Notices

yes - that is the way to go!

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!

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

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:


and this one didn't:


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!

[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.

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

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!

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?

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

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?

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