Countdown Live

» Tags [ Back to top ]

Here you can manage the tags used in your countdowns. [ Screenshot ]

• You can have as many countdown tags as you want. You can choose which tag you want to edit from the "Choose the tag to edit" drop-down. When you change the selection, the panel below will reflect the settings of this tag, allowing you to view and change them.
• The most important element of a tag is its format. This is a text which contains special elements, such as countdown units and groups, which will be replaced in run-time. You can find and insert all countdown units by clicking the button next to the format field. If you want a unit with one leading zero, such as when you want a ticking digital clock countdown, you can click the button. Although it'd be very rare, but if you ever need to place a unit literally (such as "In %d %dw, we need to get 20%done."), you can escape the tag by placing a backslash "\" in front of it, e.g. "In %d %dw, we need to get 20\%done.".

  Here are some sample tag formats:

  • Only %m %mw, %d %dw, %h %hw, %n %nw and %s %sw seconds until 2009!
    Output: Only 11 months, 0 days, 6 hours, 1 minute and 0 seconds until 2009!
  • The summer holidays of 2007 ended %td %tdw ago.
    Output: The summer holidays of 2007 ended 215 days ago.
• Another interesting option is to skip some countdown units. "Skipping a unit" here means "passing the unit's value to the next unit and set this value to zero". So, if you skip the days, the amount of days will be added to the hours unit and the days will be set to zero. You can select these units manually, but you'll probably more like to authomatically skip unused units. Then, Countdown Live will check which units are used in the format and will automatically skip the other units.

  An example:
  This is what you might get without skipping units:

  Only 5 days and 11 minutes to go.

  Not that bad, but unfortunately there are also 2 weeks and 7 hours which don't appear in the format, giving you a false result.

  Here's what you might get with skipping units:

  Only 19 days and 431 minutes to go.

  As you can see, the 2 weeks were converted to 14 days and added to the 5 days we had already, same goes for the hours which were added to the minutes. This result is correct, making this feature very interesting in case you don't need all countdown units in your format.
• The most advanced feature may well be the countdown unit grouping. This is quite complex, but if used properly can give you some great results. In the examples, the curly brackets style " { ... } " will be used, but you can pick one of the four styles you want from the "Brackets style" drop-down list.

  The syntax for a unit group is the following:

  {<unit>:<text>}

  where <unit> is the grouped unit and <text> is the text in the group. The text can contain regular text, countdown units and even other unit groups. The main purpose for the unit grouping is to leave out unit groups when the grouped unit's value turns zero and can be enabled with the option with the same name. What exactly does this mean? If you enable this, Countdown Live will check the value of the grouped unit. If this unit equals zero, Countdown Live will leave out the whole group from the countdown. This allows you to get rid of ugly results like "Only 0 years, 2 months and 1 day to go.". If you place the years in a unit group, like so:

  Only {y:%y %w, }%m %mw and %d %dw to go.

  you can get much prettier results:

  Only 1 year, 3 months and 5 days to go.
  Only 7 months and 2 days to go.

  In the last case, the group with the years was left out because the value of %y turned zero. You can go even further by nesting groups in groups, to get the best results:

  Only {tm:{y:%y %w, }{m:%m %mw }and }%d %dw to go.

  Here, the years and months group are grouped on the %tm unit. This is because if the amount of is zero, there can still be some years. By using the total amount of months, this problem is fixed. The result of this tag format can be:

  Only 2 years, 5 months and 1 days to go.
  Only 1 year, and 29 days to go.
  Only 8 months and 29 days to go.
  Only 5 days to go.

» Places [ Back to top ]

In this panel, you can choose where and how your countdowns will be displayed. [ Screenshot ]

• First of all, you can check whether you want a countdown in your name, personal message and/or media message. You can do this by checking the box next to it and, for the personal message and media message, place a bullet in the box next to the desired option. The reason why you can have the name and a message selected but not the two names, is because the media message overwrites the personal message and vice-versa.

  To make use of the media message, you need to have the "What I'm Listening To" feature of Messenger enabled. You can activate this by opening your contact list, click the arrow next to your own personal message and check the first option.

• Then, you can start editing the name and message fields. You can enter whatever you like, but the most interesting thing is that you add a countdown in it using the special tag "(!CD#)", where # is the countdown number (1 or 2). You can also insert a countdown very easily by clicking the button next to the field.
• The media icon is only available whenever you have chosen the media message to have a countdown. This drop-down menu contains the four possible icons which can be placed next to your media message: Music, Games, Office or none.

