if alarms work or not... but for anyone who has access to N900 now that they're actually shipping, or has a test device, whatever... PLEASE TRY IT and let me know! (and if anyone knows anyone with a device, please spread the word!)
It's up in garage:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa...ntle_armel.deb

As usual I tried to submit it to extras-devel for Fremantle, but I think I'm still doing something wrong... has anyone seem 0.9.4 show up in extras-devel for Diablo? I submitted it yesterday morning and didn't get any errors at all, but I still don't see any trace of it there...

Now then, onto questions!
Den - Glad to hear it works, I'll add the extra code for Insomnaic mode to make sure that it doesn't dim the screen if "display stays lit while charger connected" option is set on the tablet.

la3875 - Thanks, I don't believe in previous versions the alarm "ended" after the sound file did, but if that's a feature that you guys want I can make that happen... personally I thought it made more sense to leave it there until you acknowledged it, but maybe not? (incase you have a short sound file that you only want to hear once?) Maybe I'll add a preference for this... something like "auto-ending alarms". Does that make sense, or should I just make it always auto-end?

albright - The volume should be restored as soon as you hit the "turn alarm off" button. I set it up to restore the volume on exit as well (what it used to do) just to be safe... hmmm can others confirm this behaviour? I'll try and check it later tonight to see if I can reproduce the problem...

Thanks for all the feedback and well wishing everyone! What do we think about the UI improvements (the extra buttons on the main screen, updated colours for the buttons on the settings screen, etc)? Are things better than they were now? Still room for improvements? Let me know. Keep in mind I haven't made any changes to the "Night" theme yet, I'm waiting to hear what you guys think first...

Thanks!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Jolouis, I love how my music alarm sloooowly increases over a 1 minute period! Just to let you know, if I do not hit "Turn Alarm Off" my entire song will play then the "Turn Alarm Off" window will remain there until I hit the button. At this point my volume is still set to max (it was set to low before alarm came on). After I exit FlipClock my volume stayed at max (this is with version.9.4).

I think in is "cleaner" to make the "Turn Alarm Off" window go away after your music or alarm sound has ended.

Also, just a tiny bug. When alarm is set, in the "alarm Set" window, the three character "day of the week" text is clipped along the bottom (hardly noticable).

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

AaAaAargh - my alarms are not working at all in this version...
I tried 'everything', but no alarms.
sometimes I get the 'Alarm sync'd' pop-up, but often not...
also, the countdown is now showing a negative:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%201.png

I'm unsure what to do next, probably uninstall & fresh install...

The new 'setup' and 'alarms' buttons are rather smallish: their size invite you to use your stylus instead of your finger. Unfortunate, as you want FlipClock to be a finger friendly program. If you decide on keeping these buttons, please let them stand out in their own space at the top, instead of hovering above both the seconds space as well as the flipclock space. You might want to make a 'top menu' area wherein you can place these new buttons as well as the seconds bar distinctly seperated from the flipclock.
You'll also need 'back to the clock' buttons on the settings and alarms pages.

All in all, my personal recommendations would be:
-no seconds bar at all (but you already pointed out that you can remove it from the (future) themes menu)
- instead of an 'exit' button (at the lower right of the screen), use an 'alarms' button. And from the alarms screen one can get to the settings screen. But you already pointed out that you want an exit button, so new users won't feel 'locked in'. I (still) say that using the hardware on/off buttons is intuitive and feels 'natural' if you want to close the program.
- leave the finger gestures: they are so cool!

Anything else? Heh, yes:

- Please take a look at the image placed in this message. Look closer at the 'Alarm set' area. See how the day indicator ("wo" as in "woensdag", which means Wednesday in Dutch) is clipped?

- Also, look a bit closer at the date area (month/year + day) and notice how the red ambient light is boxed.

- the two buttons at the bottom-right ('Next Theme' and 'Exit') are not shaped equally: different rounded corners; different lightning.

- the 'Alarm set' area and the 'date area' are different in height (the 'date area' is one pixel higher at the bottom of the screen)

Ok all nitpicking and pixelstaring aside, I now have a flipclock with no alarms at all. I'm going to re-install and keep you posted!

