News
Fresh and right out of the oven!
Here you can read the news posts about Countdown Live, varying from release announcements to progress updates.
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:
Regards,
- Matti.
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 monthsand 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.
- Modify the preferences importing and exporting to support loading and saving multiple tags from and to the XML.
- Think of what else to do.
- Build a BETA and make the testers do something useful.
- Fix the bugs reported by the testers.
- Prepare the release and send it to the translators.
- Update the project site: screenshot gallery, features reference,...
- Release it!
Regards,
- Matti.
Comments
Comment #5
Ah yes, I figured out what that was. Turns out that Daylight Savings Time screwed it up.
Countdown Live 2.1 is now being beta-tested, I just sent a mail to the testers. I guess that this period will take about a week or two, after that, I should be able to make a pre-release and send that to the translators. Then, when I received all updated translations, I can prepare the final release.
The 2.1 version will be a medium update, so expect it to be released somewhere in the last weeks of June or in the first week of July.
Countdown Live 2.1 is now being beta-tested, I just sent a mail to the testers. I guess that this period will take about a week or two, after that, I should be able to make a pre-release and send that to the translators. Then, when I received all updated translations, I can prepare the final release.
The 2.1 version will be a medium update, so expect it to be released somewhere in the last weeks of June or in the first week of July.
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