» Settings [ Back to top ]

The settings panel contains options such as the status of the countdowns, the update interval and script debugging. [ Screenshot ]

• The countdown status drop-down is probably one of the most important options of the whole script. Here, you can control whether Countdown Live should place the countdowns in your name, personal message or media message. This option is also available in the script menu.
• The update interval determines how often you want your countdowns to be refreshed. You can make it as fast as four times per minute (15 seconds) or give it several hours. To prevent flooding your contacts and the Messenger servers, a hard-coded bottom limit of 15 seconds is set.
• You can also choose whether you want Countdown Live to display toasts when something happens with your countdowns. These toasts can vary from enabled/disabled notifications, warnings for paused countdowns or toasts which report a countdown that just passed its countdown date. If you unchecked this option, you can still find what's happened in the Event Log of Messenger Plus! Live. [ Screenshot ]
• For advanced users or for error tracing issues, you can enable script debugging for Countdown Live. When this is enabled, all actions undertaken by Countdown Live are sent to Messenger Plus! Live's script debugging window, so you can easily find where something went wrong. It's always interesting to have this enabled when you want to report a bug in Countdown Live, since then the developer has more information about the actual problem.

» Pause [ Back to top ]

This is where you can choose when Countdown Live should pause the countdowns. [ Screenshot ]

• When you choose to pause the countdowns when another media message is set, Countdown Live will check every time a new media message is being set. If this isn't a message from Countdown Live, the script will pause the media countdown. It will resume when it detects that the owner of the other message reports that the media message should be disabled. With this feature enabled, you could for example let your contacts know what you're listening to on Windows Media Player, or else display a media message countdown. Otherwise, Countdown Live will always attempt to overwrite the current media message when the update interval is reached, which may cause the media message to flicker because of two programs trying to set it.
• You can also choose to pause the countdowns when a personal status is set. This will disable all countdowns temporarily when you set a personal status, and will resume when the status returns to a 'normal' one. Otherwise, Countdown Live may overwrite the personal message assigned to the personal status.

» Preview [ Back to top ]

Here you can configure some options related to the preview panel at the bottom of the preferences window. [ Screenshot ]

• In case you're working on an old computer, you may want to disable the option to automatically refresh the preview when you change the preferences. This is enabled by default but can be turned off at any time. You can always force a refresh from the preview panel itself.
• Instead of having to enable your countdowns every time you want to try out something with the countdowns, you can choose to always have the countdowns enabled in the preview. This will make your countdowns active in the preview, regardless of the real countdowns state, allowing you to play around with the settings without the risk of accidentally hitting OK and having it shown in your real Messenger status information.

» Experimental [ Back to top ]

This is the panel where you can find some untested features which aren't fully "foolproof" and may cause unwanted results when in conflict with certain situations. Use these at your own risk! [ Screenshot ]

• You can let Countdown Live restore your original status information when you disable the countdowns. The information is saved in a registry location when you enable the countdowns and will be read when you disable them. This should also work when you have shut down Messenger, although there are some fatal scenarios which can cause this to fail.
• You can also make the script detect and accept countdown tags when editing your name or personal message from the contact list. So, when you enable this feature and place "(!CD1)" in your personal message from the contact list, Countdown Live will detect this, save the personal message in its preferences, replace that tag with the appropriate countdown and continue counting. This works also for your nickname, either from the Messenger options or by using StuffPlug 3's Editable Nickname feature. Although, you should be aware that this works only for already activated countdown fields, so when you don't have the nickname countdown enabled yet, Countdown Live won't enable it or detect the name change.

» Choose Words [ Back to top ]

The Choose Words panel contains a table with edit fields where you can specify the singular and plural words for the time units, such as years, months and days. [ Screenshot ]

This panel is quite self-explaining, although these units will be ignored when you specified in the Language panel that the script should use the units of the current language.

» Language

This is the panel where you can choose the language of Countdown Live and set some options related to the languages. [ Screenshot ]

• The most important part of this panel is definitely the available languages list. All installed languages appear in this list, with the current language selected. At the right of this list, you can view some information about the current language and its author. You can even visit the author's website if he/she specified one.
• You can also let Countdown Live overwrite your own time units with the time units of the current language. Every language file should contain the standard translation of the time units, which you can use by checking this option.
• If you need new language files, you can click the "Download languages" button to open the language downloader. [ Screenshot ]

  In this window, you can view all available languages for Countdown Live at that moment, select the ones you're interested in and download them. You can even update an existing language file by downloading and overwriting that language file from the server.

• For translators, you can quickly open the languages folder by clicking the button with the folder icon.