PS Jolouis, please keep on developing Flipclock for us N8X0 users before you give them crazyy N900 owners your attention ..!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Here here!!! Dont lose focus on us N8x0 users. I agree with Den the alarm/snooze buttons should disappear after the alarm/song completes.

question- do i need to uninstall 0.9.3 before upgrading to 0.9.4?

keep up the great work!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Okay I've fixed the volume problem, I goofed it when I was tweaking things earlier. Tested it in SVN and all good now, the volume gets restored as soon as the alarm stops playing.

By popular demand this has been fixed so that alarms will now "go away" if the sound file finishes playing.... if you use a short non-looping sound file, you've been warned! ;-)

Yup, there are definitely some clipping issues.. those have been around since 0.9.0 ;-) I'm leaving them there just to mess with you guys! ;-) That goes for the rectangles blocking the "mood colouring" too! But seriously they're on my list just haven't spent time on the graphics lately so... they will be fixed though one day.

lol you're killing me here... okay I'll put it on the list of things to fix, though how you noticed that on the N8x0 display... man your eyes must be better than mine ;-)

Nope, just straight upgrade. If you wait a little bit it may even show in devel-extras, I got word yesterday that there was a problem with the autobuilder not moving packages, so it wasn't my fault at all ;-) So latest version will hopefully end up in extras without too much hassle in the very near future!

sampieter - Whoa buddy what the?? How on earth did that happen? I have never seen that, and I didn't change any of the alarm coding.... try running that "flipAlarmSync clear clear clear" command, turn all your alarms off, and then re-enable one and see if it fixes it/at least shows up properly...

I'll get to your UI comments in another post as this is getting quite long here... but one important thing
RELAX EVERYONE, this app will always be targetted for N8x0 devices primarily. The only change I made for Fremantle support was an updated version of the alarmD code, since that has changed between Maemo 4 and 5; the app does version checks and automatically includes the right code for the build target. That's it...everything else is exactly the same. If there are any future "Fremantle-specific" features, there will always be a generic fallback/implementation... If you take the Flip source code and compile it on X86 it's still the same app, you just don't get the tablet-specific features like screen dimming/etc. That's the way I always code

Thanks!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

UI discussions
Okay, sampieter's been beating me up over the UI lately, so I need some general consensus/answers here guys. Let me break it down point by point
[*] The interface needs to be finger friendly.[*] The whole point of the app is to make the clock display as large and obvious as possible. [*] The interface needs to be as intuitive and easy to understand/learn for users.

So keeping those points in mind, here's what sampieter recommended:
Do we have a consensus on this? The seconds bar is handy and has some fun potential, but it does take up screen space... so is it worth keeping, or should I ditch it? It can be turned on/off by the user, and it can be used differently in different themes... but for the default "flip" theme should I get rid of it?

I agree that screen real estate is rightly right, especially designing for large finger interaction... but let me put it this way: how many other apps on the tablet REQUIRE you to use a hardware button to exit them?
The power key is associated with powering the device/offline mode/etc; over riding this is dangerous for users. Am I wrong here guys? thoughts?

Not going anywhere.

Now then, in terms of the actual interface... The idea of moving the clock settings button to the alarms screen is interesting, but the more I think about it, the less it makes sense from a logic/flow point of view. The settings screen applies to the clock in general, not anything to do with the alarms. If anything I'd be tempted to go the other way, and make the alarms button appear on the settings screen. However the beauty of Flip is that it makes alarms so EASY, and I think making the alarms settings hard to find/get to would detract from that a LOT.

Now, suggestions for another "top menu bar"... personally I think the clock display is too cluttered already. I don't want to take away from that primary purpose of "BIG CLOCK" any more than already have, and an extra menu bar would be counter productive in my mind. Personally the "setup" and "Alarms" buttons are just big enough to be finger-oriented in my mind, especially since there's nothing else around them, but I'm definitely not as happy with them as with the rest. I also feel they do kind of intrude and look out of place. BUT, without them there, there were complaints that the app wasn't intuitive and self explanatory...

