Google Desktop Sidebar: Timer Plug-in

The Timer plug-in is a simple countdown timer and alarm for the Google Desktop Sidebar (GDS). The creation of the Laundry Timer begged for the creation of a general timer. The fact that someone actually asked for a general timer made me decide that I should go ahead and create one sooner rather than later. This was relatively simple to do since it builds on the Laundry Timer, but it took a couple of days longer than expected since generalization is always tricky stuff. That plus the fact that I kept adding features.

I considered adding a Continuous option for the interval timer, but I wasn't sure how useful this really was. If you're interested in having this feature and have a clear idea of how you'd like it to work, contact me (via PayPal :).

Where it is now:

Version: v2.1 // 2006.03.15
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Implemented v2.1:

utilized cleanup function introduced in GDS 3

Implemented v2:

Stopwatch
More descriptive error messages for time/date format error
Description displays with time instead of just on the details view
Existing timer properties can now be changed
Different icon sets can be chosen

Implemented v1:

up to 25 simultaneous, independent timers and alarms (25 is an arbitrary limit, but considering that you can't scroll in the sidebar, there has to be a limit)
command execution when timer completes
visual and audio notification
sound file selection and looping
internationalization, ready to be localized

Issues that have come up more than once:

Changing the Date/Month/Year format: go to /1033/strings.js and change the date format string to your order of preference. Remove the panel from the Sidebar and add it again. Voila.

GDS Scripting API Head Scratchers plus others:

ContentItem.open_command property and ContentItem.onOpenItem method confilct with each other even though one should be for clicking the details title bar while the other should be for double-clicking the content item
checkbox in the options dialog causes an app restart issue that makes one use clunky drop downs instead
no way to open an options window except for the options command
inability to add properties to ContentItem forces me to use something random (in this case the source property) as a placeholder for an id; inability to return a new content item for ContentItem.onDetailsView instead of the same content item causes this id to be seen
content item refresh and click handling/menu refresh being on the same thread means that even relatively long 1 second refreshes makes it hard to open and select an item from a menu

last modified // 2006.03.15 // 18:43

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