» Update [ Back to top ]

In the Update panel, you can check for updates of Countdown Live and choose whether this should be done automatically at script start-up. [ Screenshot ]

• The first option is to check for updates automatically at script start-up. When a new version is available, a toast will pop up to notify you about this.
• The biggest part of this panel is then taken in by the updating process. From here, you can click "Check for updates now" to start the process. If no new update is found, the process stops after letting you know about this. If a new update if found, the panel is filled with information such as the current and the new version number, the release date and a button to check what's new. When you're ready to download the update, you can click "Download update" and after it's been downloaded, you can click "Install update" to open the script packet file. After the installation, you might have to restart Messenger.

The Script Menu [ Back to top ]

The script menu can be accessed by clicking the scripts icon in either the contact list toolbar or in any conversation window's toolbar and selecting "Countdown Live" in the menu.

• Enable/Disable the countdowns - With this option, you can quickly toggle the status of the countdowns.
• Update the countdowns now - This option will refresh the countdowns immediately.
• Preferences - Opens the Preferences window, where you can configure everything the script should do.
• About - Opens the About window, where you can find more information about the script.
• Check for updates - Opens the Update panel of the Preferences window to check for updates.

The Script Commands [ Back to top ]

The script commands can be entered in any conversation window. You can also find these commands by typing a forward slash "/" and look in the small window that pops up.

• /cdltoggle - Toggles the status of the countdowns.
• /cdlstatus - Explicitly set the status of the countdowns. Must be followed by a positive (true, on, 1) or negative (false, off, 0) value, e.g. "/cdlstatus off"
• /cdlpref - Opens the Preferences window.
• /cdlabout - Opens the About window.
• /cdlupdate - Opens the Update panel of the Preferences window.

Countdowns Explained [ Back to top ]

The countdowns are what this script was made for. This section will explain how they're calculated and what countdown units are available.

• Countdowns are calculated by one single function in the core of Countdown Live. This function first calculates the difference between the given date and the current date. It collects all values for the units, such as months, days and hours. From then, it replaces every instance of a countdown unit with the calculated value. During this process, other functions such as unit grouping and unit skipping are also executed. At the end, the result is a literal containing what will replace the "(!CD#)" tags. This method has been revised several times and has been optimised to the maximum, so that any countdown should give you a correct result.
• To insert unit values and time units in the countdown, the script has some special units which will be replaced. The units format can be described as followed:
  1. A percent sign ("%").
  2. An optional "t" to get the total amount instead of the remaining value. This is invalid for the amount of years, as that amount is always the total amount.
  3. A letter defining which unit to retrieve. "y" = years, "m" = months, "w" = weeks, "d" = days, "h" = hours, "n" = minutes, "s" = seconds
  4. An optional "0" (zero) telling the script that the unit should have one leading zero, if needed. This cannot be combined with the word part (below).
  5. An optional "w" defining that the time unit as a word should be given. This is commonly placed after a unit value tag. This cannot be combined with the leading zero part (above).
     For example: when %y is 5, %yw is "years", but if %y is 1, %yw is "year".

Most Important New Features since Version 2.1 [ Back to top ]

• The countdowns tags got their own tab and are separated from the countdowns, this means that you can now use one tag for multiple countdowns.
• The preview panel has been enlarged and now has toolbar buttons for some related features.
• The weeks units were added: %w, %ww, %tw, %tww, %w0, %tw0.

Most Important New Features since Version 2.0 [ Back to top ]

• Programming features are one thing. Making these features easily accessible is another thing. For all the features in Countdown Live 2, a new, clear and effective design was required. Check out the screenshots!
• The whole countdown system has been revised, to fix issues with version 1 and make serious improvements compared to older versions. To name a few: you now have the possibility to insert the total amount of months, days, hours,... with their unit, the media countdown can be paused when another media message is set, ...
• Countdown preview: You are now able to see exactly how their countdowns will look in your name, personal message and media message right in the Preferences window. This feature already existed in version 1, but has been fully restyled and now carries the look of a genuine Windows Live Messenger contact list, with the countdowns status in the bottom right corner. Make sure you take a look at the screenshots for a better idea about this feature!
• Sometimes, you want to have a countdown to two dates, such as Christmas and new year, at the same time. In Countdown Live 2, you're able to do just that!
• Although you will only have to use this feature once, it may just save 2 minutes configuring the settings. Countdown Live 2 will attempt to port your preferences from version 1 to version 2 and will make the necessary adjustments to them. It's recommended that you take a look at the preferences when you install the new version, since a lot of new features will still need to be configured.
• One thing that you should take in account is that there are two tags for each countdown. One will be used for counting down, the other one for counting up. This is because you will be able to choose whether to set a finish message, such as "Happy new year!", at countdown end or to start counting up with another tag. This may sound confusing, but the layout will make sure that everything is understandable. And when in doubt, there's always the preview to make sure everything is working properly!