Aggg okay just had to get that out there... the buttons will be going away again, the interface will be changing slightly, and sampieter, I think you need to come up with a nice mockup/theme so we can have 4 themes ready at release time ;-) (And show me how this whole design thing should be done! ;-) ). Make 3 screens with whatever info/buttons/etc you want whereever you want, post it up, and I'll help you make it into a theme!

Thanks!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I prefer having a screen just for alarms. Of any of settings, alarms is something that would be changed most often by the user, and therefore should be as big and as finger friendly as possible.

I also like the seconds bar. Since sometimes some of my .mp3 files don't play, if I'm testing them I know how much time I have to expect the alarm to go off.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

1. I like the seconds bar.

2. Remove the "setup" and "alarms" at the top of the screen (they are not finger friendly).

3. Use the "alarm set" display at the bottom to also be the new finger friendly alarm set.

4. Add "setup" text vertically on the right of the date window, and let this be the friendly "setup" button.

5. Change the "next theme" button to "Night Mode". In the setup screen you can choose a "day" and a "night" theme.

6. Make that "night mode" and "exit" buttons bigger and of equal size. Now you have four finger friendly buttons on the bottom of screen.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Seconds bar doesn't bother me one way or the other.

On the main clock screen, have a settings button and an exit button.
The settings button would have options to change the current theme (day/night), button to reach the themes settings page, and a button to reach the alarms settings page.

This keeps the main screen nice and uncluttered more like a traditional clock.

For the advanced user, maintain the finger swipe as quick access to the alarm page and the setting page. Add a new swipe from left to right or right to left to quickly change themes.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

First, my alarm woes.... (UI discussion in later message)

I uninstallled Flipclock.
No installing via Application manager, as it still shows 0.9.3 version; I re-installed via the forum link on page 13 of this thread.

the first screen shows the Flipclock main screen. Notice that there's no alarm:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%202.png


...going to the alarm setting screen, setting up an alarm just a few minutes in advanced:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%203.png


...look how the alarm setting on the main screen now shows an alarm for 00:27 at night:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%205.png


...while my clock mode is set to 24-hours:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%206.png


...let's go to XTerminal, and type:
sudo gainroot flipAlarmSync clear clear clear
Perhaps that will help me with this alarm setting blues?
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%201.png

"OMG" a funky error about an apparent incorrectly set up D-Bus library ... I am now officially freaked.

Next stop: chatting up the nice people of #maemo at irc.freenode.net?

By the way, Nelson L. Squeeko wrote
which looks like my original problem that my alarms did not go of. I thought the problem was with flipclock, but as Nelson suggests it might be the mp3 itself? Oh well. First I have to get this 12/24-hour thingie sorted.

Will keep you posted...

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

1. Keep the seconds Bar - its cool and it doesnt take too much away from screen real-estate

2. Take away the text "Setup" and "Alarms" from the top corners - it goes against the visual flow of the application.

3. You could make the arrow on top and bootom more prominent to make user realise you got to slide up or down to reach the Alarms and settings screens maybe.

4). Keep both screens seperate - Alarms and Settings with the main clock page in middle as the functioning page

5) Oh, exit button - a must - newbies WILL absolutely trip up on not seeing any exit - since not many realize to use the hardware buttons to exit (even I wouldn't have).

6_ As someone else suggested make the mode button say Night Mode and Day mode ...

7) on Night mode, the day mode (or change mode) button still doesnt show - so no way to understand you can change mode on that invisible button area.

Great app so far ...

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Aha! Nice Idea of that Left and right swipe ... !

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I am writing a longer UI entry, but just a quicky for this one:

Firstly, I feel that the Nokia N series is owned by "powerusers", who are more apt to tinker with their devices. Or is that too much of a generalization?

