Countdown Live

Well, actually it's been online for almost two weeks now, I simply forgot to make a blog post.

Countdown Live 2.2 allows any number of countdowns in the same way as tags are set up. You can now also choose system-wide hotkeys to quickly set the state of the countdowns. A documentation browser is now also available where you can get information about each single feature in the script.

Countdown Live 2.2.020 can be found at the download page.

To find more about the features and facts, look around on this site and visit the thread on the Messenger Plus! Live forums...

Hello again!

It has been a while since I posted here, with the release of Countdown Live 2.1.014. And today, I am here to announce the availability of Countdown Live 2.1.017.

"Not a big deal, only three small build increments since build 014." You may not see the difference immediately, but the script's updater has been completely removed in this latest build. Why? Because Messenger Plus! Live now does the updating itself with the official scripts database! This build also fixes a few small bugs which you might not spot at first sight, but you'll be happy you don't have to encounter them any longer.

Countdown Live 2.1.017 can be found at the download page.

And here we are. Three months and two weeks have passed since the public release of Countdown Live 2.0. Tons of changes, a couple of brand new features and a lot of headaches later, I'm happy to announce the availability of Countdown Live 2.1!

Countdown Live 2.1.014 can be found at the download page.
Learn more about the new features.

To find more about the features and facts, look around on this site and visit the thread on the Messenger Plus! Live forums...

Hello there!

I have some good news for you all! Countdown Live 2.1 lost its Beta tag today and the Pre-Release has been sent to the official translators. Now that the translators are busy, I have some time to summarise what happened the past three months.

Apart from the big features mentioned in the previous news entry, some small yet interesting changes have been made to improve the script:

• The tabs are now scrollable. A button with an arrow to the left and right on both sides of the tabs are added, which allows you to scroll through the tabs. This is especially interesting for users with smaller screens, as I can keep the window relatively small while still being able to add a new preferences tab if necessary. When you enlarge the window, more tabs will be visible until all tabs are visible, and vice-versa.
• The preview area is bigger and has more options. You can now force a refresh and toggle the countdown state from the preview itself. A new tab with options for the preview is also added with two options. The first one controls if the preview should be refreshed every time you change a setting, this is especially interesting for slower computers. The second one allows you to always have the countdowns enabled in the preview, regardless the real state of the countdowns. The real state will be displayed at the right of the preview, about at the same place where it is in 2.0.
• The languages list is now sortable. This is mostly because of practical reasons, as the current view doesn't allow long filenames. The list now also has a version column, so you can see if the language file you want to use is compatible with your version of the script without having to click the file. Aah... laziness!
  

And that concludes this news entry. Expect Countdown Live to be released in a week or two, when I hopefully have all translations. Then, the new version will be available from the thread on the Plus! forums and from this site, and later also through the script's updater and the official scripts database.

- Matti.

Hello there!

This week, I've done much work on the new version of Countdown Live (2.1). Many feature requests which I've received since the release of 2.0 were implemented, so I hope you'll like it when I release this. No ETA yet, I still have much work to do before I can release this!

Here's a list of some interesting new things which are implemented in the current internal build:

• Countdown tags have their own preferences tab. The tags are now separated from the countdowns themselves, so instead of typing a tag format directly for the countdown, you make a new tag, set its options and select that tag from the list for the countdown. This allows you to use a tag multiple times without having to change it for each countdown and makes some space for extra options for the tags. Read further to know more about those!
• Skip units in a tag. Currently, it's not possible to have years and days in a tag like 2 years and 270 days left, because the months are still being calculated and you end up with 2 years 9 months and 27 days left. By skipping the months, the amount of days will 'inherit' the value from the months, allowing you to achieve the given example.
• Group units in a tag. By placing brackets around a text in the tag and adding the prefix unit + semicolon ( : ) between the brackets, you can give your tag more structure and, as being requested many many times, leave out groups when the "main unit" becomes zero.
  An example:
  Only {td:%td %tdw and }%h %hw to go
  In normal cases, this will give you something like Only 2 days and 5 hours to go[i]. But when the event is coming really close and the total amount of days becomes zero, the group will be left out and you'll get [i]Only 23 hours to go.
  This becomes even more interesting when you nest groups in groups. Take this tag for example:
  Only {th:{d:%d %dw, }%h %hw and }%n %nw to go
  The days group is nested in a total hours group. By using the total amount of hours in the prefix, the whole group won't be left out when there are 2 days and 0 hours left, for example. This tag can give you very neat results, like Only 5 days, 2 hours and 20 minutes to go, Only 17 hours and 20 minutes to go and Only 35 minutes to go. As you can see, you won't get "0 days, 0 hours" in front of the last example, which makes the countdown look more professional and natural.
  The minutes at the end aren't grouped, because otherwise you may get a completely blank tag during the last 60 seconds.
• Units with a leading zero are implemented, for example %h0 gives you 09. This way, you can make a nice clock countdown: %h0:%n0:%s0.
• The countdown calculation was improved once again.
  

So, what is still on my to-do list:

1. Modify the preferences importing and exporting to support loading and saving multiple tags from and to the XML.
2. Think of what else to do.
3. Build a BETA and make the testers do something useful.
4. Fix the bugs reported by the testers.
5. Prepare the release and send it to the translators.
6. Update the project site: screenshot gallery, features reference,...
7. Release it!
   

Regards,

- Matti.