Notices

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!

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.

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!

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.

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

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!

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).

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:


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 ..!

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!

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!