Secondly, something I noticed just yesterday: I use the fullscreen/normalscreen hardware button a lot when I'm fooling around with Flipclock (mainly because I noticed that the screen brightness in Insomniac Mode was much brighter than the minimum screen brightness setting of the 'Advanced backlight' program, but I wanted to point that out in a seperate entry altogether).
Since we are in 0.9.x beta release, FlipClock does not hang or freak out when you use the fullscreen/normalscreen button. This brought me to the following: you can use this button to bring FlipClock to a 'normal' screen setting, wherein you can see the 'normal' X exit button (at the top left of the screen).
If you know how to properly use the fullscreen/normalscreen button in order to use a program in fullscreen mode, you can also figure out that flipclock, which opens in fullscreen automatically, can be brought to a smaller version so you can find the X for exit.

My (new) suggestion is to remove the exit button on the screen and use the fullscreen/normalscreen hardware button in order to get to the X exit button.
You'll actually get an extra 'feature' when using this approach, because you can also minimize FlipClock if you want to use another program altogether. So instead of exiting the program everytime you want to do something else, you just minimize it.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Sounds like dbus session has gotten goofed up. Try just restarting the tablet, that will probably take care of it. Also the command should be flipalarmSync, I'm not quite sure how it did anything with the capital A but...

I'll check the 12/24 hour alarm timing problem now to make sure, I thought I'd fixed that before but I'll double check it now.

I'll respond to other things in a bit, just wanted to get that out there quick for you!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I like the idea of having the alarm info box at the bottom always visible and being the button for the alarm settings. Make the date info box be the button for setup. Put a small vertical SETUP on it. Make the swipes still work, but make it a circular pattern. From the clock screen, swipe up to get to alarm settings, swipe up again to general settings, up again for clock. Same but in reverse for swiping down. That way, you could add a fourth screen in the future if you ever need to.

Loving this app, even though i over slept this morning because of it. I forgot to select AM on the alarm setting screen. Maybe have it default to AM and you have to verify (with stylus) that you really do want PM. Maybe a user option for the new screen?

Jim

:edited to make sense.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

yes - that is the way to go!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Alarm and info boxes at the bottom as buttons... you guys are brilliant! I love it! Already implemented... and swiping left and right to change themes, even more so! Absolutely awesome! And making all the screens cycle to each other?... Well from a design point of view it's a bit strange, but hey why not it's easy enough to implement I'll toss it in right now!

sampieter - Thanks for pointing out the problems with 24 hour mode... i've fixed some of them, but there's definitely some work and bugs left to get out before it'll be fully functional. For now I recommend sticking to 12 hour mode until the next update... sorry!

I'll get the next update out with the improved UI as soon as I get this whole 24 hour mode problem taken care of... thanks all!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Jolouis-
I already tried restarting the unit...
When I try the command flipalarmSync I get a 'not found' error..?

Anyway, please don't be bothered too much by this particular bug/error: I will use the program with 12-hour modus until you have a new beta version to test (as you suggested).

An update:
I just set FlipClock in 12-hour mode and set up a test alarm.
Yes, I now see the 'Turn alarm off' and 'Snooze..' buttons, but there's no sound... After two minutes: still no sound.

When I started FlipClock, I had the volume set to 1 (I use the 'Advanced Backlight' program, that manipulates backlight, volume and orientation settings). When I exited FlipClock, I saw that the volume was maxed out. It's strange that I don't hear the alarm file!

In Media Player, the mp3 I had chosen is playing normally, so it's not a mp3-file-related issue.

Next step: Set the brightness to 50 & the volume also to 50.
Open Flipclock, set up a test alarm...
AaAargh! --the alarm buttons (turn alarm off & snooze) popped up, but still no sound.

What if I uninstall this Advanced Backlight program?
Let's try that... In Application Manager I uninstall 'Advanced Backlight'... Go to 'Panels' in 'Control panel' to choose 'Sound' and 'Display' to show in the 'Status bar'.... open Flip, set up a test alarm ............. the seconds are slowly ticking by..... suddenly I'm glad that there's a seconds bar in FlipClock......

Still no sound :confused:

Just to be sure, I then turned the unit off and on again, tried it all again and....? no. alarm. sound.

Just to be VERY sure, I tried another mp3 (you can never try too much, eh?) and ....? I HAVE SOUND!!!

I love to have sound, but then I hate it that the original mp3 did not work... why oh why? Perhaps because it's on the 'internal memory card' and not on the 'N810 card' as the sound that just worked is on? Another test!

