Notices

I was going to say 3rd screen for settings could be used. But, there is the windowed mode with the empty space in the upper left side. There is plenty of room there for settings like Insomniac mode(aka allNight), snooze settings, etc.

I think a button for instructions on the main page would be kind of annoying. It would take up valuable screen space for something that would only be needed once. An option could be an instruction video/slides with illustrations that demonstrate how to use the application. Then give the option to not show that video on start up. A button could be placed in one of the settings screen to relaunch that "manual" so the user can read up on all the features.

another new bie question:
When i click on Flipclock from the extras tab it says "Flipclock loading" then nothing happens.
So how can i run this app from the X-term window?

jolouis: latest version (FlipClock_0.1.9_armel.deb) identifies itself as 0.1.8 internally!

well, we can use the (now disabled) 'about' space for some help notes (but still people have to reach the alarm setting screen to find the about button . Not that Im too worried about that, the average tablet user should be smarter than the average iphone user... but still there are some philosophical alarm choices that could be explained). I still have some brainfog about the window mode: I think it should at least show the actual time, the alarms list, the active alarm and the relative remaining time).

We still have a bit of space on the 'setting alarm page': a couple of buttons/slide/whatever could be easily put there:



I would think a command line setting to disable the long flip animation at the begin to minimize the starting time and to set the night mode behaviour: seem like a bit too exotic settings to deserve a button on the already crawled interface

pohlmeyr: just open xterm and type "flipclock" (yup it's that easy!)
Then post up what the error message is that shows up... my bet is that there's a python module missing.

qole: Aggg these version numbers are killing me! lol I'm pretty sure I've got them all sorted now, but I'll have to change them all again for the next release so just remind me if I miss it somewhere!

Ciro: Well the biggest question I've heard from newbies is "how do you get to the alarm settings page"; once they figure that one out once, it's all good... so we can put the about screen back in just to say "Hey we're here, we built this awesome clock, enjoy!" but I don't think there's much point to it beyond that as the hardest thing is overcome by the time the user gets there.
I still say that for the Window mode it should just be a slimmed down version of the normal clock view... but made to fit in the window area; that way we can ditch the whole "Drag up to window mode" thing, and just rely on the hardware button to switch back and forth; makes the clock line up with the way almost all other apps on the tablets work.

I like where you're going with the latest design for the setting alarm page... two thoughts from my side: 1) I know you love the mood stuff, but that's an awfully big "mood button" considering what little practical effect it has... i.e. most commonly used/practical things should be most important on the screen right? Just my thought... 2) The buttons layout still seems akward to me... I mean all the important stuff is there, but why is the Sound chooser up with the rest of the clock stuff, while the rest of the alarm related things is at the bottom? Keep in mind that sounds are per-alarm, so you can have a different sound for each alarm if you wanted, etc. I think the "insomnia" mode thing should have a button on the interface though, as it's a common enough thing (i.e. if we're going to keep the 12/24 switch, then the insomnia thing is just as relavent and probably more likely to be used on a regular basis. 12/24 is more of a one time personal preference thing). I'm not really a big fan of adding some command line controls/requiring settings beyond the app because inevitably people don't realize they're there or don't "get it"; anything that's a useful feature should be clear and easy to find for the user; my Dad shouldn't need to know how to use a command line to enjoy all the features of a clock ;o)
Oh, and don't forget... there's always the option to change the amount of snooze time too... as if we didn't have enough things to cram onto that settings page (this is why I come back to the idea of "alarm settings page" and "clock settings page"). i.e. maybe if we toast the window mode as proposed, you could scroll down to alarms, or scroll up to clock settings? I think that would help clean things up and give us more space for future/other options...? Just my two cents, you're the uber designer guy tho! ) (If you design it I'll handle the code side, no problemos)

Let's go fancy: the 1st time the clock is launched check for the config file: if the file is not there we can show the instruction on the screen
(or we can put a counter and show the instructions the 1st 5 times)
something like this:


Yes the mood button is huge just because my ego (and to balance the spaces) but Is just temporary: its just a filler waiting for new buttons.

I guess I can switch down the about and the sound dialog: I want both near each other because I plane to use the about button space for the ringer name and because the about button should play the alarm (so User can test if it works and the volume) + the about screen should show the alarm list with the relative associated mp3 (maybe then we should choose another name for that button).

OT:Is the 1st april fish something international or is just an italian tradition?

yep you are right:
It says /usr/bin/flipclock: Line 2: python: not found

So what needs to be installed from my end?

Hey Ciro, good idea with the showing the help first time if there's no config file... that way we only have to show it once and it doesn't take up any space with buttons or anything. Once you get an interface layout that you're happy with make up one of those awesome "play by play" howto screens to go with it! I think all the newbies to the app would really appreciate it!

Okay sounds like you've got some more plans for the interface than you were letting on to the other day ;-) Do you want me to finish the coding stuff I've been doing and let you loose at it for a while to rejig everything the way you envision, or do you want to send me the graphics and have me roll it in (don't know how comfortable you are with MY code now! lol) I'm good with doing either just let me know how you'd prefer to do it. What I will do since everyone seems to have gone quiet again (hopefully meaning no more big scary bugs that crash everything or do odd things) is try to get the latest build that I have here up into extras-devel so that more people can enjoy it while we do the rest of the tweaking/etc.

pohlmeyr: That's pretty impressive, how did you manage to install the clock without it failing on the dependency for python?... Not sure what your initial install route was, but I'd recommend that you uninstall the one you have there now, make sure you have extras-devel repository enabled, and install the one from there; that will automatically bring in the dependencies and things. Then just update to the latest build by clicking on the garage page link. Or if you wait a little I'll try to get the latest build up into the extras-devel repo sometime today...

Found a problem today, but I'm not quite sure the cause. The alarm didn't go off this morning, so I set it again and watched the screen. When the time changes, the snooze button flashes on and then off, and then nothing happens. I tried it again, same thing. I then tried it again, but with some different songs, and it worked for 5 out of the 6 songs I tried. I'll have to test it a few more times to look for anything common among the ones that don't work.

I had a strange thing in the morming too:
The alarm went off at 5h and 0515h. It was set to the last, so I don't know why it rang at 5h too!
Since yesterday the little alarmclock is showing in the status bar. But when I click it, there aren't any alarms in the alarm-configuration-window.