Move the not-working mp3 to the 'N810 card'.... test it in Flip....
No sound.

Do I hear More tests! More tests!
OK: Let's look more closely to the mp3 that worked and the mp3 that didn't:

this one worked:
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%201.png

and this one didn't:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_duX4L46wIQE/Sv...icture%202.png

Hmmm. the one that worked has a fixed bitrate (128Kbps) and the one that refused to work has a variable bitrate of 200Kbps.
And, ID3 Tag v2.2 (works) and v2.3 (doesn't work).
(and, the one that worked is in English while the one that didn't work is in Dutch :))

Forum poster Nelson L. Squeeko also had mp3 issues. I suspect that FlipClock can only work with fixed bitrate mp3's...?

Jolouis, perhaps you know of this limitation already,but if you didn't know it, you do now :)

Phew... Sometimes I feel that this is the only thing I do with my tablet.... testing and trying to figure out why something is not working...

Now I have to re-install the 'Advanced Backlight' program...

UI Design post will follow later!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

[QUOTE=jolouis;374506]Alarm and info boxes at the bottom as buttons... you guys are brilliant! I love it! Already implemented... and swiping left and right to change themes, even more so! Absolutely awesome! And making all the screens cycle to each other?... Well from a design point of view it's a bit strange, but hey why not it's easy enough to implement I'll toss it in right now!

I updated from the application manger last night to 0.9.4 without issue. WOW, you have been busy! The interface is much smoother, dimming was better, everything. I support the side swiping motion being added as the method to change themes as I was thinking the same thing yesterday morning.

Since the program is getting more robust our criticisms will start looking at minor details. One for me is to change the "snooze" and "alarm off" to say only "snooze" and "off". Could you also make them slightly smaller as they nearly obscure the time. Another thought... Does anyone support the idea of hitting any button on the tablet during the alarm - sets a snooze?

I support the idea about taking the exit off the face now that the minimize is working. Make it work like all other apps - reduce from full screen and then exit by taping in the upper right corner. Should save some real estate on the screen for... Maybe change insomniac to "dim" or "dimmer". I know this isn't as sexy as insomniac, but for for user friendliness in the absence of an instruction manual, it seems more intuitive to me.

As always, great job! This has brought me back to using the tablet and even got me thinking about learning to make a theme.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I remember reading a very old post that says not all mp3 files work.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Sorry you're right I was looking at an older version where I'd goofed and forgot to capitalize it; flipAlarmSync is the correct command. Still working on the 24 hour mode but I've got an idea of how to solve the last bit of it so shouldn't be too long hopefully!

Thanks! Glad to hear that the improvements are noticable and making the app better! My next big step is going to be to try and steamline the rendering code a bit to see if I can squeeze a bit more performance/faster response out of complex screens like the alarm settings. (Notice right now that going from "clock" to "clock settings" is much faster than going from "clock" to "alarms" as alarm screen has a lot more going on that needs to be processed before display). I might be trying to push a bit too much there though as that really is starting to hit on the processing power of the N8x0's; on any other device it's quick as a jack rabbit. Still, gotta try and optimize as much as possible! (Think about how quick it is compared to the old python version already!)

I've implemented the left/right swipe along with the "cyclical" screens thing and it is pretty neat, I like it a lot. I made the horizontal swipes require a bit more movement of the finger since the device is wider and I didn't want you to trigger them accidentally, and in testing it seems to be just right... but you guys might want me to tweak that a little.

Yup I'll shrink them up a bit... I'm going to change the text around so the font is larger and the purpose of the buttons a bit more obvious as well as it took me a little bit in the mornings to get used to remembering which button did what since I had a hard time focusing on the small text when first waking up.

I'm still not convinced getting rid of the exit button is a good idea... especially now that we don't NEED the extra screen space for anything for useful.

Keep in mind that there WILL BE instructions and help/about information... it's just not done yet! Remember this is still very, very much work in progress that you're seeing and contributing to as it develops.

As always thanks for all the feedback!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Dimming issues.

Using the 'Advanced Backlight' program (yes, it's re-installed), I set the backllight to 1. I can also set it to 0, but there's no backlight at all.

Open FlipClock and it stays very dimmed, even when I switch themes back and forth. When I hit the 'Insomniac' button (Insomniac off), the backlight brightens. But when I hit the 'Insomniac' button again (Insomniac on), the backlight does not dim back to the lowest possible setting. Can you make it so?

Another test shows:
Exit FlipClock while Insomniac mode is off;
Turn the backlight to 1;
Open Flipclock.

After the welcome schreen, when you see the clock and you wait one second, you see the backlight become brighter. I presume that this is because Insomniac mode is still off. I would prefer that Flip keeps the brightness setting as it is, and only dims it to the lowest possible setting when Insomniac is turned on. Would that be possible?

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

flipAlarmSync clear clear clear also doesn't work: 'not found' error.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

My great UI post

Seriously :) I wanted to write up a whole bunch of thoughts, but got caught up in those 12/24 mode & alarm mp3 issues. Which, in hindsight, is a good thing: many posters came up with cool UI suggestions! I'm really eager to see how the next beta version will look like. I'm tempted to leave my UI thoughts unwritten until I've seen this next version, but....

One of my previous recommendations was to leave the seconds bar out of the standard screen. As I was constantly testing alarms and whatnot, it turned out to be very hand because I had something to look at). Perhaps you should just leave it in, but why not use this seconds bar as a divider between the clock area (top) and the buttons area(bottom)? A seconds bar might look very natural in between the clock and the buttons. I suspect that the overall look will be cleaner and less cluttered.

(Un?)fortunately no kidding there :) I spent a lot of my professional time pixelstaring, so that's why I probably saw it.

That's great! I've got two theme ideas, so let me make some designs and I'll get back to you. And, now that you've mentioned 'release time'..... How much time do I have for my theme? :D

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I suggested a long long time ago in a thread far far away :) that if the alarm is ringing, a single tap anywhere snoozes, and a double tap stops it. Thoughts?

Jim

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I like the idea of the seconds dividing the clock from the controls.

Also, on the horizontal swiping, I was trying it out to see what it felt like and I often triggered an up/down swipe by mistake. Maybe the number of pixels needed to trigger up/down needs to be increased?

Jim

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

At 4:30am my mind is not yet functioning enough to remember to hit the display either one or two times. A big "Alarm Off" or "Snooze" button is what my mind responds to.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Jolouis, I just thought of a novel display option. My Garmin GPS looks at the time to determine whether it uses a "Day" display or a "Night" display. I would like to see the display automatically change to the "Night" display at 6pm, then have it automatically change back to the "Day" display at 6am.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Hmmm...how about if I shout at it. A pass phrase of course, not just incoherent furious shouting. That shouldn't that hard? Two pass phrases, "snooze" and "off". You'd have to record yourself saying it so it can pattern match of course. And as such you could record any pass phrase you like. I guess you'd have to activate the mic right before the alarm starts playing, and you'd have to have waveform subtraction to remove what ever was playing so it can try to match your recorded "snooze" or "off" phrase to the mic input. Should be easy!

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I like that! How about gradual brightening to max brightness in sync with the alarm? And/or flashing white/black.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Nice idea - but would require the option to over-ride or turn that off. What if I like one display over the other and want to see it regardless of the time of the day.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

The idea is that once you are ready to get out of bed, the display is now at full brightness to act as a night light. Therefore the display should stay dim untill you hit the "Alarm Off" button. If you hit "Snooze" it should remain dim. Besides full brightness, the display could also switch to your "Day" display.

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Yes, it must be an option that you can turn "off".

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

Wellll, I was thinking more along the lines of light as part of the "wake up" process. Sound and light?

Re: FlipClock Beta
 

I see your logic. But I don't think we should have to listen to an alarm or music for 60 seconds to get full brightness. Therefore I suggest that when the alarm goes "off" the sound and music slowooooly increase over a 60 second period. However, if we hit the "alarm off" after just a few seconds the display will 1) change to the "Day" display and 2) increase to full brightness.